tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538477881080991285.post3027102087399072257..comments2024-03-26T08:10:52.158-04:00Comments on City Father: Roman BobCity Fatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17769559147659492086noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538477881080991285.post-11438026579936760762013-11-28T11:33:44.000-05:002013-11-28T11:33:44.000-05:00I'm glad that the "City Father" took...I'm glad that the "City Father" took the initiative to help so many of us start absorbing such a lengthy and weighty new document all of it in its entirety of our Holy Father, while promising to follow up with further helpful reflections after our national holiday of Thanksgiving. At the outset of my own study of Evangelii Gaudium (EG), I was struck by contents in its Sec. 13, such as the statements: “Memory is a dimension of our faith which we might call “deuteronomic”, not unlike the memory of Israel itself. Jesus leaves us the Eucharist as the Church’s daily remembrance of, and deeper sharing in, the event of his Passover (cf. Lk 22:19). The joy of evangelizing always arises from grateful remembrance…” <br /><br />In my own life’s journey to discovery of the Eucharist and then finally first reception of it as the source and summit (or “fount and apex”) of our Christian life of faith (Lumen Gentium, 11), I believed through a significant fraction of the years of my youth as a Protestant, namely, as what was then called in northern New England, “Congregationalist.” Whom I remember most vividly of that part of my Christian journey -- in my pre-high-school days -- was the pastor, a Rev. House, of the large, high-spired white church in our village. He had agreed to shoulder the responsibility to advise and mentor me as a very young helper in his pastoral duties, once I had agreed as a Boy Scout in the local troop to work on earning what was called in the 1950s the “God and Country Award.” <br /><br />I spent many hours, then, in a commitment of my own to record and archive his Sunday sermons on magnetic tape and, in his private Pastor’s Office and in his presence, operate the mimeograph machine to run off Sunday service programs and other publications for his congregation. I also asked him questions about the Christian faith and he always had a fresh apple for me to snack on. Too, I was awestruck, even inspired by all those bound volumes of religious and theological works on his book shelves which before that point I did not even know had existence! All this led later to other interactions at the church, as with the faith-filled and humble church organist, who on the church’s new instrument even let me improvise, a habit learned from taking lessons for playing a piano at home (but having great difficulty in reading sheet music), plus providing personal lessons on organ fundamentals like using foot pedals and choosing stops. He also took me to one of the area concerts of the organ guild that he belonged to. <br /><br />Without Rev. House, it is possible that much later, as a senior in college, I would not have finally agreed to taking on the commitment of conversion of my religion to Roman Catholicism, my Mom’s and her family’s, as a catechized confirmand at the campus Newman Center, nor, then, in May 1964 be confirmed as a Roman Catholic (in Vt.). Nor, then, might it have been possible that part of my own evangelizing of others would be through music, either at Mass (as in N.M.) or in civil society itself such as an improvisational performer in the classical-music idiom on the piano (in several States) or as a singer in a local choral society which performed sacred as well as secular works (in N.M.). <br /><br />Since today is our national day of Thanksgiving, it seems quite appropriate to thus write all this in thankful Deuteronomic remembrance, even in the context of the New Evangelization (EG, 14), about the Eucharist, whose core meaning from the Greek involves the same word. <br /><br />By Harold M. Frost, III, in Vermont, age 71.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com