Wednesday, September 14, 2022

The Furnishings in the Saint Joseph Cupertino Friary Chapel

The Furnishings in the Saint Joseph Cupertino Friary Chapel
Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland (see descriptions below . . .)



For many years, the altar, the ambo, and the tabernacle now found in the friary’s second floor “private chapel” (or “oratory”), were used in the main chapel located on the first floor of the St. Joseph Cupertino Friary (now the primary worship space used by the Shrine of Saint Anthony, and open to the public).  

These furnishings in the friars’ chapel are entirely hand-carved from wood, and were imported from Italy.  They were originally placed in the main chapel after an extensive renovation was done there following the Second Vatican Council.   (continued below . . .)


 


They depict friars carrying large stones, a reference to St. Francis and his first friar-followers efforts to literally rebuild churches with stones and mortar.  This was a response to what the saint believed was the early friars calling to “rebuild the church,” a commission he believed he received in a vision while praying before the San Damiano Cross, and in which Jesus said to him “Francis, rebuild my church.”  

The altar, also employing the same stone theme, is engraved with a gold medallion, representing the Eucharistic bread, and is superimposed with a Tau Cross, a symbol often used by the Saint as a “signature” in his writings (and for centuries since used and worn by Franciscans as a sign of their Franciscan spirituality).  

The tabernacle is fashioned as a stone carried by the friars.  It suggests their more significant role as Christ-bearers, taking Jesus into the world, and in that way giving new life and truly “rebuilding” the church.  The loaves and fishes on the face of the tabernacle recall the Gospel account in which Jesus had pity on the 5000 gathered to hear his preaching — the “multiplication of the loaves and fishes” reminds us of Jesus’ passion to serve the poor and the needy, and it is a foreshadowing of the miraculous gift of the Eucharist, the Sacrament which never ends in giving life and the grace of God to the faithful.  

The Ambo is engraved with the words “This is the Rule and Life of the Friars Minor.”  This is a reference to the Rule of St. Francis in which the friars are mandated to follow the Gospel way of life.  The Gospel and other Scripture readings are proclaimed from the Ambo!   (continued below . . .)

Each piece is discretely stamped with a metal seal stating they are “Entirely Hand Carved” by their Italian artisans. 

The friars of the St. Joseph Cupertino Friary community gather each day in their oratory chapel for Morning Prayer, Office of Readings, Common Meditation, Evening Prayer, and Compline (night prayer).  The friars also use the chapel for their Conventual Masses.   (continued below . . .)


**The Shrine chapel downstairs now houses altar furnishings originally used at the now closed St. Hyacinth College and Seminary, Granby, Massachusetts. 


For more information about the Shrine of St. Anthony, see the following web sitehttps://www.shrineofstanthony.org/ 

For more information about the Conventual Franciscan Friars of the Our Lady of the Angels Province (OFM Conv.), see the following web site:  https://www.olaprovince.org/


Sunday, September 11, 2022

A stunningly simple yet very thought-provoking 9/11 memorial

 



A stunningly simple yet very thought-provoking 9/11 memorial at the Conventual Franciscan Friary of St. Joseph Cupertino in Howard County, Maryland.

On the friary grounds (on the wooded “Alverna Trail” maintained by the staff and volunteers of the Shrine of St. Anthony), is a stunningly simple yet very thought-provoking memorial to those lost in the United States on 09/11/01.  A statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus stands at the entrance to the trail.

The memorial site, located about 100 feet into woods, includes a steel relic of the NY World Trade Center, a gift to the Franciscan Friars Conventual of the Our Lady of the Angels Province by the the Little Sisters of the Poor of Latham, New York.  

The peace and simplicity and the wooded setting of this prayer-inspiring memorial, so very far from city noises and busy streets, seems quite contrary to the violence and horror of that dreadful day.  This site is simply stunning to behold, and it gives those who visit a comforting and very peaceful place to pray and to reflect as they recall 9/11. 

A nearby marker reads: “Cross made from the rubble of the World Trade Center, New York City.”

Another marker reads: “In remembrance of the lives lost and the lives forever changed by the events of September 11, 2001.”  and . . . 

At the Cross her station keeping — Our Lady of Sorrows — Pray for us

Patron of the Lost — St. Anthony of Padua — Pray for us.”  

**The Alverna Trail is located in an area behind the friary that once was a tree shaded grove, and the picnic site of the Annual St. Anthony Pilgrimage, a friary fund-raiser that was held for many years until the last such “pilgrimage” in the summer of 1986.

For more information about the Shrine of Saint Anthony see https://www.shrineofstanthony.org/

For more information about the Conventual Franciscan Friars, Our Lady of the Angels Province see https://www.olaprovince.org/

Saturday, August 20, 2022

Actual Answers to a Sixth Grade History Tests (author unknown)


Actual Answers to a Sixth Grade History tests 
(author unknown):

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother's son?" 

3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada. 

4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines. 

5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth. 

6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. 

7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline. 

8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw the java. 

9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. 

10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus." 

11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them. 

12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard Shaw. 

13. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense. 

14. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. 

15. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. 

16. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah." 

17. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100‑foot clipper. 

18. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroicouplet. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet. 

19. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. 

20. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. 

21. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim's Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this. 

22. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. 

23. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. 

24. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. 

25. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. 

26. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees. 

27. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large. 

28. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. 

29. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't have any children. 

30. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. 

31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers. 

32. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch‑Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The day my world stood still . . .

The day my world stood still . . . 

This is always a very difficult day for me.  

Forty-five years ago today, and at the very moment I heard an announcement from a radio news report about the death of Elvis, I was in a tent in the camping area of a Maryland State Park (a radio was blaring somewhere in the background).  

I was fourteen years old, and still very short and undeveloped for my age. It was just two-and-a-half weeks before my fifteenth birthday; the first day of classes for my sophomore year of high school was only three weeks away. 

Just moments earlier, I had been coaxed and forced, for the first time in my life, to perform oral sex on someone.  The culprit and predator was a man nearly twice my age.  

He was a “diocesan” seminarian studying for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and had already been regularly sexually molesting me for over a year (something that had started just after I graduated from the eighth grade of my parish school).  

I think he was very happy that things had “progressed” to that level on the eve of August 16, 1977.  He told me I had “a talent” for what had transpired.  

As I heard the news about Elvis, I remember feeling at that precise moment like all I wanted to do was to wash out my mouth with soap, and to take a shower to cleanse my body and soul of it’s “filth.”  

I have PTSD, and this anniversary always “triggers” me.  

But I’m a SURVIVOR!

Saturday, August 13, 2022

My Transfers and various parishes (2014 through 2022)

My transfers and various parishes (2014 through 2022):


I posted the following, and the updated comments first on August 13, 2014, and then on August 13, 2022.  Eight years passed between the two entries below . . . 

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Posted on 08/13/2014:

I'M BEING TRANSFERRED!

Greetings all:

Now that the "dust is settling" from our recent Province Chapter, I want to let you know how recent decisions of the Minister Provincial and his Definitory (i.e., his "executive council") have impacted my life; I have no doubt that these decisions will also effect the lives of quite a few people who have been very dear to me for many years.

I'm filled with emotion (and quite a bit of anxiety) as I wish to share with you that I will soon be departing Most Holy Trinity--St. Mary and Brooklyn, New York.

I'm being transferred "up north" to Syracuse, New York and to another friary and parish, at "The Franciscan Church of the Assumption" (see: http: // assumptionchurchsyracuse. org   NOW [2022]: https://assumptionsyr.org/ ).

I've been stationed at Trinity for two separate assignments during the past twenty-two years--first, for seven years during the 1990s, and then more recently, for the past ten years (since June of 2004).  I've spent seventeen years of my life at Trinity, and every one of those years were filled with both wonderful moments and many blessings! 

I love Trinity, Brooklyn and New York City.  Leaving this place again, now for the second time, will no doubt be very difficult for me.  But with that in mind, I am now grateful for the opportunity to move on to a place where I hope to respond faithfully to God's call in my life and to minister to God's people in a new and challenging ministry.  That being said, I know the transition will not be easy.

I hope to have time, before my departure from Brooklyn on September 1, 2014, to say good-bye personally to the many people who have enriched my life for so many years at Trinity.  Words cannot express how grateful and blessed I feel to have had all of you as such a wonderful part of my life and ministry.

Please pray for me!

Peace . . . and Praise God!
Timothy

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Posted on 08/13/2022:

Wow!  How time does fly!  Eight years ago I was being transferred from Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary in Brooklyn, New York to Assumption Church, Syracuse, New York. 

So many highs and lows since then . . . 

Since August of 2014, I've been blessed, and am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, to serve as the Pastor of six parishes (most of them simultaneously): Assumption, Syracuse (‘14-‘15), St. Ann and St. Wenceslaus, Baltimore City (‘15-‘18), and St. Michael, Annunciation, and St. Clement, Baltimore County (‘18-‘22).

How blessed I’ve been to journey for a time with so many wonderful and faith-filled people in each of those parishes!

Seventeen years of my life were spent at Trinity in Brooklyn (‘92-‘99 and ‘04-‘14); MHT-STM still holds a very central place in my heart!!! ❤️

Praise God!

Timothy

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Wednesday, August 10, 2022

A "Googled" image of my folk's OC, MD home

 




Earlier today, I “Googled” my folk’s Ocean City, Maryland home address; I did so because, planning some travel, I wanted check the distance and time it would take to get there from "here to there," for a visit I plan to make to see my dad. The attached Google photo is what came up (with some privacy alterations!).

Seeing the Google photo made me feel sad and melancholic because it’s obviously “dated” (I’d guess about eight to ten years old). My dad’s old fishing boat is in the driveway; years ago now, he departed with it.
There’s no doubt the photo was taken when my mom +Carolyn was healthy, full of life, very much alive, and still lived there (and before she was ravaged by Alzheimer’s and eventually had to live out the last three and a half years of her life at St. Joseph's Nursing Home, Catonsville-d. September 13, 2018). I'm sure my mom most certainly put those fall/Halloween decorations in the windows of the house that are visible in the picture.
Seeing this photo (something I didn't anticipate as I had entered the address on the Google search app), reminded me of how my mom always delighted in holidays, and how she took pleasure in changing her home’s decoration schemes so as to spruce up the house for festive occasions. She loved doing that!
The second photo is from Christmas 2014. It was the last Christmas my mom spent in her home. As I look at the photo now, I can see how obvious it is that my mom was already suffering the effects of the disease of Alzheimer's. It's notable to me that the tree is decorated only with lights and no ornaments, something my mom normally wouldn't have allowed! Not long after that Christmas, she became a resident of St. Joseph's Nursing Home.
After that, family holidays were never the same . . .
I really miss her.
Rest in peace dear +mother!

Friday, July 22, 2022

Maybe I Missed Something???

Holy Cross Polish National Church
Fells Point, Baltimore, Maryland

On Friday, July 22, 2022, I passed by this venerable old church building in the Fells Point area of Baltimore City, Maryland.

I was surprised to see these very LARGE signs on the front door of the church (namedHoly Cross”):

“NO TRESSPASSING”

“NO LOITERING”

Maybe I’m missing something, but I find the placement of these signs to be very confusing . . .

And Jesus said:

Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.

(See Matthew 11:28). 

I have to be honest, these signs left me feeling confused?!?!

These are my thoughts . . . 

It seems there is a systemic abandonment of the most needy, the most underserved, and the most marginalized by “the powers on high.” And I believe that when thrown “into the mix” if there is any type of discrimination, apathetic lack of concern for the plight of the poor-and-the-marginalized, outright contempt for those who are “different,” and blatant racism in all of its ugly manifestations, then the result is exactly what is seen here and elsewhere in various and numerous ways.

I think churches ought to have large signs on them that say “All are welcome here, and ALL means ALL!

My suspicion in this case is that because this particular church is located about a block away from a well known, largely populated, and very busy drug rehabilitation program (serving both residential and out-patients), and unlike the relatively recent past, it is now in a so-called “challenged” neighborhood, that it has taken an ill-conceived “defensive position” believing it needs to shield itself from real or imagined “problems.”

What a missed opportunity to get out onto the streets and “to be” the presence of Jesus perhaps where such a manifestation of God’s love might be needed most.

I believe the optic of “NO TRESSPASSING” and “NO LOITERING” signs on a church building, very much speak volumes about malformed fears and anxieties about an otherwise “fertile mission field.” That’s too bad, and probably even “sinful.”

Maybe I missed something???


The following is another of my blog posts that addresses a similar theme: 

https://www.frayteo.us/2020/09/meeting-friend-in-baltimore.html