FRIAR WHO EVANGELIZES IN THE MALL:
“WE ARE AN ABSOLUTELY PASSIVE CHURCH”.
Dominican Father Tony Wall thinks Catholics should spend more time living out their faith in the marketplace.
That’s why he spent every day, except Sunday, for a month in Portland’s Lloyd Center Mall. Father Wall, a priest for 60 years, wore his Roman collar or white friar’s habit, simply making himself obvious for those yearning to talk about life’s greater issues.
“People don’t meet priests any more. We are hiding in the rectory,” says Father Wall, who has moved on to lead missions from the Dominicans’ California headquarters. He plans to return to Portland at the start of 2012 for another month of mall evangelization.
“Jesus sent people out on the road,” explains the 86-year-old friar, who helped found the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. “St. Dominic was out in the crossroads and at the inns. He was not waiting for people to find him.”
Educated in Rome during the 1940s, Father Wall counted the future Pope John Paul II among his classmates. He served in parishes and was a teacher before starting the Berkeley project. He served as president of the theological union for two terms. Then he joined the Dominican preaching band, men who give retreats on the road in honor of the itinerant charism of their 13th century founder.
In Mexico on a mission, he met a priest from St. Charles Borromeo Church in Harlem. The pastor said his church counted as many as 339 converts in a year and attributed that to the habit of priests standing out on Harlem street corners to engage the people and give them cards with Mass times.
When he visited Holy Rosary Parish in Portland, just down the street from Lloyd Center, he got thinking. There is no priest at the mall, and there should be.
“We are no longer a missionary church,” Father Wall says of Catholics. “We are an absolutely passive church. We stand back.”
Mall officials were receptive. There were limitations, however. Father Wall had to stay put in one place. Amplification and big signage was out.
That all suited the priest just fine. On weekdays, he chose a bench and sat, smiling. On weekends, he donned the habit and rented a kiosk near Macy’s and filled it with free crucifixes, rosaries, holy cards and sacred medals.
Many shoppers asked who he was and that led to encounters, some brief, some lengthy. Everyone seemed impressed that a man representing deep matters had set up in a place devoted to fashion, skin products and fast food. He heard several confessions.
“People are hungry to have the church stand up and say, ‘Come, come, come,'” Father Wall says. “I think every big mall in the country should have a Catholic presence. All I think the church needs to do is rent a chair and have a priest sit there and have a sign that says, ‘Have a question? Ask a priest.'”
Mall security guards took a special shine to the priest. They passed a hat several times and gave him the money to further his work.
Mary Halvorsen is not surprised the priest had that effect on the mall workers.
“Father Tony had a great method of engaging passersby,” says Halvorsen, prioress of the Holy Rosary Dominican Laity, a group that helped the priest on many days. “People just naturally were drawn to him. Father would ask those people what their names were and would tell them what their name meant in Latin or Greek or what saint was connected to their name. Some would be shy and say they knew a Catholic or used to be a Catholic.”
Halvorsen says other vendors in the area would come introduce themselves to the priest.
“People are hungry for God even if they don’t know it and when they are fed by a gentle, holy man they are filled with gratitude and joy,” she concludes.
As for Father Wall, he talks a lovely torrent that puts everyone he meets at ease. Within the amicability, though, he has an urgent message.
“What we Catholics need is a four letter word — a little bit of z-e-a-l,” he says. “And you have these zealous lay people just waiting for someone to point them the way and say, ‘Go.'”
Take from:Â http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=35&ArticleID=14726
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
that I may be
reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Anonymous
A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said:
“I am blind, please help” There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.  Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.
That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked,
“Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”  The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.” Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?
Moral of the Story:
Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.  The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling… And even more beautiful, is knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!
Anonymous
CHINESE NEW YEAR MASS AT THE PRIORY
The Chapel of Saint Dominic’s Priory was filled to its capacity on Febuary 3, as the community and friends gathered to celebrate the first day of the Chinese New Year of the lunar calendar. A group of Vietnamese Catholics in their traditional garbs also attended the liturgy adding color and solemnity to the feast. In accordance to the calendar of the Macau Catholic Diocese, the day’s liturgical was celebrated in honor of Our Lady of China, families came together and prayed, thanking God for the blessings over the past year and asking for the Virgin’s unconditional protection and blessings during the new year of the rabbit.
The solemn mass was presided by Fr. Athanasius Chen OP who reminded the congregation that the New Year festival is not only a celebration of Chinese culture and their way of life but also a remembrance of the faith and the struggle of the Church in China in these most difficult of times. China we celebrate the Chinese people, their faith, their culture and their way of life.
In his homily, Fr. Jarvis Sy, OP commented on the gospel passage of the day when Mary was entrusted to the care of John at the foot of the cross. The feast reminds us of Mary’s role as the Mother of humanity. Bringing all of us to the singular grace of sonship through Jesus; and through Jesus, uniting the whole humanity into one body and one spirit He also spoke on the importance of appreciating God’s gift of eternal life, embracing everyone in love and service and creating new opportunities for creative inculturation and authentic evangelization.
After Communion, the Prior, Fr. Alejandro Salcedo, OP wished the congregation, their families and friends, a prosperous New Year, calling on the maternal protection of Our Lady of China, and asking for peace and prosperity in the world and in China.
The celebration ended with the singing of the Salve.
BACKGROUND OF OUR LADY IN CHINA
According to popular tradition, during the height of the Boxer rebellion in northern China, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Donglu, Hebei province. The mother of Christ appeared to the Christians as protector and consoler, defender for helpless and the righteous.
During the historic Council of Shanghai in 1924, the Apostolic Nuncio Celso Constantini led all the Bishops of China to make a collegial act of consecration of China to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This consecration was to be repeated yearly on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. In 1941, Pope Pius XII approved the Marian title of “Queen of Chinaâ€. With the liturgical reforms after the Council, the Chinese Bishops’ Conference (Taiwan), the feast was transferred on the Saturday before the Second Sunday of May with the title “Our Lady of Chinaâ€; while the Diocese of Macau chose that the feast be celebrated on New Year’s Day.
Through the years, this Marian title has grown more significant with China begins to take center stage in the global world and international economy. From an ecclesial perspective, it is also the most populous country where the Gospel needs to be preached and religious freedom be assured. With Mary’s intercession, may China become a beacon of light and hope for the world where family is valued, life is protected and rights be defended.
Note on the image: An officially-sanctioned image of Our Lady of China—the seated Virgin and the child Jesus seated in a throne and wearing a crown and ornate imperial Manchu gowns— was blessed and by Pope Pius XI in 1928. This image had become identified with the apparitions of Donglu. In recent years, various artists had represented the Virgin in Chinese garb and had become popular among Christian communities.
Fr. ALEXANDRO SALCEDO OP. St. Dominic priory prior.
The Feast of the Presentation 2011.
…This Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple can teach us so much about Jesus, about His Mother and His foster Father, and about the consecrated life, which the Church also we celebrates today.
Today, Jesus is presented to us as the one who fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament, particularly Malachi’s message that “suddenly there will come to the Temple the Lord whom you seek,” and that He will be the “messenger of the covenant.”
In the Gospel we are introduced to two elderly people who were in the Temple at the time. The first of these was a devout man called Simeon.  He had been told that he would not die until he had first laid eyes on the promised Messiah. Guided by the Spirit he came into the Temple and recognized in Mary’s child the long-awaited Messiah.  He makes a prayer of thanksgiving to God for answering his prayer “for my eyes have seen your salvation”.
Mary and Joseph are quite amazed at the words being spoken. There is a lot they still do not know about their Son. But Simeon then had some ominous words for the Mother: “This child is destined for the fall and the rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”  This is the paradox of Jesus. He comes as Saviour bringing life for the whole world and yet there will be people who will reject his message of truth and life. His own people will be deeply divided over him. This will be a source of deep pain for the Mother, something she will not realize fully until she sees him die in agony before her eyes.
Simeon’s words must have been very puzzling and even alarming to Mary and Joseph. The second person to greet the parents and their Child was another deeply religious person. She was Anna. On seeing the Child, she gave thanks to God and spoke about him to everyone she met.
Now, what does this Feast and what do these readings teach us regarding the consecrated life. From Malachi we learn that Jesus is like the refiner’s fire, that He is daily refining us and purifying us if we allow ourselves to be perfected by Him. All of us are called to a life, which is truly a response without reservation to the initiative of God’s plan for us.
The Gospels teaches us that we should never forget that consecrated life is a gift, which comes from God. None of us has the right for this gift! None of us deserves this gift! It is totally a pure gift of God for a special mission.
So on this day, besides getting to know or to review how we are doing in our life, as consecrated people, we have to accept that our life, like Mary’s and Joseph’s, will be full of challenges, challenges in living the vow of poverty, or the vow of chastity, or the vow of obedience. In the beginning when one enters a community, it seems very easy. But the more we live this life, the more it requires from ourselves the dying of our own will for the will of God manifested in community decisions and of our superiors.
The Rite of the Blessing of Candles at the beginning of today’s liturgy reminds us that Jesus is the “light of revelation to all nations.” But it also calls to mind Jesus’ challenge to us in the Sermon on the Mount, that we too are meant to be the light of the world.
Our way of living and working can express our consecrated life and our mission. We Consecrated people are called to be watchmen in our society and we are all entrusted with the task of proclaiming, by word and example the new life already present in our history.
Together with the elderly Simeon and the prophetess Anna, let us rejoice for having meeting the Lord and for having received the gift of religious vocation. And together with Mary and Joseph let us live to the full our special vocation and mission by accepting the challenges ahead of us and by committing ourselves to spreading Jesus message.
