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.)

BRIGHTON/STURBRIDGE - Brother Stephen P. Goguen, A.A., 70, died Saturday, April 19, in the Assumptionist Center, Brighton, after a long illness.

He leaves his Assumptionist brothers and nieces and nephews.

He was born in Gardner, son of the late Albert and Angeline (Roy) Goguen. He graduated from Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester and earned advanced degrees in English and Psychology from the SUNY in Buffalo, NY

He was professed as an Augustinian of the Assumption on February 28, 1960. He served in community assignments as a teacher, administrator and formator at Our Lady of Lourdes Minor Seminary in Cassadaga, NY, at Incarnation Parish in Tampa, FL, at Assumption College in Worcester, at Saint Anne’s Church and Shrine in Sturbridge and at the Assumptionist Center in Brighton. He was a trustee of Assumption College since 1982.

The funeral was held on Wednesday, April 23, at 10:00 AM in Saint Anne and Saint Patrick Church, 16 Church Street, Sturbridge. The Rev. Dennis Gallagher, A.A., Regional Superior, was the principal concelebrant. Among the concelebrants were the Very Reverend Marcel Poirier, A.A., Provincial Superior of North America. Burial was in Saint Anne’s Cemetery, Sturbridge.

New statue at shrine carries on a tradition

HUMAN CONDITION

At about 5:10 p.m. on June 9, 1953, the whirlwind that came to be known as the “Worcester Tornado” crashed into Assumption College in Worcester , shrouding it with menacing, black-ink clouds and furiously pummeling it with fist-sized hail, driving rain and train-roaring winds.

When the skies abruptly cleared, the Greendale campus lay in ruin.

A priest and two nuns were killed.

Given the damage from the storm and the cost to rebuild, it looked like the decades-old presence of the Augustinians of the Assumption Order in Worcester was over.