by Maryknoll Society | Sep 8, 2014 | Call to Mission, Events & Celebrations, Peace & Social Justice
RONKONKOMA, N.Y. (CNS) — As Pope Francis’ plane was cruising through Chinese airspace in mid-August en route to his first visit to the Far East, 20 Chinese priests and nuns were assembling halfway around the globe at a retreat house in the United States, preparing to begin a week of quiet prayer and reflection.
The gathering at the Cenacle Retreat Center in Long Island, New York, was affiliated with the Chinese Seminary Teachers and Formators Project, an initiative launched by Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in 1991 to help train priests and women religious for various leadership roles in the church in China.
“It’s Maryknoll’s way of cooperating with the Chinese bishops and religious superiors to help the church in China grow,” explained Maryknoll Father Larry Lewis, who has been involved with the project for 21 years.
The Chinese participants in the program “are under a lot of pressure in this country, studying for a master’s or doctoral degree in another language,” said Fr. Lewis, former project coordinator. “This gives them a chance to leave that pressure behind.”
Most of the summer retreats associated with the project have been preached retreats, allowing for interaction between retreatants and presenters. This year’s, however, was a directed silent retreat, where each retreatant met one hour a day with a spiritual director who recommended Scripture readings and provided individual counsel. The rest of the day, between meals, was spent in solitary prayer and reflection, with the group gathering for Mass before dinner.
“Part of the whole experience here, and we know this from being missionaries and going abroad, you have an opportunity in another culture to see yourself differently, see your faith differently, see the church differently,” Fr. Lewis said. “Being in an unfamiliar situation, you don’t have the usual escapes at hand. It’s very important the spiritual immersion that we offer through the retreat help them look at that and learn from that. It’s a wonderful experience.”
Maryknoll Sister Janet Carroll, who has been involved with the project from the beginning, said the retreat is a welcome respite for the priests and nuns. The self-imposed and cultural pressure to excel in a foreign environment can be overwhelming, she said.
“They have to study five times as much as a regular student every waking hour,” Sr. Janet said.
Chinese participants are handpicked by their bishops and religious superiors to continue their higher education in the U.S. under the auspices of a Maryknoll-appointed project coordinator, who directs them to schools that offer advanced degrees in coursework relevant to the needs of their dioceses and religious communities.
Areas of study include:
• canon law
• liturgy
• spiritual direction
• church history
• pastoral counseling
• ethics
• family therapy
• social work
Most participants enroll in master’s programs, while some work toward doctoral degrees. Before being accepted into the program, candidates must possess a bachelor’s or equivalent certification.
The biggest obstacle participants face when arriving in the U.S. is the language barrier. In order to succeed in the classroom, they must be proficient in English. So following their orientation at Maryknoll headquarters in New York, participants immerse themselves in English as a Second Language classes for a few months before they transition to their chosen college or university.
Project participants are placed at Catholic schools throughout the country. Those institutions have included Boston College; Catholic Theological Union, Chicago; The Catholic University of America, Washington; Fordham University, Bronx, New York; Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara, California; Loyola University Chicago; St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota; St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, Winona; and St. Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
On average, participants study in the U.S. for four years before returning to China, where they serve the church in various capacities, including as:
• diocesan administrators
• seminary rectors
• religious superiors
• academic deans
• spiritual directors
• retreat center directors
• teachers
• social service coordinators
Five graduates were ultimately ordained bishops.
Graduates of the program also minister in the public square, serving people of all faiths or no faith, spreading the Gospel message through their various skill sets.
“One of our priest-graduates started the first social center in Xi’an (more than 10 years ago),” Fr. Lewis said. “And it’s still going strong.”
Project participants also convene each year between academic sessions at Maryknoll in late December for a one-week seminar that focuses on such topics as interreligious dialogue; domestic violence; AIDS education; hospice care; and sex, alcohol, drug and gambling addiction.
The summer retreat and winter seminar provide an opportunity for the priests and nuns to connect with one another and to develop friendships that many maintain when they return home.
Fr. Lewis said the fraternal spirit generated in the U.S. bears fruit for the church in China.
“They invite each other to give seminars and lead retreats and teach courses,” Fr. Lewis said. “Last year they had an official reunion of alumni in China.”
Because of the intensity and duration of the program, participants are required to go home for a month or two midway through their stay to reconnect with their dioceses, religious communities and families.
“China is changing so rapidly, so it’s important to keep them in contact with their dioceses and religious congregations,” said Fr. Lewis. “That’s been a huge factor in helping them remember why they’re here. They’re here to go back.”
Maryknoll’s annual budget for the project is $700,000, said Fr. Lewis. The society pays for participants’ travel expenditures; medical expenses not covered by the sponsoring institution or religious community; tuition costs not covered by scholarships; and costs associated with the annual retreat and seminar. The project also pays for the project coordinator’s assistant, who handles the daily administrative duties.
As with many religious communities, Maryknoll has fewer personnel as a result of the decline in vocations to priestly and consecrated life. The project, however, has helped the society continue its evangelization efforts in a country its missioners first visited in 1918.
“I have tremendous respect for this project,” said Fr. Lewis. “I think it’s a very sane way of doing mission now.”
Sr. Janet concurred: “We are able to do what Maryknoll was founded to do, which is to support the local church and to build up the local church. In lieu of having our own men and women live and work in China, we’re able to channel the money directly into the church in China.”
by Maryknoll Society | Sep 5, 2014 | Adventures in Mission, Aiding Those Most in Need, Call to Mission, Notable Maryknollers, Peace & Social Justice
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, no Catholic priest has resided in the North of this divided peninsula, where autonomous religious activity is effectively forbidden. And no enemy of the communist regime there is more detested or fiercely denounced than the United States.
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by Maryknoll Society | Jun 1, 2012 | Prayers
Service and Generosity
God, grant me the generosity Of Spirit.
Let me not think solely of myself today, but m
make the effort and take the time to touch another’s life.
Let me reach out to perform at least one kind act, to smile, to listen, to embrace.
Grant that I may live this day spreading joy among my brothers and sisters
In Christ, in the fulfillment of the Gospel’s command to love one another
Amen
by Maryknoll Society | Jun 2, 2014 | Call to Mission, Events & Celebrations, Notable Maryknollers
On Sunday, June 29, the Maryknoll Society will commemorate anniversaries of ordination to the priesthood or Final Oath as a Maryknoll Brother for 31 jubilarians. Ceremonies will be held at the Maryknoll Mission Center in Ossining, New York.
A number of the Maryknoll jubilarians have shared information about their work in mission in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the U.S. During the second half of June and continuing through the summer, all of the 2014 Maryknoll jubilarians will be celebrated in the Maryknoll Museum of Living Mission located in the Maryknoll Mission Center.
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by Maryknoll Society | Jun 2, 2014 | Call to Mission, Events & Celebrations
Father Lam Minh Hua, M.M., originally from Vietnam and now from Tacoma, Washington, is the newest Maryknoll Society priest. Father Hua, 28, was ordained into the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers on Saturday, May 31, 2014 at the Maryknoll Society Mission Center in Ossining, New York.
The Mass of Ordination at Maryknoll’s Queen of Apostles Chapel was celebrated by His Excellency Archbishop Bernard Anthony Hebda, coadjutor archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey. Maryknoll Superior General Father Edward M. Dougherty was a concelebrant along with more than 50 priests from the Maryknoll Society and other religious groups.
Later that same day, Father Hua received his missionary crucifix at the Maryknoll Sending Ceremony that presents Maryknoll missioners to the world. After the summer, he will be assigned to serve in mission in the Africa region. Father Hua hopes to join three other Maryknoll priests who already serve in mission in South Sudan.
Father Hua celebrated his first Mass at Maryknoll’s Queen of Apostles Chapel on Sunday, June 1. During June, he also celebrated Mass in English and Vietnamese in his home parish.
Learning About Maryknoll
Father Hua was born into a Catholic family in the hamlet of LaNang on the outskirts of the eastern coastal province of Da Nang in Vietnam. His parents were rice farmers. Years earlier, Father Hua’s own father had been a seminarian. But, this path ended during Vietnam’s war. The elder Hua served on the side of South Vietnam and became a prisoner of the north.
Upon receiving permission 21 years ago to emigrate to the U.S., the family, which included Father Hua’s younger brother, Vien, arrived in the Archdiocese of Seattle and settled in Tacoma. As a teenager, Father Hua volunteered in his local parish and learned about the work of missionaries who came to the U.S. during the 1800s. Seeing a copy of Maryknoll magazine, he also learned about the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers and its work in foreign mission.
“The stories in the magazine motivated me to learn more,” said Father Hua. “As I learned more about Maryknoll, I also learned more about my own vocational calling. Since I went through the public school system all my life until college, I depended on weekly religious education and my church life to foster my faith, wherein I found strength through being an ‘active’ Christian.”
While completing his studies at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, earning a degree in philosophy with minors in history and religion, Father Hua participated in retreats and visited a Maryknoll mission in Cambodia. He witnessed outreach to people with AIDS in a program managed by Father James Noonan, M.M.
Soon after, while completing a master of divinity degree with a concentration in world mission at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Father Hua spent two years in Tanzania to learn Swahili. While there, he witnessed and participated in the mission work in Musoma of the late Father Ramon McCabe, M.M.
Building A Church
While in Tanzania, at a parish on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Father Hua was encouraged to venture out on his own by Father John Waldrep, M.M. Father Hua traveled to a village far from the regular parish. With his encouragement, the people cleared an overgrown plot of land in the middle of a field close to the village and then began bringing poles, tarps, sticks and wood to build their own church.
“Every Sunday, when I got there, I’d see they’d added more poles, more tarp. It was a really beautiful way to pray, out in the middle of nature. They were people of great faith. They came every week, bringing their own chairs and mats. The beauty of this experience is that because I said, ‘OK, let’s do it,’ they were able to build that little outpost church. If I hadn’t gone out there, they would have had no one to say ‘yes.’ That’s all they were waiting for. They were all ready.”
As the newest priest in the Maryknoll Society, Father Hua now is ready to begin his work in mission.
To learn more about Father Lam Minh Hua, please read the article “The Road to God” that appears in the May/June 2014 issue of Maryknoll magazine.
by Maryknoll Society | May 25, 2012 | Prayers
A Prayer for a Mission Heart
Lord, serving you is my greatest joy.
Help me to become as compassionate and caring as Jesus was.
Help me share your love for the sick and the poor with kind words and acts of charity.
Help me to live your Gospel, especially among those who are separated from you, or don’t know you at all.
Walk beside me now and always.
I promise to do your Will always until the day I am home with you and all the Saints of heaven.
Amen
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Short-term Mission    | Global Mission Projects  |  Prayer Corner |  Vocations
by Maryknoll Society | May 11, 2012 | Prayers
A Mother’s Prayer
How soft and beautiful are your little hands.
How innocently they snuggle up against my breast.
Some day…
Some far-off day these little hands must leave behind
the warmth, the toys of fun-filled childhood days
to find their place in the world…
to take up the work of mankind.
Oh how I long to know these hands will find their place!
That someday they will make their imprint on the world.
That they will be hands used not to hurt, nor to take from others, nor cause dishonor.
But instead will be virtuous hands–hands to heal, or to defend, to build, to create, to pray, to worship, to love.
Hands, that though they may become scarred and worn from work
will have lost none of the tenderness and innocence I see in them now.
It may be that these hands will never become famous, but I pray that the world will be better because of their touch.
David A. Tomko,
Butler, Pennsylvania,
a friend of Maryknoll
From “A Maryknoll Book of Prayer“
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by Maryknoll Society | Apr 17, 2014 | Call to Mission
The canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II has Catholics from all walks of life reflecting on the many ways these missionary saints influenced and promoted a global church.
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by Maryknoll Society | Apr 3, 2012 | Notable Maryknollers
Lumina News – Wednesday, March 14, 2012
(Supplied photo courtesy of Rich Cox / Catholic Diocese of Raleigh)
Bishop Michael Burbidge, from left; Father James F. Garneau, Episcopal Delegate for the Cause; Msgr. Jerry M. Sherba, Chancellor of the Diocese who administered the oaths; Father Ja Van Saxon, Promoter of Justice; Angela Godwin Page, Actual Notary and Maureen Foster, Adjunct Notary, gather on Friday, March 9, in Raleigh for a prayer service and to take an oath, beginning the diocesan phase of the Cause for Beatification and Canonization of Father Thomas Frederick Price.
The Catholic Diocese of Raleigh has officially opened the diocesan phase of the Cause for Beatification and Canonization of North Carolina’s first native Catholic priest.
Tribunal members met Friday, March 9, in Raleigh for a prayer service and to take an oath as they begin a formal study of Father Thomas Frederick Price, who was born in Wilmington in 1860.
The tribunal’s historical and theological commissions will study Father Price’s writings and records about his life and listen objectively to witnesses who may have knowledge of his work or reputation, Father James F. Garneau, pastor of St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Mount Olive, said Monday, March 12.
Garneau, Episcopal delegate for the cause, added they have a list of about 30 witnesses from throughout the country so far.
“We don’t have living witnesses from his time, eyewitnesses,” Garneau said. “But we have people in the next generation, people who knew people who knew Father Price.”
Bishop Michael Burbidge opened the cause at Sacred Heart Cathedral. Among those attending was Edward Price of Clayton, one of Father Price’s descendants.
“He was a fascinating man,” Edward Price said Monday, March 12, by telephone.
“Imagine having a conversation with someone and saying, ‘By the way, my fourth cousin is a saint.’ I find that remarkable,” he added when asked about his ancestor possibly being declared a saint someday. “How many people on this earth can say that?”
Price established the Nazareth Community orphanage in Raleigh, co-founded the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers mission society in New York with Father James A. Walsh and served on Maryknoll’s first foreign mission in 1918. He suffered an infected appendix while in China and died in 1919.
A family connection was made when Edward Price saw an issue of NC Catholics magazine last year with Father Price on the cover. He recalled his father telling him about a famous priest from North Carolina they might be related to.
“I mailed the copy to my father and that pretty much got the ball rolling,” Edward Price said.
Family genealogical research helped confirm that connection, and the family contacted the bishop and visited Maryknoll, said Edward Price’s father, Carl Price of Red Bank, N.J.
Carl Price, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., said his father had mentioned having had a cousin from North Carolina who co-founded the Maryknoll Society.
“We kind of knew this as a fact of family history but…we never took any action upon it,” Carl Price, 82, said during a telephone interview Thursday, March 8.
The Price family came to the United States from Wales and settled in Wilmington, where some family members were buried at Oakdale Cemetery, he said.
Father Price’s father — Alfred Lanier Price, editor of the Wilmington Daily Journal — had a brother, William, who was Carl Price’s great-grandfather. Father Price was editor for a magazine about the Catholic faith called Truth.
“It’s just such a wonderful, wonderful thing,” Carl Price said. “The more I’ve learned through the genealogy that there is a blood connection here, it’s something I never expected. And I’m sure my father, if he were alive, he would be astounded about this too.”
“It’s such an honor,” he added. “I’m overwhelmed and I feel very blessed by this connection.”
The tribunal will examine if Father Price’s life demonstrated heroic virtue and will study reports of any miracles people believe are from his intercession or prayers.
“We’re not looking to jump to conclusions,” Garneau said. “The church is deliberate on this so if a declaration is made there’s a certain assuredness we can point to, even among nonbelievers.”
Father Price, called the “Tar Heel Apostle,” is credited with spreading Catholicism throughout North Carolina. He belonged to St. Thomas Church in downtown Wilmington, which is now St. Thomas Preservation Hall.
“I hope this beautiful area of our diocese in Wilmington takes great pride, because Father Price, this was where he was born and certainly grew in his own faith,” Burbidge said during a visit to Wilmington on Wednesday, March 7.
Father Price’s legacy includes 39 acres of land near Raleigh remaining from about 400 acres he bought in 1897, which is where the diocese planned to build a new cathedral. The current cathedral seats approximately 320 people and is the nation’s second smallest Catholic cathedral after the one in Juneau, Alaska, the bishop said.
In death Father Price is near two important figures of his life — his body is buried near Walsh’s remains at Maryknoll, while his heart is buried near St. Bernadette’s tomb in France.
When asked why the church recognizes saints, Burbidge said it is a way to provide concrete examples and is similar to honoring respected members of professions.
“We can talk about saintly virtues,” Burbidge said. “But it’s a lot better when you can say, ‘And here is an example, and here are some of the things that this woman or this man did in his or her earthly life. These are obstacles that they faced, and this is how through their holiness that they conquered it.’”
by Maryknoll Society | Apr 16, 2014 | Adventures in Mission, Aiding Those Most in Need
I had been away from Tanzania for one month enjoying a vacation with family at home. The highlight of the vacation was presiding at the marriage ceremony for my niece. Joined by more than 200 guests, it was a great occasion for family and friends at a beautiful church and reception hall in New Jersey. It was a day filled with celebration and joy.
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