On August 20, 2016, in the church of  Our Lady of the Assumption in Sokode, Togo, six novices made their first vows in the presence of Fr. Vincent Cabanac, A.A., assistant provincial and provincial treasurer:

Armel Yoni DAKISWENDE (Burkina Faso)
Bernardin KANTCHIRE (Togo)
David BINIDI (Togo)
Honoré WINIGA (Togo)
Valère KOUWAMA (Togo)
Jovic KOUEPOU KOUEPOU (Cameroon)

The Assumptionist Center in Brighton was the orientation site of its six new residents with one more expected to join the community in October.

After the Sunday liturgy, celebrated by Fr. Claude Grenache, A.A., Local Superior, each new member was welcomed and blessed (left to right - Yves Olinger, Fr. John Cervini, Cedric Dussert, Andrew Mercado, Kyle Herrington and John Monaco.) They then joined the returning residents, staff and Assumptionist members to review the vision and purpose of the house; that is a community where its members discern their ministry as laymen as to what it means to be church through prayer and study in a Christian environment rooted in the spirit of St. Augustine.

This was followed by the sharing of information, expectations, house traditions, upcoming events and programs which contribute to the smooth experience and enjoyment of living in a large community.

September 1, 2016

WORCESTER, MA – Bayard, an international Catholic publisher with offices in North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, held a dedication and blessing of its recently established location at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, on Sept. 1.

The new editorial offices, located at 2 West Hill Drive, were opened last summer on a limited basis and are now fully operational. The offices currently host full-time employees as well as staff who split their duties between the Worcester location and the company’s other offices in Dayton, OH; St. Louis, MO; and New London, CT.

Bishop Robert J. McManus of the Diocese of Worcester blessed the offices as part of a noontime dedication. The site previously served as a novitiate for men discerning their calling to a vowed religious life with the Assumptionist Order.

On the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Augustine, the Assumption Family celebrated the Rite of Religious Profession of Bros. Ryan Carlsen, Sagar Gundiga and Fr. Joseph Zhang in temporary vows; and Bro. Blair Nuyda’s perpetual vows at the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at Assumption College.

Presiding at the Sunday Liturgy and representing Fr. Miguel Diaz Ayllon, A.A., Provincial Superior and Fr. Benoit Griere, A.A., Superior General, Fr. Peter Precourt, A.A., Territorial Superior, received the vows of the brothers. Fr. Richard Lamoureux, A.A., Director of Formation was the homilist.

During the school year, Corinne Murphy ’17, a human services and theology major from Wilbraham, and Mary Boulton ’17, an elementary education and mathematics major from Poughquag, NY, invest much of their spare time serving as a peer ministers among other Campus Ministry-related activities on the Assumption College Campus.  However, this summer, Murphy and Boulton continued their spiritual education by participating in the College’s ministry internship program.  The program, funded by a NetVUE grant that the College’s Campus Ministry office received to assist students in their vocational discernment, supports two students who are discerning some form of ministry as their vocation.

Murphy spent her nine weeks of internship work serving as a missionary at Camp Covecrest in Tiger, GA. The camp was operated by Life Teen, an organization that brings teens and their families closer to Christ and strengthen their relationship with the Church. Murphy said her desire to spend the summer as a missionary stemmed from the experience she had with Life Teen in high school that “changed her life forever.”

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.