Exile Then and Now: Remembering the Displaced

I am watching a video series on the Old Testament (usually called the First Testament in recent scholarship) through the Great Courses study series presented by Dr. Amy Jill Levine, Professor of Jewish Studies and New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University. She relates history, archeology and scriptural scholarship in lectures on the prophet Jeremiah and the deportation to Babylon. I have read briefly about the 2 deportations in scripture of the Israelite people into exile. 

What shocked me is how little most of us, myself included, know about that suffering in history.

As deportations are happening across North America and other parts of the world, I realized we are ignorant of our own story and historic sufferings of displaced people.  About 1400 parents are deported each month in the United States (with 27,000 children being separated from their parents).  That is a horrific scandal that we seem powerless to address. Worse still, recent reporting states that up to 200 million people are displaced through war, famine, flooding or oppression in the past few years. 

I was staggered to realize that our world is aware but mostly indifferent to the plight of millions of suffering people. The gospel calls us to be aware and active in seeking out the marginal, the disposed and the oppressed of our world.  

I pray that these scandalous realities may be addressed and people given hope, help, and refuge.

-Father D.M.Vere

Reference: UNHCR reports 132 million people are forcibly displaced with 36.3 being refugees, 73.5million being internally displaced (in their own country) and 8.4 million asylum seekers fleeing oppression or seeking safer surroundings. There are differing number from various years within the United Nations data sources 2024/2025. (Some 8 million have returned to their home region in the past two years)

Prayer for Transformation at Easter

Prayer for Transformation

Risen Jesus,

Every moment of your life was a glorious hymn of praise

            as you did only “what pleased your Father”:

listening, and responding in love and fidelity,

                                    whether questioning the doctors in the temple,

                        learning from Joseph how to make furniture,

and grieving his death,

changing water into wine, 

leaving home to walk the dusty roads of Galilee,

                        teaching, healing, forgiving, challenging,

                                    relaxing with friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus,

letting Lazarus die and then raising him, 

                                                            suffering rejection and unjust judgment,

                                                                        living the hours of your torture, and death.

Your life was a faithful and loving song of “Yes” to your Father.

Risen Jesus,

May my life too be such a song of loving praise,

its every moment a note in that melody,

                        whether a glorious and true note of jubilation,

                                    a wobbly, weak note of grief,

                                          a tender tone of longing and love,

                                                or a cracked and uncertain squeal of confusion.

            a rest note that holds the silence of waiting,

                        or a crescendo that pleads or rages. 

Whatever the notes that compose the moments of this, my life,

            whether they be clear and true, scratchy or wavering,

or even off key,

somehow, let my imperfect, human “yes”

blend with your magnificent and perfect one,

into a beautiful and unique harmony.

Risen Jesus, help me to accept all my moments, as they are, as I am,

those moments I have lived and those yet to come,

            and by your amazing love transform them

into your paschal hymn of praise,                                                     

today and every day,

for the salvation of the world.  

Amen.

-Sister Mary Diesbourg, CSJ

IMAGE: Sixteen Miles Out/Unsplash

Teacher Appreciation Day

Sister Callistus Arnsby teaching piano to a student at the Sacred Heart School of Music, London, Ontario. Sister of St. Joseph Archives.

As a very shy 12-year-old I knocked on the door of the most esteemed piano teacher I ever knew. The door opened and there stood Sister Callistus Arnsby welcoming me into her piano studio. A beautiful grand piano filled most of the room. A cushion carefully embroidered with musical symbols topped the chair beside the grand. Music scores and biographies of musicians filled the open shelves, and behind the closed cupboard doors were hidden more tools of the trade: music liners for the blackboard, chalk, manuscript paper, recital notes, exam requisitions. This was truly like stepping into another world.

Though I felt overwhelmed and in spite of my shyness this seasoned professional set me at ease and encouraged me to enter more fully into the contemplative world of sound. Sister Callistus knew how to call forth a presence to the experience of making music, not just reading the notes. She was sensitive to the ebb and flow of a musical phrase. She helped me realize that the weight applied to an individual key could vary so that a phrase would take shape, a melody would lift and fall, like one crescendos and decrescendos when singing a best loved song.

This music making was not only about performing a piece for a recital or the Kiwanis Music Festival, but it also was about building confidence, and a sense of identity. When memorization became a challenge and sometime failure, she would encourage and advise new techniques for calming nerves and send me off to the next recital opportunity.

Sister Callistus led our St. Joseph’s School of Music through the height of its success and then as time warranted, helped guide all who taught with her, to a new environment in collaboration with the Western Ontario Conservatory of Music. Sister Callistus is remembered by numerous musicians. I thank her for the extraordinary ways that she helped me grow in my love of music and music-making.

On this National Teacher Appreciation Day for whom do you give thanks?

-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj

NATIONAL TEACHER APPRECIATION DAY

National Teacher Appreciation Day is on the Tuesday during first full week in May as a reminder to show appreciation for teachers everywhere. We are using this National Day to say thank you to all teachers for their time and dedication to educate our children.

image: Geert Pieters Yanna Zissiadou/Unsplash