Walking with a Growing and Giving Community

Marianist PULSE is very happy to welcome our great friend and PULSE chaplain, Father Ted Cassidy, SM as our guest blogger for this week. Father Ted was ordained in 1968 after graduating from the University of Dayton in 1960, and today is the campus minister for Marianist Hall.

On Aug 5, 2016 during the celebration of a Mass, the first PULSE Volunteers were commissioned to begin PULSE. PULSE program coordinator Maureen O’Rourke and so many others were responsible for beginning this new Marianist adventure. At the Mass I was really honored to give the homily and related PULSE’s initiation to the foundation of the Marianist Sisters by Mother Adele de Batz de Trenquelleon. 

This is what I wrote in my homily:

"I have been reading the life of Mother Adele. In her early twenties just like our PULSE volunteers, she and her associates went through the process of building relationships and building communities. From about 1809 when she was first introduced to Chaminade, Adele was a 'Maureen O'Rourke'—contacting friends, developing her life with Mary and Jesus. She was learning ever so deeply how to serve the poor around her home. She grew in extraordinary relationships with her friends and even a deeper grasp of her own spirit and union with Christ. She traveled to visit her associates. She was a great writer and contacted them often. She reached out for new members. All this was in the backdrop of Napoleon closing the Sodality and the fear that more suppression of the Church would develop. She had wanted to enter the Carmelites but her direction changed and she discovered she had a mission to be very active." 

“I sense we are about something very similar tonight with the foundation of PULSE—Partners in Urban Leadership, Service and Education. In a sense every Marianist Community goes through the same type of beginning. Reflect on the community you are in. Personally I have been involved in high school sodalities, the setup of two new Brothers' communities, two new lay communities and melding into numerous other Marianist communities. How about you?”

We will soon be celebrating when DeMarcus, Jess, Kateri, Peter, Ricky, Kierstyn, Hannah and Lauren will finish as the second year of PULSE’s foundation.

I have cherished my relationship with PULSE for these two years. I have especially loved the personal interviews with these founders. Every one of them has a vivacious and positive energetic spirit. They are young adults who make one’s heart very joyful. We have shared what it means to be community and to grow in relationship. Have you seen the “Big Bang” on TV? I hesitate to say that I think that PULSE life is the Big Bang Community, but there are similarities.

Fr. Ted and Bro. Ray with MP1

I have lived in Marianist Religious Communities for a little over 60 years—a long time I hesitate to believe, hoping there will be a number of years yet to come. What I realize now is that if one stays with the community and works out the kinks, a glorious life appears. The central way of enabling this is to keep appreciating the gifts of each member. I find that the more I pray for and about each member of the community, I discover the gifts and the relationships become deeply loving.

Our young PULSE college graduates and founders have learned much about community. It takes careful listening, persevering dialogue, growing in one’s own self-confidence, setting goals, collaboration, evaluation and other learned skills. Marianist PULSE is especially built on the foundation of God’s grace, which is the power behind community.

I want to emphasize that perseverance in appreciating each other brings about a very contented, profoundly joyful life.

I can’t help but think that Adele models the way community is to be lived in its human and grace filled dimensions. This young girl, Adele de de Batz de Trenquelleon, who will be declared Blessed on June 10, 2018, and who at the age of 15 spent 12 years leading an Association of young women of her age—primarily through letter writing—and then for 12 years was leader of the community of the first Marianist Sisters, joyfully lived and guided the community she founded. She had an extraordinary love of Christ and skill in friendship and relationship building.

In one of her letters she writes to her a dear friend: “The Holy Spirit, whom we must have received during the great solemnity (Pentecost) we have just celebrated… (has) fired us with the life of God…The heart cannot encompass everything... Have we really received this Spirit of fire and love? Our works must prove it to us. For you know, dear friend, that the Apostles who came out of the Cenacle were totally transformed men. They had been cowards and timid, but now they were eager and ready to confess the faith of Jesus Christ even at the cost of their lives. Have we undergone a similar change my dear Agatha? Has our luke-warmness been changed into fire? Our cowardice into fervor? Can we now say with St. Paul ‘Who can separate me from the love of Jesus Christ? Will it be torments or death?’ No, nothing can separate me from this adorable Master, to whom I have vowed eternal fidelity.”(letter 82.3-5)

Father Ted with PULSE coordinator Maureen

The community which our first members of PULSE have founded is based on this spirit of  Adele. They have participated in something that society needs so much today. What comes from this kind of community is a deep appreciation for each member and a force for the world to bring growth and joyful creativity. This is what our PULSE founders have been about. Thanks and congratulations to the second PULSE community.


Blessings,
Fr. Ted Cassidy, SM