Feast of St. Irenaeus

Paul Kline and Fr. Dan Riley, OFM, offer us the gift of their reflections for the Feast of St. Irenaeus.

 

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By Paul Kline



I felt just a little anxiety when I was asked to offer a reflection marking the memorial of St. Irenaeus. Truthfully, I know very little about the life and good works of Irenaeus. I thought I might carry out some quick research in order to sound smarter and, perhaps, fool everyone! In the end, however, I decided to put my anxiety aside and wait and listen for where the invitation might lead me.





As a boy, I remember that I loved reading books written for children about the lives of the saints. They seemed very much like the people in my family and in my neighborhood. To me, they were men and women who could be funny, angry, and even silly. They were sometimes smart, sometimes foolish, and often seemed dedicated to shooting themselves in the foot! Many did not seem to be looking for sainthood. They argued with God even as they longed for wisdom and grace.





The stories of their lives were told in such a way that I felt that sainthood was not so far out of reach. It seemed to me that a common feature of their stories was the experience of a moment in their lives – a turning point - when their eyes and hearts were opened and they experienced an overpowering awareness of the miracle they were truly meant to be.





Over the years I have sometimes lost contact with the power and beauty of this lesson from childhood. We are all called to sainthood and to discovering and re-discovering our true self. Grace waits for us in the great and small moments of our lives; each moment offering a window into the miracle of whom we are in the eyes of a loving and merciful God.





Thomas Merton writes:

“The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God…the saint is never offended by anything and judges no man’s sin … (the saint)…knows the mercy of God… (and)… brings that mercy to all….”

And so, on the feast of St. Irenaeus, I pray that I might always see, touch, and hold family and friends with the tenderness and love that respects and reveals their holiness. I pray that I may know God’s mercy ever more deeply and be generous in sharing the grace of forgiveness with others. 

 



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By Dan Riley, OFM

The tender, homey truthfulness of Paul's reflection invites me to say more about this early Christian saint, Irenaeus, Bishop and martyr. Irenaeus’ faith grew about a generation after the evangelist St. John and his Gospel of light and peace. The unity, beauty and community unfolding from God through Christ to all creation is amazingly illuminated by Irenaeus in his writings. The harmony he longed for and believed in, we long for and work for today.



Irenaeus defended the Christian faith. As well he is often quoted as saying, “The glory of God is a human person fully alive.” He opened reflections on God's goodness and love, seeing each of us “in Christ” in whom all creation and everyone began and comes to their final beauty and fullness of life.



We chose St. Irenaeus as a patron for our Franciscan Mountain Retreat because of the holy, gentle friar, Fr. Irenaeus, a long time friend of Thomas Merton's and the beloved St. Bonaventure University librarian.



Though many of us have come to say and think of "Old and New Testaments" and sacred scripture, Irenaeus saw and taught a flow of history formed by God as an unfolding covenant over and over again with human kind and all creation. From the prophets to the "Good News" to carrying "News" out to the world there is an out flowing and unfolding God ever creating and holding us ... holding us to love one another.



Let me only add now a little more - from St. Irenaeus - as a close to our sharing here and opening to your own reflection.



In our House of Peace at Mt. Irenaeus, on the wall of our entrance over jackets and sweaters, sneakers and flip flops, we have these lovely words of St. Irenaeus framed. As you reflect on them, my prayer is that all of us may be touched, as Paul Kline prays, “we are all called to sainthood and to discovery and rediscovery of our true self." We are called to be like "soft clay" in the loving hands of our God who holds and shapes us all.

"It is not you that shapes God, it is God that shapes you. If then you

are the work of God, await the hand of the artist who does all things in

due season. Offer God your heart, soft and tractable and keep the form

in which the artist has fashioned you. Let your clay be moist, lest you

grow hard and lose the imprint of God's own fingers!"



- St. Irenaeus of Lyon

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(Mt. Irenaeus Web Site)

Pentecost Reflection

Fr. Bob Struzynski, OFM, and Mike Fenn offer us the gift of their reflections for Pentecost.
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Gospel Reading


On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

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By Fr. Bob Struzynski, OFM

I get very excited about the Feast of Pentecost. Someone has said that the Spirit is the presence of Jesus when Jesus is absent. That sounds pretty good to me except I would add “the loving, healing, life-giving presence.” I love the message of the Risen Lord as he “breathes” this presence on the first believers – it would be a powerful presence that enables them to break through fear into peace and that would enable them to carry on his mission of reconciliation through forgiveness.

I would like to share briefly on the first part of this message. I experienced the Spirit's power in my life to break through fear into peace in a special way when I decided to leave Bona's in 1978 and join two other brothers to begin St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia. After I made the decision I went for a retreat in Maine and during the retreat became very fearful of following through with my decision to leave the academic life behind and live a simple life with the poor.

One night I had a dream and in the dream I saw myself enclosed within a field by thick heavy walls. Combined with this dream was a certain experience of God through the Scriptures that I was reading at this time. I read the passage about Jesus curing the man who was crippled and was laying by the healing waters of the pool of Siloam. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to walk and the man complained that he could never get to the healing waters in time to be cured, someone always got there ahead of him. I was the imprisoned man who was not able to get up and walk.

But I heard the words of Jesus very strongly “Get up, pick up your mat and walk!” in a very personal way. Jesus was saying to me just get up and walk and I would find I was walking into my new life. I did, and those seemingly thick, impenetrable walls were nothing but an illusion created by my fear. As I went to touch them my hand went right through them. There was nothing to stop me. Jesus led me right through my fear into greater freedom and new life.

This is only one story from one life. I'll bet all of you reading this little sharing on the bible readings for Pentecost could add many many more stories of God's loving, healing, strengthening presence through the gift of the Spirit. In true “Mountain” fashion let us rejoice, give thanks and spread the Good News!

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By Mike Fenn

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you”

I am thrilled to partner up with Bob on this special holy day of Pentecost, as we have common threads related to this day. I, too, was called from St. Bonaventure (as a student) to live at St. Francis Inn. While my work there could only have taken place through the pioneering of Bob and his Brothers, it was a wonderful year of truly walking the spirit in everything I did.

Another connection that Bob has drawn out is my recent dream that has been on my mind for a few weeks now. On March 24, my father passed away in North Carolina after a few years of being in poor health. We had a wonderful funeral, recalling his life dedicated to Christian ministry. However he was to be buried in New York City about a month later. The planning for this second event was difficult as many from our family lives far from there. It was also difficult to go through the grieving process for a second time. Truly my spirit was down, and I was depressed at trying to help in the planning while life continues forward at a fast pace in every other respect.

About a week before the memorial service my father visited me in a dream. He was the giant I remember him being when I was young, wearing one of his three-piece business suits. I ran up and hugged him, asked him if he was back. He said, “No, but I’m OK.”

As I read the gospel quote above, and thought about Bob’s own dream, I felt my dream was a message from my father and the Holy Spirit to continue all the goods works he had ministered through his long life. In a way my Father was sending me forth. I pray the Holy Spirit will support me and my family to follow my father’s significant footsteps.

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(Mt. Irenaeus Web Site)

Holy Week Reflection

Mike Fenn and Fr. Dan Riley, OFM, offer us the gift of their reflections for this Holy Week.
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By Mike Fenn

Our sojourner group recently spent a weekend in reflection on Francis’ celebration of the Incarnation – of God coming to earth in the form of Man. We learned that Francis considered Christmas “The Feast of all Feasts” because it meant that the divine is here on Earth, not just up in the heavens. With this perspective, I sit here on Palm Sunday thinking about the upcoming week Jesus endured. The jubilation of his entrance in Jerusalem, the bittersweet mix of companionship and betrayal experienced with His Brothers at the Last Supper, the incredible angst He endured in dialogue with His Father in the garden. And the humiliation, pain and suffering that took place on the day of His death.

From my own experience I know life can bring emotional ups and downs as well - the jubilation of living in a house filled with love to the angst of raising a family in times of moral indifference and economic uncertainty. The companionship of being blessed with good friends made over the years, to the difficulty of watching our adolescents find their way, their identity, and sometimes experience rejection from others. Finally the pain and suffering we are witnessing this very day – a teenager we know passing over after battling cancer for years; someone close to us admitted to the hospital with heart problems.

It can be easy to focus on this Holy Week and – using words Fr. Dan shared with me while collaborating on our reflections – “get lost in the dark.” Jesus experienced sin in many ways on the day of his death. Yet we know what happened by week’s end; the glory of the resurrection, Jesus conquering death.

The primary message of this week is not one of pain and suffering, but of hope. Hope that comes from Resurrection after the darkest of all days. This hope helps me through the darkness in my life and gives me strength to walk with each other through this great gift of life on Earth.

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By Fr. Dan Riley, OFM

While I was reading Mike Fenn’s reflections (above) for the Triduum, the three Holy Days – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, through Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday morning – I thought again and again, about how much I admire him, his wife Julie and their children. I am so grateful that they share their life with us at the Mountain and that a number of us have had a chance to see them grow as a family over the years. This year the celebration of the incarnation, the time when we hear the Christmas story and the story of the Holy Family, has been closer now to this Holy Week and these two great Christian Feasts will be again for almost 100 years.

We come so quickly this year from the "stable," "the flight into Egypt," the early days of Jesus' ministry and now intimate lessons of "the upper room," the deep getting-down foot washing love of Jesus for each of us. His example I see in mothers for children, the great concerns that Bona Dads have for their families. Jesus tells us and then shows us as he washes the feet of Peter, that he "came to serve, not be served" - and I am blessed to watch some of you understand this as you reach down and care for your children and lift them up in love ... care for a sometimes dark and cold world.

The "ups and downs" of family life and daily life and the challenges that we all have, including parents with children (and yes, sometimes children with their parents!), shows me the great example that reflects the love of Jesus who suffered so much to show us love, ultimate love. Jesus' own struggle with his Father that we heard on Palm Sunday in the reading of the Passion in Matthew's Gospel is not unlike our own uncertain struggles with parental figures, with our own uncertainties occasionally about God. Jesus' own words, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; ..." suggests an inner dialogue that wants to grow within us all.

It is Christ's struggle for all of us and an invitation for us to enter more deeply into our own struggles with hope.

I have always had a special love for the Easter Vigil, which is to be celebrated when darkness has come over the whole earth and when we long, not only for the light of day, but the light of Christ. The Vigil takes time and takes us through many passages of Scripture which tell us of God's covenant with us. I find myself turning tonight to close these reflections with some words from Isaiah.

Much of our country has been thirsty this year and some of it still is in drought. In other parts of the world hunger is still a great problem, here and elsewhere money is a confusion and at our Easter Vigil this year Isaiah the prophet proclaims, "Thus says the Lord, all you who are thirsty come to the water. You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk! Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy. Heed me, and you shall eat well, ..."

Tonight in Devereux Hall a student from another country, one of our Bona athletes, told me he thought he would go back to his native country after graduating here because, "Americans worry too much about spending their money and finding some more."

Bona families and God's "Bona word" invite me not to be preoccupied with "what fails to satisfy," but turn my thirsts to the Living Water and to the Light of Christ that blazes in this Easter Vigil. The love that has bent down to wash our feet and lift up our faces so that we can see each other, love each other and bring peace to our world in these coming days.

Feel free, if you wish, to join into this conversation. You might want to read Isaiah 55: 1-11, any of the other Vigil readings, Romans 6: 3-11 is a wonderful reading that comes just before the Easter Vigil Gospel for this year, Matthew 28: 1-10. There we are told by the Lord after he has risen and speaks to two of the Mary's, "Do not be afraid, go tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me."

We too will see the Lord when we enter the world with the courage he gives us and the love he has planted in our hearts to serve others.

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(Mt. Irenaeus Web Site)