September News from the Province

September has been a busy month for our Province and Parishes! It has been a month of great blessings and changes.

---

• Over the first three weeks of September, the Augustinian Order held their 186th General Chapter at the Curia in Rome. The chapter brought together 80 delegate friars from 49 geographical circumscriptions, and 63 countries of origin. The three-week meeting opened on the evening of Sunday, September 1, with an inaugural Mass at the St. Augustine Basilica, with chief celebrant Fr. Alejandro Moral Antón, O.S.A., Prior General of the Order.

• At the opening of the second week of the General Chapter of the Order of Saint Augustine, the delegate friars re-elected Fr. Alejandro Moral Antón, O.S.A. as Prior General of the Order. With this re-election, Fr. Alejandro will serve a second six-year, which goes into effect immediately.

• On September 2, Prior Provincial Fr. Tony Pizzo, O.S.A. was invited to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Profession in a truly blessed way, as he was invited to say Mass on the morning of the first day of the Augustinian General Chapter at our Curia in Rome. Click here to read his homily.

• On September 13, the Augustinians at the General Chapter were invited to the Papal Palace for an audience with Pope Francis. Read Francis' address here.

• The three Federated Peruvian Vicariates, which have been under the jurisdiction of the Midwest Province, the Spanish Province, and the Italian Province, continue their talks towards unification and independence, though no official changes had been approved at the General Chapter.

• The General Chapter voted to suppress the Province of St. Joseph, Canada. It now has been subsumed under the full canonical jurisdiction of the Midwest Province.

• The Prior Provincial together with the Provincial Secretary and Treasurer are continuing to work with the Augustinian Community at Marylake - Canada and the AFOI about options for maintaining an Augustinian presence there.

• The Franciscan Ministries Board and the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago have approved the sale of the St. Anthony Village in Crown Point, where the friars of our Health Care Community reside. The new owner and operator will be Majestic Care of Crown Point. Currently, the Province leadership is scheduling a meeting with Majestic Care to clarify our relationship with the new administration and what if any changes they are planning in their facilities or care.

• Br. Joe Ruiz, O.S.A. has been appointed the new Prior of the St. Rita Monastery in Chicago (St. Rita H.S.); Fr. Stephen Isley, O.S.A. has been appointed the new Prior of St. Augustine Monastery (Cascia Hall).

• Fr. Chris Steinle, O.S.A.will be assigned temporarily to the Augustinian community in Apurimac, Peru.

• Fr. Bill Hamill, O.S.A. is convalescing temporarily at the Montereau skilled healthcare facility in Tulsa, OK.

• St. Rita High School President Search Committee continues to move forward positively and is currently in the process of interviewing candidates.

• The Colegio San Agustin is moving towards the completion of their first three-story school facility in Trujillo, Peru.

Augustinian News from the Parishes

• On September 10, four parishioners from St. Jude Parish delivered welcome packages to a family from Syria that has now settled in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood on the city’s north side. Thanks to the generosity of the St. Jude community, they have everything they need not only for their apartment, but also to start the newest chapter in their lives.

• On September 13, St. Jude School celebrated the blessing of the students’ grandparents. They were celebrated and honored at a Mass with the students, enjoyed a concert, and visited classrooms.

• On October 4, there will be Eucharistic Adoration. Eucharistic Adoration takes place the 1st Friday of the month.

• St. Jude’s Octoberfest will be taking place on October 26 from 6:30pm to 11:30pm. It is a 21 and over event and it is sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and St. Jude School.

• St. Bernard Parish welcomes Br. Sam Joutras, OSA as he will be conducting an appeal on behalf of the Midwest Augustinians for our missions in Peru. The appeal will take place during the Masses on October 5 and October 6.

• The Knights of Columbus hosted a Tootsie Roll Drive on September 21 and September 22. Funds raised went to support the intellectually disabled.

• St.Bernard and Our Mother of Good Counsel hosted a Healing Mass with the Anointing of the Sick at St. Bernard Church on Saturday, September 28. Fr. Joe McCormick, OSA was assisted in the Anointing of over 300 attendees by five Augustinians co-celebrants:

  • Fr. John Merkelis, OSA, Fr. Jerry Nicholas, OSA, and Fr. John Ohner, OSA from the Homer Glen/New Lenox area and Fr. Joe Mostardi, OSA and Fr. Kevin Mullins, OSA from St. Augustine Friary in Hyde Park.

  • Frs. Joe & Kevin brought with them three students in formation who assisted as acolytes in the service: Brs. Jeff Raths, OSA, Spencer Thomas, OSA, and Michael Riggs, OSA.

  • Fr. Jim Sheridan, OSA, Fr. Jim Thompson, OSA, and Bro. Paul Koscielniak, OSA came from St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park to co-celebrate and/or be anointed.

  • Fr. Joe hosted the participating Augustinians to a pizza party at the rectory of our Mother of Good Counsel. Frs. Tom Osborne, OSA and Terry Deffenbaugh, OSA of the Good Counsel community helped host.

• Our Mother of Good Counsel Parish will be hosting plenty of wonderful events at the beginning and throughout the month of October:

• On October 6, there will be a blessing of the Animals that will take place at 12:00pm

• On October 13, OMGC will be providing flu shots from 8:00am to noon. It is a good idea for people of all ages to receive them, but those who are the most vulnerable are small children and the elderly.

• On October 27 the Knights of Columbus will be hosting a Blood Drive 8:00am to noon. One pint of blood can save up to the three lives!

• On October 27 there will be CCW Trunk or Treat after 10:30am Mass.

• The Knighs of Columbus will be hosting a Spaghetti Dinner on October 13 from 4:30pm to 6:00pm. Tickets are on sale now. For more information, please call the parish office.

• St. Turibius Parish is asking for donations of canned meat or cans of Spam for their food pantry. Please check cans for expiration dates as expired cans WILL NOT be taken or used. Cans can be brought to Mass or taken to the rectory during business hours.

• The 2nd Annual Feast Day Banquet will be taking place on Saturday, October 26. 5:00pm to 6:00pm is the Feast Mass of St. Simon and 6:00pm until midnight is the Banquet reception. Proceeds raised are going towards major repairs and the replacement of the heating system in the parish. For more information, please call the parish office.

• To be kept up-to-date on the events taking place at St. Turibius, you can register with St. Turibius Parish’s database. All information is confidential and secured. To register, go to https://connectnow.parishsoft.com/chicago and create a user account. Enter the necessary information and then select St. Turibius Parish - Chicago. Continue to enter the rest of your information in the required fields. Once the form is completed, click on the “Submit Registration” button. For any questions about this, please contact the parish office.

• St. Rita of Cascia Parish had a Blessing of the Repaired Sanctuary Floor at each Mass on Sunday, September 15.

• On Sunday, September 29, St. Rita’s held a special Ministry and Parish Information Fair to offer the opportunity to parishioners to get more involved in the parish.

• St. Rita’s continues to going through the Renew My Church process of the Archdiocese. The parish now knows the possible scenarios of the future of the parish and they have been shared with parish leaders. The final decision will not be known until late December or January.

Pope Francis Addresses Augustinians: Be Witnesses to the "Contagious Charity of the Church"

The Augustinians assembled for the General Chapter met with Pope Francis early Friday morning within the Vatican, where the Pontiff exhorted the friars to live out their call to fraternal charity rooted in God:

“You Augustinians have been called to witness to that warm, living, visible, contagious charity of the Church, through a community life that clearly manifests the presence of the Risen One and His Spirit. “

The foremost opportunity to live out this charity, he added, comes within the context of community life. He emphasized that while the Augustinian way of life is rooted in a shared spiritual experience, our most important experiences of charity come in the “small everyday things” that make up communal living.

He appealed back to his 2018 Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et exsultate, where he specifically invokes the story of Augustine to show that “a community that cherishes the little details of love, whose members care for one another and create an open and evangelizing environment, is a place where the risen Lord is present, sanctifying it in accordance with the Father’s plan” 

While the charism of fraternal charity takes place within and among Augustinian communities, it is intended to reach outward to “show God living to the world.” The importance of fraternal love is all the more important, the Pontiff claimed, in the midst of scandals such as the one the Church now faces. He appealed back to the letter of St. Augustine to St. Jerome, where our Holy Father described his experience of community: “Upon the love of such friends I readily cast myself without reservation, especially when chafed and wearied by the scandals of this world; and in their love I rest without any disturbing care: for I perceive that God is there”

Read the entirety of the Pope’s address below:

Dear brothers,

I welcome you all, gathered in Rome for the General Chapter, and I thank the Prior General for his words.

In this Chapter, you have proposed to face the most important challenges of the moment, in the light of the Word of God, and of the teaching of the Church and of the great Father Augustine.

You are well aware that communities of consecrated persons are places where we want to live the experience of God from a deep interiority and in communion with our brothers and sisters. This is the first basic challenge that consecrated persons face and which today I wish to entrust to you in particular: to experience God together so that we can show God to this world in a clear, courageous and uncompromising way. It is a great responsibility!

I remember the words of Saint Paul VI in the wonderful Exhortation, Evangelica testificatio: “From the beginning, the tradition of the Church—is it perhaps necessary to recall it?—presents us with this privileged witness of a constant seeking for God, of an undivided love for Christ alone, and of an absolute dedication to the growth of His kingdom. Without this concrete sign there would be a danger that the charity which animates the entire Church would grow cold, that the salvific paradox of the Gospel would be blunted, and that the “salt” of faith would lose its savor in a world undergoing secularization” (3).

You Augustinians have been called to witness to that warm, living, visible, contagious charity of the Church, through a community life that clearly manifests the presence of the Risen One and His Spirit. Unity in charity – as your Constitutions also explain well – is a central point in the experience and spirituality of Saint Augustine and a foundation of all Augustinian life. From this perspective, in the Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate I wished to recall “the sublime spiritual experience shared by Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica!” (142): a moment in which their souls merged in the intuition of divine Wisdom. We always reread it with emotion on the liturgical memorial of Saint Monica. That desire of the Saint who in the end had what she sought, and even more. That “cumulatius hoc mihi Deus meus prestitit” (Saint  Augustine, Confessions, IX,11). This must encourage us to move forward.

“Such experiences, however”, I immediately added, “are neither the most frequent nor the most important. The common life … is made up of small everyday things. … A community that cherishes the little details of love, whose members care for one another and create an open and evangelizing environment, is a place where the risen Lord is present, sanctifying it in accordance with the Father’s plan” (ibid, 143, 145).

Certainly, keeping alive this flame of fraternal charity will not be possible without that “in Deum” of your Rule: “Primum, propter quod in unum estis congregati, ut unanimes habitetis in domo et sit vobis anima una et cor unum in Deum” (3). That is, tending towards God. This addition to the expression of the Acts of the Apostles is proper to Augustine, to underline that this is the profound dynamism of your communities, the first great source from which there springs all your service to the Church and to humanity. The anima una et cor unum is born of this perennial Wellspring: in Deum. Your hearts, always tending towards God. Always! May every member of the community be orientated, as the first “holy intention” of every day, towards the search for God, or letting oneself be sought by God. This “direction” should be declared, confessed, witnessed among you without false modesty. The search for God cannot be obscured by other aims, even those that are generous and apostolic. Because that is your first apostolate. We are here – you should be able to say, every day, among yourselves – because we walk towards God. And since God is Love, one walks towards Him in love.

As the dear father Agostino Trapé wrote: “According to the Rule, charity is not only the end and the means of religious life, but it is also its centre: from charity it must proceed and to charity it must be oriented, with a perpetual movement of circular causality, every thought, every affection, every attitude, every action” (Saint Augustine, La Regola, Milano 1971 Ancora, p. 137).

Writing to Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine expressed his own experience of community in this way: “Upon the love of such friends I readily cast myself without reservation, especially when chafed and wearied by the scandals of this world; and in their love I rest without any disturbing care: for I perceive that God is there” (Letters 73,10). And in the face of the scandals of the Church or the scandals of your family too, peace is on this road. Going back to this… and scandals fall by themselves, because they show that there is no other way, this is the way.

It is good to return often to that meditation that Augustine offered to his faithful, in the First Letter of John, where the Church is called by him “mater charitas”, a mother who weeps at the division of her children and calls to and recalls the unity of charity: “Then if you would know that you have received the Spirit, question your heart: lest haply you have the Sacrament, and have not the virtue of the Sacrament question your heart. If love of your brethren be there, set your mind at rest. There cannot be love without the Spirit of God: since Paul cries, The love of God is shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. Romans 5: 5” (ibid., VI, 10).

Your Constitutions refer to this fraternal charity as “a prophetic sign”, and their warning is wise when they say: “We will not be able to accomplish all this if we do not take our daily cross for the love of Christ, with humility and gentleness”. The cross is the measure of love, always. It is true that one can love without a cross, when there is no cross, but when there is a cross, the way in which I take up the cross is the measure of love. That is how it is.

Let us return to the Augustine meditation to listen from him, father and guide, what the via charitas is, in the final analysis: “A new commandment, says the Lord, give I unto you, that you love one another (Jn 13: 34) … What is perfection of love? To love even enemies, and love them for this end, that they may be brethren. … For so loved He who, hanging on the cross, said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Lk 23: 34). … He was fixed upon the cross, and yet was He walking in this very way: this way is the way of charity” (ibid., I, 9).

Dear brothers, this is also the challenge and the responsibility for your today: to live in your communities in such a way as to have the experience of God together, and to be able to show him, living, to the world! The experience of the Lord, as He is, as He looks for us every day. May Mary, mother of Jesus and luminous figure of the Church, accompany you and keep you always. I bless you heartily, and I ask you, please, to pray for me. Thank you.