Bulletin Board with News and Events

Last weekend I attended special events on consecutive days at which two of my former students gave brief speeches. I taught Speech at Quigley High School Seminary North in the 1980s. One of my often repeated and drilled lessons was “Never get up to give a speech without knowing how you are going to end it.” To break that rule, I told the students, would be the equivalent of flying an airplane without knowing where the landing field was located. I promised to give an “F” to any dunce who ended his speech by saying, “That’s it.” Crash landings were disqualified. On Sunday at his parish’s celebration of 100 years, Father Chris Doering, pastor of Our Lady of Victory Church in the northwest side’s Jefferson Park area, delivered post-Communion appreciation remarks during which he graciously thanked all who returned to OLV to honor the parish’s century; thanked the concelebrants calling each of us by name; thanked those who worked on the liturgy and the other arrangements; and thanked the Cardinal for offering the Mass and for preaching. Then Father Chris remembered to conclude smoothly. “Most of all, I thank God for 100 years of grace.”  I smiled. On Saturday night I heard Luis Meza, owner of Platiyo’s Mexican Restaurant at 3313 N. Clark, give the best-man’s toast at the wedding reception of his Marine Corps-brother Memo. With charming wit, he thanked his new sister-in-law for taking his brother “off my hands”. He thanked all the guests who traveled to Chicago from near and far.  He toasted the bride and groom.  Then he glided to a finish with an honest prayer. “Most of all, I thank God who brought Bonnie and Memo together and who gave us this marvelous day.” I think I said something similar in the wedding homily earlier that afternoon, although maybe not as effectively. Twice last weekend I found myself dusting off my old grade book.  A couple of grateful guys deserved another A+.
 

 Anne Therese Guerin was born in anti-Catholic, revolutionary 1798 France. She entered the Sisters of Providence in 1823. Newly-named Sister Theodore educated children and cared for the sick poor in France for 17 years. In response to a request from the bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, newly-designated Mother Theodore led a group of five Sisters of Providence to the United States to establish a motherhouse and novitiate, to educate children of pioneer families, and to care for the sick poor. Mother Theodore and her sisters arrived in the remote forest wilderness of Indiana the evening of October 22, 1840. Today, west-central Indiana would never be mistaken for Chicago. In 1840, that part of Indiana was less than three decades and only a hundred miles away from the Tippecanoe Battleground where Governor William Harrison’s troops had defeated Chief Tecumseh’s Indian Federation.  Harrison would serve a brief Presidency in the first years of Mother Theodore’s American mission. During the summer after President Harrison's sudden 1841 death, Mother Theodore opened an Academy, now known as Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. In the years that followed, Mother Theodore established schools throughout Indiana, two orphanages, and free pharmacies in Vincennes. Eventually, many of her Sisters would extend their mission to Chicago. Today, sixty-six Sisters of Providence continue in the Archdiocese. My appreciations of their charisms – Justice, Love, Mercy – are rooted in the six years I was honored to sit on the Board of Directors at Mother Theodore Guerin High School in near-suburban River Grove. Since re-named Guerin Prep after the young men of their late neighbor - Holy Cross, the former all-male high school administered by Holy Cross Brothers from 1961-2004 - were admitted, Guerin began educating adolescents of both genders in that piece of the Lord’s Vineyard.  Mother Theodore died May 14, 1856, at her Motherhouse. On July 2, 2006, word came from the Vatican that Mother Theodore was going to be canonized a Saint on Sunday, October 15. That glorious day is this weekend. A shrine honoring Mother Theodore is located at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. Saint Theodore Guerin's feast day is celebrated on October 3. I promise the prayers of thanks and praise from all parishioners and visitors to Holy Name Cathedral this weekend for the grace, courage, tenacity, justice, love, and mercy that this great Catholic brought to the Midwest. Join me in praising and thanking Jesus for St. Mother Theodore Guerin.

Next weekend a second collection basket will be passed after Communion for the World Missions Appeal. Offerings made will fund the Holy Father’s ability to proclaim the Gospel in the Missions and with the missionaries of our time. Offer your hand to Catholics in nations unknown to most of us, your gift to believers who really need us. Please be kind in next weekend’s collection for the World Missions.

This Sunday we remember Msgr. Malachy Foley – former Rector of both St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein and of Quigley High School Seminary in the years he occupied the Cathedral rectory room where I will rest tonight. He died in 1977 and is buried on the grounds of the major seminary. I’ll pray for him today; please, join me.

Most registered Holy Name Cathedral parishioners will receive a survey within the week asking opinions about a proposed project that could recreate Holy Name Cathedral and our identity as a parish and as a Cathedral. That’s big news – more than I can explain in this short paragraph. Read over the sheet that will accompany your survey. Appreciate who we are already – a famous Cathedral with doors open to thousands of visitors each week, the home Church of so many who live nearby or who have invested their souls in Holy Name. Learn, however, the facts about how the Cathedral building itself, the rectory, and the area on our block are showing serious age. The Cathedral doors first opened the year before Custer’s “Last Stand” and the founding of the National Baseball League, the year after Winston Churchill and Robert Frost were born, and the same year as the Whiskey Ring scandal of the Grant Administration and the first running of the Kentucky Derby.  The rectory/Church office building was built a month before the Black Monday stock market crash, the month Barbara Walters was born, and just eight months after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Read Joe Konen’s STEWARDSHIP piece on page 9. He will give you a more complete picture of the need for a major capital campaign raising $11-$14-million if we want to do a thorough job. For now, let me urge you to complete the survey. Your opinion will be read.  I hope you agree with those who have persuaded me that we need to take a strong step in making sure that Holy Name Cathedral looks like it should – a great parish and the attractive face of Catholicism in Chicago.

Fr. Dan Mayall