Father Joseph Zhang remembers his mother telling him when he was quite small, “Today is Ash Wednesday and we have to fast.”

When he asked her what “to fast” meant, she told him there would be no meals in the house that day.

“We were so poor there wasn’t ever much food in the house, but I wanted to know why this particular day,” he said. His mother told him “If you fast, you will go to heaven when you die.”

This sounded like such a great idea to the little boy that he went out, found his best friend and said they should fast together so that they would go to heaven together. When his mother overheard, she was horrified. She told him to be quiet. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone he was fasting.

He couldn’t tell anyone he was Catholic. This was China in about 1984 and the church was not “open.”

On Saturday, March 21^st, 2015, the two Lay Assumptionist groups from Brighton and Sturbridge gathered at Old English Road in Worcester for a retreat day facilitated by Fr. Dennis Gallagher, A.A. The focus of Fr. Dennis’ presentations were five frequent themes found in the writings and preaching of Pope Benedict XVI and how they echo frequent teachings of Emmanuel d’Alzon.

Beginning with the need we have as human beings to have God in our lives, Fr. Dennis moved on to the idea of being drawn out of ourselves in loving service to others and of servants of the truth through the person of Jesus who always sees himself as ‘Son.’ Lastly we saw how the Church is first and above all a communion with leadership, being responsible for those in their care, as shepherds with holiness being the ultimate goal of us all.

WORCESTER – Rev. Alexis Babineau, A.A., died Saturday, March 21, 2015 in St. Francis Rehabilitation & Nursing Center.

Besides the members of the Assumptionist community, he leaves a brother, Raymond P. Babineau of Belchertown, MA; a sister, Marguerite Lussier of Charlton, NY; nephews and nieces and grandnephews and grandnieces.

He was born and raised in Three Rivers, one of the 8 children of J. Arthur and Alexina (Plouffe) Babineau and moved to Leominster in 1926. He graduated from Assumption Preparatory School in 1936 and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Assumption College in 1940. After entering the Assumptionist novitiate in Quebec, he attended Laval University in Quebec, receiving a Bachelor of Theology in 1944 and a Licentiate in Theology in 1946. He pronounced his perpetual vows on April 26, 1945 to Reverend Yvon LeFloc’h, AA. He was ordained to the priesthood on December 22, 1945 by Cardinal Villeneuve in the Basilica of Quebec City. Upon returning to Worcester, he earned a Master of Arts Degree in 1949 and then a Doctorate in Chemistry in 1953, both from Clark University.

So this is how it happened. It begins, actually, a long time ago, back in the early seventies before I was an Assumptionist. I had finished a program in political science at Boston College, was living in the North End of Boston and wanted to start teaching, but until then, to make ends meet, got a job at the Chart House Restaurant that had just opened up on one of the piers at Boston Harbor. I didn't feel at home either with the other restaurant people or with the clientele, which at the time seemed to me unpleasantly demanding and unreasonably snooty. For hours every night I'd be wiping clean their tables. And that's how it happened.

The tables, fitting in with the nautical theme of the Chart House, were inlaid with nautical charts of the whole watery world and its coastlands. The landmasses were colored green, but as a place set apart from all of them was Greenland--because of its icecap Greenland was represented as white.

The image of that clean, white and distant land, showing up every night at work in the vaguely sleazy environment of the restaurant, worked its way into my imagination, and after work, night after night, I had dreams of flying to Greenland, sailing to Greenland, climbing the coastal mountains up to the icecap of Greenland...