On Sunday, May 25, the Feast of Corpus Christi, several friends gathered with the community to celebrate mass and honor those who had recently received advanced academic degrees. Brother Dinh and Tomasz Kierul both received degrees in Theology for the Weston School of Theology. Tomasz’s wife, Natalia, received a master’s in Education from BU and Sheila Vargas, received a similar degree from BC. Mass was followed by a delicious cookout and congenial conversation on a beautifully sunny day.

This was also the occasion to announce that Brother Dinh will be leaving Brighton to assume his duties in the Campus Ministry Team at Assumption College. Adding to the festivities, albeit “in absentia”, were Tomasz and Ana Jaster who became US citizens on May 22.

In his remarks at mass, Fr. Claude noted that we are all members of the Body Of Christ by virtue of our Baptism and that whenever one member accomplishes something we all rejoice. He also reminded the recent graduates that as members of the Body of Christ, they are called to use their knowledge, wisdom and experience for the spiritual and intellectual growth of the Body of Christ.

St. Anne’s Church, Fiskdale, MA

April 23, 2008

The memory of Steve that will be fixed in my mind for as long as I live – perhaps for some of you as well – is an open door, with him sitting behind his desk in his office. The enduring power of this image has to do with the fact that he was almost always there, and he always had time for you.

When Steve said to a number of us that he did not wish to be first remembered as a finance man, he meant by this, I think, that whatever happened when a person walked into his office and sat down next to his desk was more important than whatever he was doing behind that desk. And he always made you feel that way.

This steady presence of his was due, in part at least, to the fact that he was a brother, that he wasn’t busy with the things that priests do. But more than that, it had to do with the person that he was. What you found as you entered that open door, as witnessed by so many of us, was a receptive ear and a sympathetic presence. Not that everything that transpired in those conversations was “heavy, deep, and real,” as we used to say. It was fun to waste time with Steve. (How often I took a break from my ill-fated doctoral work to talk with Steve, who deserves none of the blame for my failure to finish.)

Cans send kids in Congo to school

By William T. Clew

Lynn Brouillette of Brimfield delivers mail for the United States Postal Service.
And she collects cans and bottles to send youngsters to school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.) in central Africa.

The only thing that one has to do with the other is that some of the people on her mail route in Sturbridge, Brimfield, Holland and Wales save their bottles and cans for her. She does not pick them up while she's delivering mail, but does so afterwards, or has helpers pick them up, she said.

She picks them up every couple of weeks, she said. She cashes them in, gets a check and sends it to Father Ephrem Kapitula, an Assumptionist stationed in Butanbo, D.R.C.
Father Kapitula uses the money to pay the cost of schooling for youngsters picked by the local parish, Ms. Brouillette said.

Archbishop Mbogha Kambale Charles, A.A. (1942-2005)

The oldest of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Archbishop Mbogha Kambale Charles, A.A.,  (63 years old) died in Bukavu (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo) on Sunday, October 9, 2005, at 2:37 AM (local time). The illness that led to his death (high blood pressure which resulted in a stroke) came to light during the ceremony on the day he was to become archbishop of Bukavu in June 2001. From that day he had been taking medication and following a regime of rehabilitation exercises, all the while completing his mission as well he could as the pastor and overseer of the Ecclesiastical Province of Kivu. During those four long years, Archbishop Charles proved to be a man of great faith.