What Should I Include in This Blog?

Well, I have given some thought that I should update this blog on a more regular basis. Any thoughts on what I should use this blog for would be greatly appreciated. I do enjoy writing and often receive many positive accolades for the homilies I publish on Facebook. I have often thought it might be worthwhile to write about the daily joys and tribulations of a Director of Campus Ministry. I can certainly include these the homilies as well as the reflections as Director of Campus Ministry ... any other thoughts from folks on what else I could use this blog for? Would be interested in any thoughts!

Memorial Mass for Haitians - Homily

The last 48 hours we have seen the pictures,
read the words, offered prayers and intentions,
and perhaps even questioned ourselves
in the face of the largest natural disaster
in each of our lifetimes.

What can we say
in the face of such a terrible tragedy
in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere?

Or another question raises itself:
How can God – who stands with the poor –
allow for such a tragedy to happen?
Where was God?

I find these questions difficult to answer …
impossible really …
and these questions are not really any different
than what the Israelites in our first reading experience,
when in the face of the terrible tragedy
of the battle with the Philistines, they ask,

“Why has the LORD permitted us
to be defeated today by the Philistines?”

All of these questions and really no answers.
What are we to do
in the face of such huge questions,
it seems only natural
to gather together like we do tonight …
in faith …
in faith in a God
who is the God of Hope.

My friends,
I do not think God is responsible
for any evil in the world.

God does not cause evil.
God does not cause earthquakes or tsunamis or famines
to get back at people for something they may have done.

Evil does not discriminate …
evil just happens
whether by the hands of others
or by the terrible natural disasters
we have all witnessed to over the last many years …


So, where is God then in all of this?

I am reminded of an image
that started my day
when reading this morning’s New York Times.

A collapsed cathedral in Port a Prince …
the remains of a once beautiful cathedral
reduced now to only rubble
with only some of its outer walls still standing.

Yet in that starkness – from the air -
the form of a cross is all that is left to the eye.

Imagine for a moment
in the midst of the chaos and distress of Port au Prince
that a cross stands in the middle of this city.

Where is Christ in all of this?
The crucified Christ –
naked on the cross and his blood pouring out –
laments with the Haitian people.

The crucified One
weeps with his arms
wrapped around women in search of their children,
husbands looking for their wives,
lost and stunned children looking for their parents.


Yet, the cross is not just a sign of death,
is not just a sign of endings.

The cross also signifies hope,
hope for a future,
even though in the pictures, videos,
and words of the days
it just seems so utterly impossible
to think or believe that hope is even possible.

Yet that is our faith.


I am consoled by what Saint Ignatius writes
in his Meditation on the Incarnation
when he describes the Godhead
looking down on all of creation
in its distress, corruption, brokenness,
confusion, dire straits, and tragedies.

There God,
in only what God can do because God is love
gives his very self to the world through his son, Jesus!

Jesus the Christ in his deep love and compassion for creation,
for his all peoples, for the Haitian people,
has chosen to make his home in Haiti …
in Port au Prince.
He has chosen to stand in solidarity with them,
weeping with them,
and offering his hands
and heart for a better tomorrow.


That is what we witness in today’s Gospel reading.
The leper begs Jesus to make him clean.
Jesus in his great compassion reaches out to the leper
and heals and makes him whole again.

And we have witnessed
Christ, the healer, the compassionate One,
who has made himself known
through the hearts and hands
of so many around our global neighborhood.

Even within this SU neighborhood,
all of us have gathered together
in deep care and compassion,
in a variety places across our campus today,
and have asked, What can we do?
How can we be with our Haitian sisters and brothers?

And we do this because of our shared humanity …
and because we have Christ within us
who only knows how to love with compassion.
______________________________________

Mike Bayard, SJ
Ecumenical Chapel
January 14, 2010

The Baptism of the Lord - Homily

Why do we want to love the poor, to help the lonely,
to console the sad, to heal the sick,
and to bring freedom to the oppressed?
Simply because that is what God does. Nothing else.
It is the very essence of Christ.
Christ taught us how he acts, how he lives,
how God loves – and we try to learn." - Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, S.J.

Friday morning
sitting in the Arrupe Community library,
I overheard three Jesuits remark,
“Christmas is over”

Afterwards
I commented to one of my other Jesuit brothers
that Christmas isn’t over
and that Bill McNamara’s music selection
for Sunday mass
has us singing Joy to the World.

Immediately this Jesuit responded,
“C’mon Mike, Christmas is over.
You need to get a life!”

Well, excuse me, I do have a life …
three times over …
having kept 3 of my New Year’s resolutions,
a full 10 days into the new year.

I just wonder if this other Jesuit could say the same …

What of any of you?
Have you made a New Year’s Resolution?
Have you at all kept your New Year’s resolutions?
(Not surprising.)

Recently Northwest Cable News
reported that 2/3 of the US population
typically fall away from their resolutions
within 4 days of January 1st!

And the reasons for not keeping a resolution:

#3 – Failure to set up a support system …
#2 – Failure to be patient …
#1 – Failure to have an optimistic attitude!

Let’s face it …
starting something new
always proves to be a challenge.

Or as Fr. Pat Howell, my rector, often quips,
“You know all beginnings are hard!”

New Year’s resolutions are not any different …

And it is,
in all beginnings –
that we – as human beings –
strive to start over,
to make things aright,
to try things differently,
to improve on our way of living,
to recommit to who it is God calls us to be.

And often these beginnings can be very hard!


What we celebrate today – the Baptism of the Lord –
is all about beginnings!

At the juncture between Christmas and Ordinary Time,
we have an opportunity
to embrace a new way of living.
Let me suggest that what we celebrate today
encourages us to make a New Life Resolution.

The baptism at the Jordan signifies
a beginning …
the start of the mission of Jesus …
a fresh way of living …
a resolute way of living.

The plunging into the waters of the Jordan
awakens and turns his life in a new direction,
publicly confirmed by a voice
that probably reverberated
just as loud inside his very self
as it did among the throngs of people
gathered at the Jordan,

“You are my Beloved, with you I am well pleased!”

With that public affirmation … confirmation,
anticipated centuries earlier by the prophet Isaiah,

“I formed you,
and set you as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon,
those who live in darkness.”

Jesus resolutely starts his journey toward Jerusalem,
with heartfelt passion …
Jesus lives into his call
of welcome, teaching,
healing, reconciliation, freeing oppression …
essentially his own “New Life Resolution”!

My friends,
this new resolution is not some age-old promise.

No, it is a promise that keeps on renewing itself
each time another person comes forward
entering the waters of baptism.

This promise will renew itself this coming Easter Vigil,
when twelve young men and women will assent –
one after another:

“Is it your will to be baptized in the faith of the Church,
which we have all professed with you?”

And with that one question
will come a resolute Yes!

And entering into the waters of the reflecting pool,
their lives will turn toward a new direction …
with the community gathered around the pool,
affirming their faith,
each one of them
will share with Jesus this new life!


Beginning to live this new life is not always comfortable!

Living the way of Jesus
will put each one of us in situations – almost daily –
Asked to step aside of our needs
to provide for someone else;

To challenge some injustice that is close to our heart;

Generously offering one year of service in place of a six-figure first time job;

To step up, speak a truth to a fellow friend
helping them break out of a destructive pattern of life;

To courageously stand within the culture confronting discrimination;

To be humble enough to step aside from
“my way is the only way”
and instead say “I am sorry!”

Indeed beginnings are hard
especially when living into this New Life Resolution.

How are we to live into this new life
we have each chosen through our baptism?

FIRST, we live this life together
as members of one body … the People of God …
encouraging one another along the way!

That is why we gather here week after week …
to hear our story;
support one another;
pray for the needs of those whom we encounter;
And we gather around this table
to be strengthened together in this meal we share.

SECOND, be patient!
Living into the New Life Resolution
does not happen overnight …
more often than not
we will make mistakes …
we will turn away from our resolution

I am often reminded of Pierre Chardin’s prayer,
Patient Trust, when he prays,

We are impatient of being on the way
to do something unknown, something new.
yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing
through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

Only God could say
what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you …

THIRD, let us commit ourselves to optimism,
beginning each day in gratitude
for the life God has given us;
and then to imagine each day our encounters
and how whatever we say or do on any given day,
helps to build up the Kingdom of God!

Then we could say, we indeed do have a life!
___________________________________

Mike Bayard, SJ
Chapel of Saint Ignatius
January 10, 2010

Fr. Rutillio Grande, S.J. is considered a catalyst for Romero´s own conversion. We stopped by his roadside memorial, a testament to the immidiate and repressive violence of the war years. I couldn´t help but notice that the road directly in front of the memorial, and for some distance on either side, was not paved and smooth like much of the route between Agillares and El Paisnal. Rather, it was rough and potted. Was it simply not paved? Or had someone, or many someones, at some time deliberately removed that stretch of pavement? I imagined faithful parishoners constructing a memorial - bouncing over that rough road. These questions and images pushed me further in an ever evolving realization: its not really about Rutillio. Its not about Romero. Or any of the other martyrs. Like Jesus, the Salvadoran martyrs, from the innocents at El Mozote to Ita, Dorothy, Jean, Maura, to the Archbishop, were never pointing at themselves. They were all pointing to a bigger reality - something much larger, much more powerful (for better or for worse) than themselves. The murderers put a bullets in Rutillio, using his death as a symbol to the people: maybe not as quickly, but we´re going to leave all of you to die at the roadside, too. These martyrs are the symbols of a much deeper structural violence that plagues the same people today as it did 20, 30, 40, 500 years ago. As the homilist at the UCA martyrs mass confirmed, the destruction of this most recent hurricane is not attributible to a natural disaster alone. But, for believers, death is not the end. For love is as strong as death, passion as fierce as the grave. Romero articulated what was said in every Salvadoran martyr´s death: If you kill me I will rise again in the people. And so, to each of us, a question is posed? Will you let the prophet rise in you?

Saludos de El Salvador!

I´m Brian Johnson, SU alumn (o5). Many thanks to Magis and the Alumni organizations for their sponsorship of my trip. The opportunity to build new friendships feels so hopeful for global solidarity. There were processions and museums and a Cardinal and crowds but so far it has been Gabriel that has touched my heart. I´m a musician and brought a guitar in hope of expanding my appreciation for the Salvadoran folk music tradition around all of their martyrs. Gabriel is one of the leaders of Ël Coro de los Martires that has provided music for the last eight years of UCA martyrs commemorations. With open arms and an affirmation to the stage security gards that - This music is for everyone, we must teach our brother - Gabriel ushered me to the guitar section of the band with 7 other players. For the hours of the procession and the Mass I lost myself in the sounds of solidarity in El Salvador. The leaders must have noticed because they gifted me with a copy of their song book with chords. Gabriel, his son Boris the drummer, and his little girl Marelyn had another gift for me: claves (wooden precussion instruments) that Gabriel, a wood worker, had made especially for the event. I will not soon forget my new friends, their music, their hospitality and generosity. And I look forward to sharing their songs with you!

Saturday Morning in El Salvador

Saturday was packed of activities. Starting with breakfast at a Mexican restaurant. I´m not sure how I feel about Salvadoreans dressed up in typical Mexican restaurant uniforms... But the breakfast itself was very cool. I ended up sitting across the table from a man that used to be an attorney working in private practice in Seatlte but now works in DC for the Washington Office on Latin America doing essentially work that he loves. He spoke of his self realization that he always knew he didn´t want to be an attorney working in litigation. He was sincere and genuine in that he asked me if I was doing what I wanted to do. When I responded, he asked me questions that showed me that he was truly intersted in helping me find a way to where i wanted to be. he gave me several ideas and his card. he also told me that he wished that one day I would get there.

Although the breakfast was personal for me, the tour of the UCA assassination site was very moving. I stook outside the area where the mother and her daughter were killed. I felt the terror that that mother must have felt as she tried to protect her daughter from the inevitable horror that she knew was coming as the armed men pointed their rifles at her.

Friday in El Salvador

As a political science student at SU, i learned about the existence of a country named El Salvador at the same time i learned that it was a brutal place with a raging war going on. Ronald Reagan, Jesuits, murders, conspiracies... it was all too much. I moved on to learning about other places as I figured I would never go there.. I learned enough to not want to know more. it was too hard emotionally and intellectually to take it all in. However, I want to work in international work and work in international justice. But, by working in international justice one can´t go work in a peaceful country. Uh, what´s the point? Why work in international justice if there is no work to be done.

Tonight I heard Jim McGovern receive his honorary degree in human rights from the University of Central America. What struck me about his speech was that he spoke about how Salvadoreans are a resilient people. How Salvadoreans have suffered so much yet are so determined that their country succeed. He worked on bringing the world´s attention of the atrocities in El Salvador to the world. He worked and talked and traveled and talked and became angry about what was going on. then the murders of the Jesuits and their two companions brought the beginning of the end. But, he was the one that started the momentun. If not for him, the assassinated would have died in vain. He stood up for El Salvador. He didn´t turn his back because the conspiracy, the murders and the atrocities were too much to bear. He faced it head on. That´s he brought change to an entire people. That´s how he saved a people and a country.

The ceremony today inspired and shamed me. But, I ultimately I plan on taking the inspiration and making it into action. Leaving the shame behind.

Norma Linda Ureña