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A Brief Encounter Jottings By BARBARA C. JENCKS MOST CATHOLICS at some time or other in their lives wish that they had been, could be or might be strictly cloistered monks or nuns. Most perhaps say this when they are fed up with the world of ‘getting and spending’, bills, flu-epidemics, noise, etc. For a fewer num ber, it is a sincere longing to be free of the worldly encount ers which weigh one down and keep the housewife, business man, career woman, truck dri ver, waitress, lawyer or doc tor from continual concentra tion on the things of the spirit. Yet, even monks or cloistered nuns do not pray all day. They too, have a routine to follow of housecleaning, work in the fields, answering doors, bells, entering into the work which keeps the monastery or con vent operating as a house of prayer. At Lent, there is oppor tunity to have a small taste of the life of contemplation. We have, in short, a brief encoun ter with the life lived by a nun or monk in a strict order. We can enter into the spirit of this strict religious life during Lent. During Lent, then Catholics have a brief encounter with the life that is lived all year by the Church’s strictest religious or ders. It is a forty-day period observed by fasting, prayer and penance. All three forms of self-denial are in direct con trast to the spirit of the world. Contemplative orders like the Carmelites and Trapposts live Lent all year long, all during their religious life. When Ca tholic laymen do without meat and add extra devotions to their daily routine, they will be en tering into the spirit of the penitential season. They will also be better able to understand the purpose of the strict orders. The black fast of Ash Wednes day begins for most of us with toast, coffee and orange juice. This is an improvement on the daily breakfast served at a Carmelite or Trappists Mon astery. All year round, it is bread and black tea or coffee. Fruit, cheese, milk and bread, which will make a more frequent appearance on the Lenten tables in Catholic homes are the staple of the cloistered Carmelite and Trappist. Vegetable plate spec ials are the major meals for these religious, not a blue plate served up for Friday luncheons. JESUS SAID to his apostles: “When you fast, do not look, gloomy like the hypocrites, who disfigure their faces in order to appear as men fasting." Did you ever see a Trappist or a Carmelite who wasn’t radiant with joy? But note in contrast the irritability witnessed by those who give up cigarettes or Martinis for a few days or have pulled themselves out of bed an hour earlier to go to a seven o’ clock Mass. In summer, the Carmelites rise at 5:00 a.m. and in the winter at 6:00 a.m. The Trappists rise in the night at 2:00 a.m. to sing their of fice. This is a form of their perpetual life of penance even as Wholesale Plumbing, Heating And Water Works Supplies McKenna Supply Company 600 W. 51st St. AD 2-7141 Savannah the Catholic laymen’s effort to rise for daily Mass is part of his forty-day brush with a life of self-denial. The Carmelites say that “they tend constantly by prayer, penance, a life of sacrifice to extend the kingdom of God to procure the salva tion of souls, to intercede for the Holy Father, apostles preachers, theologians, learn ed men, that they may be filled with courage and virtue.’’ Trappistine Nun has told me that when she rises at 2:00 a.m. to sing her office she offers it for all who are dying at that time, those who are in trouble or sick and for those who are in sin that they may re pent. They offer up their lives and prayers for those who never give a thought for God. Lay Catholics can begin to live this kind of contemplative life in the world during Lent. Even though an evening cocktail is foregone and the reading of a spiritual book substituted for television most lay Catholics can count on a comfortable bed and an at tractive room for their night’s sleep. Most contemplative nuns sleep in what they call * ’cells.’ Each cell is equipped with a bed of boards, a straw mattress and pillow, a chair and a table with a few holy pictures. ONE of the most difficult as pects of the life lived by the re ligious of these two strict or ders wou}d seem to be the fact that they keep a rigid silence Several hours each day is spent in mental prayer and medi- votions and the manual work such as the farming done by the Trappistines or cleaning and scrubbing, the religious remain alone in silence and prayer. Thomas Merton has made the Trappist life of strict contem plation, silence, farming the fields, known to thousands by his books. His writings in a way have “popularized” the life of those who live Lent all year round. The life of contemplation dates back 900 years before the Christian era when the Prophet Elias dwelt on Mount Carmel and gathered about him a group of disciples who practiced with him the virtues of an ascetic and contemplative life. Our Lord prepared in the desert alone, praying and fasting for His Passion and Death. Since that time thousands of young men and women have entered strictly contemplative orders in America. In Lent for a period of forty days laity can attempt by fasting, added penance, pray ers, to imitate this life of self dinal. What kind of a nun or monk would you make? Mission Starts Sunday Mar. 24 At St. Mary’s AUGUSTA—Father Christo pher Walsh, Sts. Peter and Paul Church, Cork City, Ireland, will give a Mission at St. Mary’s starting on Sunday, March 24 and concluding on Sunday, March 31. Father Walsh will conduct a vocational triduum for the students of St. Mary’s School on the first three days of the Mission. He will give a Retreat for the students of Aquinas High School during Holy Week and will preach at St. Mary’s Church on Wednesday, Thursday and Fri day evenings during Holy Week. the place ft or savincfs in the V. <oastai CURRENT YEARLY RATE ON ALL SAVINGS mpire FIR Savannah’s Largest Savings Institution DERAL SAVINGS and Loan Association • ADams 4-8851 all offices Main Office Broughton and Abercorn Streets Skidaway Branch Skidaway Road at McAlpin Garden City Branch Highway 17 at Rommel Avenue ARCHBISHOP PAUL J. HALLINAN is pictured addressing the Hibernian Society of Savannah. Also pictured are Honorable Carl Sanders, Governor of Georgia and W. Kirk Sutlive, Chairman of the Speakers Committee. Archbishop Hallinan St. Patrick Extolled As ‘Model Of Justice’ SAVANNAH—S i x hundred guests at the annual St. Patrick’s Day banquet of the Savannah Hibernian Society heard the Most Rev. Paul J. Hallinan, archbishop of Atlanta, extol the Patron Saint of Ireland as “an inspiration and a model of justice for every man who ever lived.” The archbishop contrasted the homage paid to St. Patrick in many American cities with days in a “dark and shameful” past. He recalled the history of prejudice against the Irish im migrants of a century or more ago, and called on “Irishmen and those of Irish descent” to lead the way toward elimination, not only of religious prejudice, blit also racial bigotry. The following is part of the text of Archbishop Hallinan’s remarks: “One period of Irish history has always held my attention, the first decades of the Irish immigrant in America, the time that brought forth and nourished the noble societies of charity and philantropy like your own. A century ago, the exodus from Ireland was at its peak. The Spanish, French, English and Scotch-Irish were already here with some Dutch, Germans, Jews and Swedes—then came the Irish! From 1835 on, some 35,000 a year. By 1850 206,000 were coming each year to swell the total to nearly a million. Marist Fathers To Hold Mission At Saint James SAVANNAH—A Parish Mis sion will begin at St. James Church, Savannah, on Monday, March 25. Father James Cum mings, S.M. and Father Michael J. McMahon will conduct the Mission. The first week will be for women and the second, starting on Sunday, March 31, will be for men. Very Rev. Michael J. McMahon, S. M. Rev. James Cummings, S. M. Services will be held each evening at “ight o’clock. Daily Masses will be at o:30, 8 and 11 a.m. A mission for the children will also be given on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the first week. The Marist Mission is call ed a “Mission of Mercy”. The sermon topics are The Mercy of God, Salvation and Sin, Death and Judgment, Marriage, and the closing sermon is on the Blessed Virgin Mary. Father Cummings is the for mer pastor of St. Francis Xav ier Church, Brunswick. He has been on the Mission Band for the past two years. Father McMahon is a native of Canada, formerly amission ary in the South Sea Islands, and now superior of Marist Se minary, Washington, D. C. He has also served as pastor of St Michael Church, Wheeling and Holy Name of Mary Church, New Orleans. Missioner Named Bishop While Home For Visit PHILADELPHIA, (NC) — An American missioner home for a visit with relatives here learn ed that he had been appointed a bishop in the African nation where he has served since 1950. He is Bishop-designate Dennis Vincent Durning, C.S. Sp., who has been named by His Holiness Pope John XXIII to be first Bishop of newly erect ed Diocese of Arusha, Tengan- yika. The Holy Ghost Father has been serving in the Diocese of Moshi. The See he will head formerly was part of the Moshi diocese. CARROLL BURKE A [^PHOTOGRAPHER • Portraits •Children • Advertising . Wedding •Commercial -Aerial Studio Hours 10 A. M. - 5:30 P.M. AD 2-7731 1708 Abercorn Savannah By 1860, it was 1,600,000. “More than any other immi grant group they came princi pally because of starvation. They had a united faith and a language common with their new land,—and little else. If we want to study a minority group, large in numbers, small in posses sions, money and prestige,— here it is. How did they appear to the native American? How were they treated? It is not a pretty chapter of American his tory. For each band of noble Americans like the Hibernian Society of Savannah, in which the Irishman and his neighbor, lived in mutual respect and Christian honor, there were scores of cities and dozens of other societies that despised them. “Every social historian of the 19th century writes of the signs on factories and offices, —’No Irish need Apply”. Ed ward E. Hale, the great Ameri can patriot, urged the United States to cut the number of Irish admitted down to eight for every 100 native-born Ameri cans. “Irish girls were hired as servants for $4 to $7 and board a month. In Pennsylvania coal mines, the men worked fifteen hours a day for 50 cents. The Catholic churches were label led “Paddy churches”, and even Tammany Hall issued an edict: “No Irish and other foreigners admitted.” Lyman Beecher called the Irish “a deadmass of ignorance and superstition”. The Chicago Post proclaimed “Scratch a convict and you will scratch the skin of an Irish Catholic.” One Bostonian held his nose, and wrote “The goril la is superior to the Irishman in muscle, and hardly inferior in moral sense.” “They were truly a race set apart, clinging to the lowest rung of the political, economic and social ladder, segregated by their race, segregated by their faith. The Italians who come later, the Slavic, Balkan and mid-East peoples still, suffer ed the same stigma, restric tions, bigotry and discrimina tion. But the Irish of mid-19th century America set the pattern for assimilation, almost wrote the formula of how to become an American. Unwanted and des pised, they set their course to become a real and living part of a nation that seemed to want only the taxes they paid and the The Southern Cross, March 23, 1963—PAGE 3 blood they were ready to shed in her wars. “The assimilation went on, in great part due to their tena cious hold on their religious faith! They had Patrick to thank for that. Partly, it was due to their buoyancy and hope and gaiety in the darkest depths of trouble. But I find a deeper element at work in this process of assimilation. Its bed-rock is Justice, and this too goes back to Patrick. Very few Irish men today know of the Senchus Mor, Patrick’s Law. Today, the young politician in the House of Senate, of city council or state legislature, probably has never heard of it. But his ances tors knew about it, and to them may be traced that impulse for the right, that instinct for Jus tice, that he feels within him, but cannot fully explain. When the Saint first came to Ireland to preach the Catholic faith, he found a land whose civil laws bristled with injustice,—man’s rights, as well as God’s, were disregarded; man was not judg ed on his merits as a man; human law reflected many things but it did not reflect human dignity and—worst of all, these inequalities were not aberrations, they were written into the very marrow of the law itself. Patrick conferred with the native chiefs, proud and haughty men. The force of reli gion was brought to bear upon the morals of men. Justice be came the theme of Celtic law, not just a word to shout about on the holidays, not a patriotic virtue to be mocked at the polls, in the legislatures, in the courts, but a fact upon which all human dignity could be re newed. “The young Irishmen of the 19th century, the immigrants who were helped because the early Savannahians were men of justice too,—these Irish were not saints. They harbored their own bigotries and prejudices. But down deep, they knew that these were emotional lapses, and eventually had to be squared with the law of Justice. So they moved forward, from hodcar- rier, to section boss, to police man, lawyer, city and state and federal leader. Sometimes they carried their prejudices with them, against the Chinese in California, Negroes in the South, the French-Canadians in New England, but they carried deeper within their souls the awareness of Patrick’s Senchus Mor, the Law of Justice. "In this tremendous process of assimilation, we must see not just this or that completed chap ter of American history. Assi milation is the American contribution to the world, and it will never end. Great Societies such as yours have played their part in it, nobly, charitably, benevolently. There is still as similation to be done; may we earnestly recognize that it will always be there to be done. “Tonight we celebrate the Feast Day of the Saint, the birth day of your Society made up of men of varying nationalities and creeds. “We raise a Toast to the Day We Celebrate, the Saint we honor, and we find that we are toasting the very bulwark of the American Nation. “May the Irish spirit of fair play for every man of whatever creed, or race, or color, or nation, be blended with that same spirit in the hearts of every other nation that has given her sons to the United States. “May this mighty blend of Justice and Charity become in every part of our land the mark of God’s favor and His Blessing. A Toast, Gentlemen, to the Day we celebrate, the feastday of Patrick, a Saint for the Irish, a man of courage and a model and an inspiration for every man who lives.” OF/SAVANNAH The Largest And Finest Department Store In The Coastal Empire NEAL-BLUN COMPANY For All Your Building Needs 3500 Montgomery St., At 50th Savannah Thomas-Driscoll-Hutton $ Architects And Engineers Savannah, Georgia