Calendar of Events.March 9, 2011. Ash Wednesday. Day of fast and abstinence.
March 14, 2011. Luncheon Meeting, 12:00 Noon at Louis Benton Steak House. Speaker will be Sean C. Maltbie of the United States Attorney's Office and President of the Catholic Lawyers Association in Grand Rapids.
March 21, 2011. Serra Board Meeting, 12:00 Noon at Louis Benton Steak House.
March 28, 2011. Prayer Service and Luncheon Meeting, 12:00 Noon at Sacred Heart. Bob Paul has been appointed chairman of the Nominations Committee. Please submit names of potential candidates to him. We hope to complete the slate of candidates by March 28.
April 22, 2011. Luncheon Meeting, 12:00 Noon at Louis Benton Steak House. Speaker will be Father Vincent O'Malley, Director of St. Lazare's Retreat House.
April 30, 2011. Sisters' Appreciation Dinner, St. Jude's.
Set-up will be on Friday, April 29 beginning late afternoon. Exact times TBA.
Other Upcoming Events. Father Vincent O'Malley has been appointed director of St. Lazare Retreat House. As noted above, he will be our speaker for April 14. Also, he has scheduled a golf outing for Thursday, June 16 at the Grand Haven Golf Club. The cost is $85 per person or $300 per foursome. The funds will be used for hiring a groundskeeper for St. Lazare's.
The Charter Night. Charter Night will be held on May5. More information will be provided in the April newsletter.
Other Tentative Plans. Dan LaVille discussed the possibility of scheduling a retreat for the Grand Rapids and Muskegon clubs at St. Lazare's. We shall begin work on identifying workable dates for this event.
Future Regional Locations. Regional Convention dates have been set as follows:
Cleveland, 202; Grand Rapids, 2013; and Wheeling, 2014. At least for the time being, there is no convention scheduled for 2011.
International Convention. July 14-17, 2011 in Jerusalem. We will provide more information in future newsletters.
Priests' Anniversaries. We have three priests's anniversaries for March:
Rev. Richard Host, 3-17-74; Rev. Joseph Pettit, 3-26-55; and Rev. Denis Ryan, 3-18-06.
News from our Vocations Committee. Beverly Shields and Nancy Mulvihill hosted a successful 31 Club recruiting weekend at St. Stephen. Thanks to Dan LaVille and Tim Hile, who spoke after the weekend masses, and to Tom and Pat Curran, Frank Lake, Beth Gumina, Janine LaVille, and Len Gross for handing out materials and helping with the sign-ups. Beverlyland Nancy have made contact with and are awaiting replies from IHM, St. Paul the Apostle, and St. Thomas. The display board is on order. Also, we are reminded that Adoration is an important component in fostering, promoting, and nurturing priestly vocations. Especially during Lent let us try to commit to at least one hour a month. St. Isidore's Adoration Chapel is open 24-7, and the code is 513. IHM is open 24-5, and the code is 5412. On the Fridays of Lent, St. Stephen's holds Stations of the Cross at 6:00 p.m. A Lenten Series based on the theme of One God, One Human Family and a soup supper will follow the Stations each week. Our Lady of Sorrows has scheduled Stations of the Cross on the Fridays of Lent at 7:00 p.m., followed by Benediction.
News from the Membership Committee. Thank you to all who took part in our Member-Guest Reception on the evening of February 28. Thank you especially to Tim Hile, who took charge of the invitations, and to our speakers, Nate McKenzie, the Hon. Dennis Leiber, and Dan Grady, all of whom did an excellent job of portraying the joys of belonging to the club. We welcome our three newest Serrans, Bede and Stella Aririguzo and Dr. Derek Lado. Congratulations to these new members, and we look forward to your participation in the club.
August 16-21, 2011. World Youth Day, Madrid, Spain. In October the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, addressed the organizers of this celebration. Cardinal Rylko, the president of the Pontifical Council on the Laity, highlighted the following at a recent Vatican press conference:
"The Pope lays much emphasis on the fact that WYD should not be reduced merely to a moment of festivity. Preparation for this great event ant the attention that must be given to ordinary pastoral care are an integral and decisive part thereof. The festivities and the event itself act as a kind of catalyst to facilitate an dongoing eductional process. In this sense, Benedict XVI sees in WYD a prophetic response to the educational emergency of the post-modern world..."
The theme of WYD is "Planted and built up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith" (Saint Paul).
Source: Salute Magazine, the Magazine of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, Christmas 2010.
A Reflection on our Scripture Readings for the 8th and 9th Sundays of Ordinary Time. On the 8th Sunday of Ordinary time, the reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is as follows: Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me."
Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you."
Our 2011 Workbook for Lectors reminds us that these brief two verses have not been proclaimed for 20 years. The Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, occurs this year for the first time since 1990 because Easter is the last Sunday in April and counting backward from that date until Ash Wednesday leaves eight Sundays between the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of Lent. On the 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time, the last before the Lenten Season, Moses explains that the Lord will continue to care for his Chosen People if they choose to obey his commands:
"I set before you here, this day, a blessing and a curse: a blessing for obeying the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin on you today; a curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, but turn aside from the way I ordain for you today, to follow other gods, whom you have not known. Be careful to observe all the statutes and decrees that I set before you today."
The words of Moses, as proclaimed in the Book of the Deuteronomy, offer us excellent preparation for the upcoming Lenten season. In these days, when the daily news broadcasts present a picture of turmoil, uncertainty, and financial instability, we can find comfort in the words from these readings, which in essence tell us all we need to know about how to live our lives.
May 15, 2011. World Day of Prayer for Vocations.
From the Holy Father: "Proposing Vocations in the Local Church." Because of the length of this letter to the faithful, we will divide it into three sections, with the subsequent excerpts appearing in our April and May newsletters.
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
The 48th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, to be celebrated on 15 May, 2011, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, invites us to reflect on the theme: "Proposing Vocations in the Local Church." Seventy years ago, Venerable Pius XII established the Pontifical Work of Priestly Vocations. Similar bodies, led by priests and members of the lay faithful, were subsequently established by Bishops in many dioceses as a response to the call of the Good Shepherd who, "when he saw the crowds, had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd," and went on to say: "The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest!" (Mt. 9:36-38).
The work of carefully encouraging and supporting vocations finds a radiant source of inspiration in those places in the Gospel where Jesus calls his disciples to follow him and trains them with love and care. We should pay close attention to the way that Jesus called his closest associates to proclaim the Kingdom of God (cf. Lk 10:9). In the first place, it is clear that the first thing he did was to pray for them: before calling them, Jesus spent the night alone in prayer, listening to the will of the Father (cf. Lk6:12) in a spirit of interior detachment from mundane concerns. It is Jesus' intimate conversation with the Father which results in the calling of his disciples. Vocations to the ministerial priesthood and to the consecrated life are first and foremost the fruit of constant contact with the living God and insistent prayer lifted up to the "Lord of the harvest",whether in parish communities, in Christian families or in groups specifically devoted to prayer for vocations.
At the beginning of his public life, the Lord called some fishermen on the shore of the Sea of Galilee: "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men (Mt. 4:19). He revealed his messianic mission to them by many "signs" which showed his love for humanity and the gift of the Father's mercy. Through his words and his way of life he prepared them to carry on his saving work. Finally, knowing "that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father (Jn 13:1), he entrusted to them the memorial of his death and resurrection, and before ascending into heaven he sent them out to the whole world with the command: "Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations (Mt. 28:19).
It is a challenging and uplifting invitation that Jesus addresses to those to whom he says: "Follow me!" He invites them to become his friends, to listen attentively to this word and to live with him. He teaches them complete commitment to God and to the extension of his kingdom in accordance with the law of the Gospel: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (Jn 12:24). He invites them to leave behind their own narrow agenda and their notions of self-fulfillment in order to immerse themselves in another will, the will of God, and to be guided by it. He gives them an experience of fraternity, one born of that total openness to God (cf. Mt 12:49-50) which becomes the hallmark of the community of Jesus. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:35)...
(To be continued in the April and May newsletters).
From the Vatican, forwarded by Cesare Gambardella, Past President of Serra International and Envoy of Serra International to the Vatican.
Message from our President.
Dear Fellow Serrans,
We are soon upon the Lenten season. I find it helpful to make a retreat at St. Lazare's Retreat House in Spring Lake at or near the Lenten season to help me in my daily life. This year we have a new retreat director, Father Vincent O'Malley, who will speak to our club in April. Father Vince has been a vice-president at Niagara College and has written a number of wonderful books about the lives of some saints. I think you will enjoy his presentation to our club.
Have you used http://www.catholicweb.com/ recently? It is a wonderful Catholic web site and you can locate information, including Sunday bulletins, for many parishes throughout the country.
Please support our May Charter Night Dinner that Mark Kubik and his committee have been working on this year. It promises to be a wonderful evening.
Have a holy & blessed Lenten season.
Dan LaVille, Club President
Rosary Promises for March.
Promise IV. "It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means."
