Begin Again:  The Life and Spiritual Legacy of Bruno Lanteri

Forthcoming: Crossroad, 2013

In this biography of the Venerable Bruno Lanteri (1759-1830), founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, Fr. Gallagher tells the story of a man who served God and the Church courageously in times of persecution, ready to pay the price.  Ven. Lanteri’s lifelong struggles with health, his dedicated service to priests, religious, and laity that rendered him “the man of a hundred tongues and a hundred arms,” his love for the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, his deep prayer, his struggles to overcome his limitations, his enduring quest for holiness, his message of God’s mercy to the disheartened, and his invitation to begin again in times of failure, are detailed here.  This book is for all who seek inspiration in living their faith amid the vicissitudes and struggles of daily life.

“A man who sought always to remain the background is brought forward in this book so that all can begin again to discover his virtues and appreciate his influence today.”–Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago

This volume is a long-awaited biography of the OMV Founder.  Others have been written, but it was decided that a newer biography in English was needed.  Fr. Tim Gallagher has spent years bringing this project to fruition.  We are looking forward to its publication later this year.

Fr. Tim Gallagher, OMV is a popular retreat director, Ignatian scholar, and lecturer around the world.  He holds a doctorate from the Gregorian University in Rome and is the author of several best-selling books.

Ann Arbor, MI – Many retreats given by Fr. Dennis Brown, OMV  throughout the year.  Select “read more” for more information.

Milton, MA – St. Joseph Retreat House in Milton, MA is staffed by the Oblates of the Virgin Mary.  Select “read more” for more information.

Retreats at Ann Arbor, MI:

Fr. Dennis Brown, OMV is offering the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at a retreat house in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  For more information on these retreats, please call 630-417-1984.  Or send an e-mail to:  AnnArborRetreats@aol.com

Retreats at Milton, MA:

For more information on St. Joseph Retreat House and all that is offered, please visit their website by clicking on the following link:

St. Joseph Retreat House

It is the beginning of summer.  Our seminarians have packed their bags and have headed home for vacation.  Our priests and brothers are busy with summer apostolates, mission appeals, and retreats.

As if he didn’t have enough to do, Fr. Tim Gallagher, OMV, spiritual director, retreat master, and author, gave a week-long “service course” at the island of Malta.  Though Fr. Tim is very well-traveled, this is his first visit to the island nation.  The first three days of the course was for diocesan clergy while the last evening was open to the public.  According to Fr. Tim, the event went well and Fr. Tim relished the opportunity to get to know the priests and people of Malta.  For more images and an article, click here.  God bless and have a great week.

For your reference – last week’s news:

Gratitude — that is what we are feeling after the great success of last weekend’s Seminarian Scholarship Dinner and Auction.  For those of you who participated in this event — either on-line or in person — we thank you for your generosity.

Being shown above right now is a video of a typical day for our seminarians — includes some interesting time-lapse photography.  A nice video memento as our seminarians pack their bags and head out for summer vacation.

God bless you and we will see you next week for more news from “Around the Province.”

Last year I had put together a chocolate dessert with dehydrated raisins, dehydrated almonds, almond butter and dark chocolate.  So this year I tried to improve upon that along with coming up with some new creations.  Fr. Tom had recently purchased some pineapples and I thought it would be neat to dehydrate them and then dip them in chocolate.

I prepped the chocolate by using a double boiler to melt down a variety of dark chocolates and plain cacao.  The great thing about chocolate is that after being melted you can use as you like and then it will harden again after a few minutes in the fridge.  I was pretty happy with how the chocolate pineapple triangles came out.  Very sweet!

Next up was trying to improve upon last years dessert.  In 2012 I simply mixed the dark chocolate, almonds, almond butter and dehydrated raisins together, placed it in a casserole dish and then let harden up in the fridge.  I came out a little too hard and was a little bit too difficult to break into manageable pieces.  So this year I was thinking of making them in the shape of little round cookies.

I made a batch with almond butter as the center, covered in dehydrated raisins, drenched in chocolate and then sprinkled with dehydrated almond pieces.  Getting the almond butter to roll up into a neat ball was not so easy (the harder the butter the better) but overall I think it worked.  Here is how they came out…

I’m calling these almond butter yummies.  Next time I’ll work on the almond butter being harder but outside of that I was pretty happy with how they ended up. I made a batch or two of ones without the almond butter.  In addition to that I discovered some blueberries in the fridge and I put together a few with them sprinkled on top…

I must say that these were my favorite.  The softness and the sweetness of the blueberries contrasted with the harder and chewier nature of the almond, dehydrated raisin mix was a great combo! We had quite a variety of desserts…

All in all it was a great end to an awesome meal prepared by Fr. Tom who very successfully cooked a deliciously juicy roast for the main course along with plenty of  veggies. Happy Easter!

It’s a busy week here at St. Clement’s as we prepare for the Holy Triduum starting tonight with the mass of the last supper on Holy Thursday.  This past Saturday a number of us made sure all the candles were all polished and shined for this weekend.  It took a number of hours to get it done but we take a great deal of pride in making sure things are just right this the biggest moment of the liturgical year.

The “classroom” became the “clean room” as Isaac, Scott, Nate and Rafael busted out the toothbrushes to make sure the chalices and candles were meticulously clean.  No groove was left unattended.

In addition to that we had rehearsals for each of the masses on Saturday morning into early afternoon.  It allowed us to assign roles and coordinate activities like placing benches in the appropriate spot for the washing of the feet. There’s a lot of planning involved behind the scenes but again we want to make sure that everything is just right.

In addition to that we still find time to keep up with studies as outside of Tuesday (attended Chrism mass at the Cathedral), Holy Thursday afternoon and Good Friday we still had our regular academic schedule this week.  It’s a busy but exciting time!

On February 9th and 10th the Boston area got about 25″ of snow as winter storm Nemo swept through the northeast.   The storm started on Friday afternoon and went through the night.  At about 10:15 pm that night Fr. Tom, Paul, Nate and I took a walk around the block to experience the power of the storm and to see how the streets looked.

It was really quite beautiful to see the snow dressing the trees alongside the streets.

That evening I set up my camera to do some time lapse photography of the  courtyard.  Here is what I came up with…

On Saturday the 10th we were scheduled to have a day of recollection by attending a talk about Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. Frances Chapel.  So after doing a bit of shoveling we made our way over there.  As we did, the streets were still closed to regular traffic.

Needless to say it was a small crowd for the Guadalupe talk but it was really quite interesting.  Upon returning we discovered that the snow blower was not working properly, so we all got a good workout shoveling the back driveway so the cars could get out.

All in all, one heck of a storm!

Fr. John setting up to shoot a talk by Damon Owens

Our founder Venerable Pio Bruno Lanteri placed a great deal of emphasis upon using the modern means of communications to spread the Gospel and bring others to Christ.  Well, on Saturday February 16th Fr. John Wykes and I headed off to the Daughter’s of St. Paul retreat house in Billerica, MA to do something very much in keeping with this part of our apostolate.  Fr. John was asked to film some footage of a Pure in Heart retreat being put on by the St. Clement Young Adult group.  This particular retreat was focused on the Theology of the Body, which was a series of audiences by Blessed Pope John Paul II between 1979 and 1984 teaching how we can learn more about the nature of God and grow closer to Him through understanding the differences and complementarity of the male and female human person.  Pure in Heart is a group which “proclaims the virtue of chastity and the sanctity of human life around the world. PIHA will educate, inspire and empower youth around the world to faithfully live their vocations.” (see website)

Here was a panel discussion on living your vocation in light of Theology of the Body

Fr. John was asked to film various portions of the retreat for the purpose of putting together promotional videos for the Pure In Heart Boston group. We first filmed the morning mass celebrated by Oblate priest Fr. Tom Carzon.  Then in the afternoon we captured some footage of the talks and panel discussions.  The talk by Theology of the Body speaker Damon Owens in particular was one of the best Theology of the Body I’ve heard.

Then we set up the equipment in a separate room to film interviews of a number of the attendees.  Fr. John manned the camera while I asked the questions…

Here I am posing questions to one of the interviewees

As someone who has spent a great deal of time studying and teaching the principles of Theology of the Body I was really impressed with the answers we were hearing from the interviewees.  We were asking them questions like “How would you define chastity?” and “Why is it important?” It was uplifting to see young people speaking so intelligently and passionately  about the dignity of our bodies and our sexuality. Great stuff!

Fr. John setting up lighting

Fr. John is in the process of editing the footage  together to make the promotional videos but we’ll post a link when they’re live online.  All in all it was a fun day and reminded me of my time in Los Angeles working in the casting room and on set.  Hopefully, more opportunities will come up to use the modern means of communication to bring greater glory to God.  Fr. Lanteri would’ve been proud.

 On Sunday February 17th the Oblate seminarians here at St. Clement shrine participated in an appeal for adorers for the perpetual adoration program.  Paul Nguyen spoke at the end of the 11 am mass while I spoke at the end of the 8pm mass to encouraged those in attendance to become regular adorers at St. Clement.  All of the seminarians answered questions at a sign up table set up in the back of the church.

We hope to have this board all green very soon! (at least 2 committed adorers per hour)

As you can see in the above photo we were attempting to get the board all green and have at least two adorers per hour.  All in all we had 16 new adorers sign up over the weekend.  We really enjoyed the opportunity to reach out to the community here at St. Clement along with doing our part to draw others closer to Christ in His real presence found in the Holy Eucharist.  It was a great experience for us all!

Chris and Isaac joyfully greeting mass attendees after the 11 am mass

If you are interested in learning more about the perpetual adoration at the St. Clement shrine or would like to become a regular adorer please check out http://adorationboston.org/. As we mentioned during our talks at mass the chance to be with our Lord in adoration so often is a very unique and precious opportunity!

On January 24th and 25th Fr. Mark Yavarone and all of the Oblate seminarians headed down to Washington D.C. for the March For Life.  It was an awesome experience as there were record setting crowds on this year of the 40th Anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling of Roe vs. Wade.  We woke up on Thursday the 24th to bitterly cold weather as the eight of us left around 6 am to drive down.

It was cold on the morning we drove down. But Christ was with us…

After checking in to our hotel, that evening we attended the vigil mass for  the March for Life at the Basilica where Cardinal Sean O’Malley was the chief celebrant…

It was an inspiring experience for all of us as we were amongst 5 cardinals, 42 bishops, 395 priests, 80 deacons, 520 seminarians and 13,000 people in the pews!  In particular it was pretty neat to be around the large number of seminarians and priests who vested in the lower chapel below the Basilica before mass. The music and liturgy along with everything else was beautiful as we experienced a little piece of heaven.  As we like to say, it was an eschatalogical experience!

The following morning we attended a youth rally and mass at the Verizon Center.  Again, it was inspiring to see the huge number of young Catholics that were there.

In particular there were massive lines for confession which were held in one of the more exclusive restaurants inside the center.   Fr. Mark heard confessions and then was one of the co-celebrants during the Mass.

Following the rally, we grabbed a quick lunch and then headed off to the march.  We found ourselves towards the end of the sea of people so it took a while for the massive crowd to get moving but it eventually did.  It was quite cold but everyone was in a good spirits as we prayed the rosary and chaplet with fellow marchers while making the trek to the Supreme Court and the Capital building.

Paul was even able to find and walk with his sister who is a temporally professed member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville Tennessee…

As you can see it was snowing and quite cold but we couldn’t help but be inspired by all of the fellow marchers.  As we were walking along we got the sense that there was a larger number than last year and it was later confirmed to be the largest march in the history of the event.

All in all a very cool trip!  Hopefully, the politicians in Washington will take notice and start to vote in such a way that upholds the sanctity of life.

Who would’ve known? Mr. T is pro-life!