By Fr. Barry Bercier, A.A.

There's a novel called No One Thinks of Greenland.  I haven't read it but the title until very recently made good sense.  Today people do think of Greenland...though it's less the land they think of, or the people on it, than the ice melting, supposedly because of things happening in the bigger world, the one we come from.   But Greenland really does exist and there are people there whose lives really matter, independent of the great self-preoccupations of the modern world.  It's in part their relative disconnection from our modern obsessions that got me thinking about Greenland many years ago.  Or, you might say, it's Greenland as the desert that has attracted me.  Or more generally, it is the far North, where things are stripped to the barest essentials, where there seems to be nothing more than rock, ice, sea and sky......it's that vast and awesome austerity, where even the sun and the day can vanish for months at a time, that beckons to me, and it's the people there whose whole lives breathe that austerity.   It's the North as the exact inverse of the "virtual" world that encloses us back here further south.  For me, the North is a cleansing remedy to the grotesque excesses that we have come to take for granted and even to seek out as if they were necessary.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

By Frank Bruno '17

For most Assumption College athletes, collegiate competition concluded in May. However, for two members of the Assumption Greyhound’s softball team, the summer months provided a unique opportunity to play the sport they love in a different country while experiencing a foreign culture. Ashley Abad ’17, an elementary education major from Bedford, NH, and Ashley Clark ’17, a human services and rehabilitation studies major from Pawtucket, RI, were selected by an organization called Beyond Sports, to represent the United States in an All-Star softball tournament in Cape Town, South Africa, where they competed against South African softball teams as well as taught local children the rules and skills required to play the game.

The tour, sponsored by Beyond Sports, an international education and service-learning organization that uses sports as a vehicle for students to explore the world and create meaningful cross-cultural relationships, took place from June 19 through July 1 in Cape Town. Abad and Clark were among only 13 students chosen from across the country to play on the team and represent the United States. The organization reaches out to gifted athletes who have received All-Conference awards and have posted exemplary national statistics over the course of the season.

August 3, 2016  Worcester (MA)

Barely three months after his ordination, the future founder of the Assumptionists, Emmanuel d’Alzon, wrote to one of his best friends this remarkable passage:

“The most intimate thought of my soul is that the world needs to be penetrated through and through by a Christian idea; otherwise it will fall apart. And the world will not receive this idea but from men who will be taken up with it before all else in order to proclaim it in every form that it might assume.… we need to teach it and to do so in words it can understand.” (Letter to Alphonse de Vigniamont, 28 March 1835)

“Penetrating the world through and through with a Christian idea” became the passion of his life. The young d’Alzon sensed in his post-Revolutionary France that the forces of religious ignorance and indifference were already afoot, not to mention the germs of outright unbelief, forces that would only sink deeper roots and flourish until our own day.  He was convinced that ideas governed the world, whether good or bad, and so came to the conclusion early in life that education, Christian education, was essential for the survival of the world. Without a Christian idea the world would fall apart.

For my summer assignment and apostolic experience, as an Assumptionist brother in temporary vows, I am ministering to the community of ‘boat people’ of Paris who are mostly refugees and live on the Seine River. It has been a very fruitful and enriching experience being welcomed by these folks, even though learning their language, culture and backgrounds have been my greatest challenges. Though there are other Assumptionists here in Paris, working specifically with these people and with those sleeping on the streets, has been a day by day learning experience for me. I go to the market, load and unload food trucks with them and listen to their life and faith stories. As I try to be as present to them as possible, I help them to understand that they are not alone in the world and that God is with them no matter what their circumstances are. It has been very easy for me to mingle among these good people, as they have taught me a great deal about their life and faith in God. The Lord has blessed me these past weeks by giving me the grace and opportunity to be ‘at home’ with these folks.