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Behold Your Mother Number 38: September 2007 |
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Cora (not her real name) grew up with an abusive father and was angry with her mother for not divorcing him sooner. But Cora’s step-father was worse. He began abusing her sexually when she was twelve. Two of her cousins are in a long term prison sentence for evading police in a car chase and firing at the police car. Her grandmother, sole support and love, had died. This beautiful seventeen-year-old thought of herself as trash and her life as hopeless.
As I listened to her story my heart broke, but what deflated me and angered me at the same time was that I knew Cora was only one of thousands of youth in the inner city, and scores in our parish boundaries, who are living in hell. Not the hell that they created, but the hell into which they were born and now have to gasp for air in the fetid sulfur fumes of pornography, drugs, alcohol, gangs, drive-by shootings, adultery, fatherless homes, sexual promiscuity and abuse, suicide. Yes, suicide. This past summer a friend of mine, whose husband walked out on her and her six children, lost two of her sons within the same month—not to a car wreck or drowning in the floods we had. Suicide. A third suicide of a friend of theirs followed within six weeks.
Recently I went with six other priests (including Fr. Will) to hear confessions at a youths’ ACTS retreat. It was not the sins of these young children of God that depressed me. It was the hell they are living in. I came away shaken and deflated. But as I sat in the car waiting for Father Will to finish absolving his last penitent, I had to face another reality. It was the young people who were ministering to these kids. Teen-agers themselves, they had met Jesus, they had experienced his forgiveness and his healing, and they were eager to share it with their peers. Many of them, too, had been broken and without hope, but in the darkness they had found the Light of the World.
This is the kind of parish the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple are ministering in. There is the bad news of sin, but “where sin abounded, grace has abounded even more” (Romans 5:20). We are helping the parish plug the dike and rebuild the dam. Life in the Spirit Seminars, English and Spanish Prayer groups, ACTS retreats, Youth and Young Adult groups, the “Hombres in Cristo” and “Mujeres in Cristo,” and other initiatives are evangelizing and forming evangelizers to share the saving power of Jesus Christ—to get God’s children, of whatever age, out of hell—not a future hell but the hell they are living in right now. □ Father George
Father Bob and Father George: Summer Conference Speakers Father Bob Hogan and Father George Montague spoke at Catholic Charismatic Conferences this summer. Fr. Bob spoke at the Regional Charismatic Conference held in San Antonio at the Gonzalez Convention Center on April 14 (Photo to the right), and Fathers Bob and George spoke at the Priests, Deacons and Seminarians Conference at the University of Steubenville, Ohio, June 11-15. One of their topics was “A Case Study in a Charismatic Parish.” What God asks is our fidelity, not our success. --Blessed William Joseph Chaminade
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Understanding the Bible: Father George’s Book, Understanding the Bible: A Basic Introduction to Biblical Interpretation has just been released by Paulist Press in a revised and expanded edition. It is being used as a university and seminary textbook. Fr. George traces the development of interpretation of the Bible from biblical times to today. The Bible at times re-interprets previous events or texts. Then he shows how the Fathers of the Church interpreted the Bible, then the Middle Ages, the Reformation and the Enlightenment and modern philosophical approaches, all in the context of the Church’s teaching in Vatican II and beyond. The book is available through your bookstore or directly from Father George. $19.95 plus $2 shipping, total $21.95. Send a check to:
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ACTS
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At least two new retreat houses are being built in the San Antonio area, mainly to accommodate the growing number of parish ACTS retreats. Like many other parishes, St. Mary Magdalen has found this a Spirit-blessed tool for evangelization. It has brought many to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and with that a return for many to the sacraments and an involvement in ministry in the parish. ACTS stands for Adoration, Community, Theology and Service. The retreat format was begun by two charismatics at Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in San Antonio twenty years ago. |
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New Life, New Roles for Father Bob Father Bob Hogan’s vows in the Society of Mary have been suspended so that he can become a member of the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple, and he has been accepted by Archbishop Gomez into the process of incardination into the Archdiocese of San Antonio, to which the new community of the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple is attached. That means that he, along with Fr. Will Combs, will be canonically full members of the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple, which is in the first stage of becoming an Institute of Consecrated Life. Father Bob has also been selected as a member of the National Service Committee of the Charismatic Renewal. Since August 1 he is working with Bishop Thomas Flanagan as an associate liaison for the Charismatic Renewal in San Antonio.
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Father Will Visits His Catholic Roots
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For Information Contact
Fr. George Montague, S.M.
Brothers of the Beloved Disciple
1701 Alametos
San Antonio, Texas 78201-3500
Phone (210) 734-6727 Fax(210) 738-0698
E-mail: GMontague@StMaryTX.edu
http://BrothersOfTheBelovedDisciple.org website is published by
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