Corde Press

I am pumped for this one.  

Obviously, Katie and I are delighted to share Sorin Starts a School.  Honestly though, we may be more excited for the book to financially support the work of the CSC in Bangladesh.

The history of the Congregation in Bangladesh includes so many contributors, serious builders.  Below is a story including a few of them.  (And while I won’t belabor the point, you can clearly see all the elements, from this week’s emails, of the CSC charism here.)

After I left Uganda in 2009, I spent a few months in Bangladesh to be close to the woman that I would later marry while she was finishing up her post-grad service term.  Once there, I looked up Fr. Tom McDermott, CSC, who had helped run our volunteer orientation in 2007, and was now working in Dhaka, the capital.  

A brief note on Dhaka.  It’s a tough place to live.  Bangladesh has half the population of the US on a land area equal to that of Illinois that seasonally floods.  So, high population density.  Dhaka is the most crowded city in the world.  And gets real hot.  Like, heat rash hot.  It is a tough place to live.

And it was tough in 1851 when Blessed Basil Moreau agreed that the Congregation would take over the mission there. And it was tough in 1947 during the conflict with India and Pakistan following the partition of “British India.”  And tough in 1971 when Bangladesh fought for its independence.  Through all these seasons, the Holy Cross has accompanied displaced persons from conflict, marginalized indigenous people in the north, and scores of students through their excellent schools in Dhaka.

One Holy Cross missionary who dedicated his life to this accompaniment was Fr. Gene Homrich, CSC.  He was born in Michigan in 1928, started at ND in 1947, was ordained a CSC priest in 1955 and later headed to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).  He worked there for sixty-one years helping to found two parishes with the indigenous tribes in the north, Jalchatra and Pirgacha.  (He passed away only this past summer, from COVID-related complications.  Here is a peek into the scope of his life’s contribution.)   

And that summer in 2009, I found myself on the porch of the parish house in Pirgacha, after Fr. Tom invited me to tag along with him as he oriented the Bengal Bouts summer volunteers.  

The sun was setting, Tom had just acquired both of us a quarter inch of Fr. Homrich’s scotch, and I settled in for a McDermott soliloquy.  (If you’ve spent half a day with Tom, you know what I am talking about and you know that it is awesome.)  

He riffed on the extraordinary history of the church in Bangladesh (“It’s like… Micronesia in a sea of Islam!”), where the CSC fit into that history (appreciating the indigenous leadership), and the Christian vocation generally (“Just think about it!  A life of generosity is just more fun than a life of stuff!”).  He also took care to include me in it all and helped me process my two years in Uganda (“It sure was cute of the Lord to drop you by here for a few months on your way back home.”).

It was a perfect distillation of the joy he takes in his vocation, and his extraordinary ability to share this joy; that is, to include others in God’s call.  

I encountered this joy again some weeks later during what was ostensibly a silent retreat at the CSC house in Dhaka.  Tom kept finding me to make sure I didn’t get too much quiet time.  

Hey Paul – come on – let’s go visit the Missionaries of Charity house.

Hey Paul – come over here – there is someone I want you to meet.

Hey Paul – come on into the common room after dinner – I told the Bengal Bouts guys you would talk to them.  Your topic is “The Truth Will Make You Strange.”

I have thought often about the topic he assigned to me that night.  (The line is a play, by Flanery O’Connor, on the verse in John 8: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”)  

It is a grace, I think, to be both free and strange, and this grace runs deep in Tom McDermott.  Free to contribute your life to extraordinary work, and strange only to the eyes of the world who is caught up in other stuff and, honestly, not having as much fun.

His current project is, along with a formidable team, building Notre Dame University Bangladesh in Dhaka.  It is our joy to support these CSC builders in Bangladesh with all profits from Sorin Starts a School.  Let’s pray for the flourishing of their work, and for the grace to be made strange and free.

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Order Sorin Starts a School: The Foundation of Notre Dame today! All profits support the work of the Holy Cross in Bangladesh.

Pumped about this project and have an idea of how we can collaborate?  We’d love to hear from you.

Today is about Fr. Edward Sorin, CSC.  Where to start.

Fr. Dick Stout, CSC used to say this thing about folks from the US who would travel to work in a new country.  Those who stayed for a year or less, he would say with a smile, often leave and write a definitive interpretation of what they encountered.  But those who stayed, and the longer they stayed, had a deepening sense of disorientation, wonder, and love that prevented such a reductive explanation.

I feel a bit like this about Fr. Sorin.  

Katie and I read a bunch to prepare to write Sorin Starts a School, but the central text we drew from was this behemoth by former ND professor, Fr. Martin O’Connell.  Here, Fr. O’Connell exhaustively describes Sorin’s vocational journey, enigmatic character, considerable strengths, and inescapable shortcomings.

To me, Fr. Sorin seems almost uninterpretably complex, so, tough to write an honest picture book about.  But we sifted through his life and decided to leave readers of Sorin Starts a School with the following snapshot: Despite his shortcomings, his faith in God and his desire (and capacity) to build something that nourishes others was relentless.  Utterly and magnificently relentless.

And this theme of building stuff that nourishes is one that I find so important to our contemporary church.  

Often, I wonder: “Will we be a people who comment or who contribute?”  

Some time ago, I wrote out the following to challenge myself.

Think for a moment about how you spent the last year in the life of the church.

How much commentary did you offer?  That is, your opinion about what someone else was doing or creating?

How much creation did you offer?  That is, you showing up and offering generous leadership, an educational experience, a moment of beauty, a sacred space.  

I am certain that we need more generous contribution.  I am not sure that we need more commentary.  

Fr. Edward Sorin, CSC was a serious contributor.  For years, it was unclear if Notre Dame was going to succeed.  Reading the history, it is a wonder that it did.  But Fr. Sorin and companions did the hard work of contribution, of building a place whose existence has been definitive in the course of our lives.  

So. Like Sorin, we are not perfect. And like Sorin, we can still build stuff that will nourish others.

Unlike Sorin, though, we probably won’t build a university… or wait… why not?

But that is tomorrow’s post… regarding the work of the CSC in Bangladesh.

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Order Sorin Starts a School: The Foundation of Notre Dame today! All proceeds support the work of the Holy Cross in Bangladesh.

Excited about this project and want to work together to share it? We’d love to hear from you.

Today, I promised to write about Jesus’ invitation to “Come, Follow me,” the line that begins and ends the CSC Constitutions.  

So many of us have been graced by the accompaniment of the women and men of Holy Cross.  Does it surprise us that their community is rooted in this invitation to accompaniment of the Master?

And now that I am sitting to write about it, I figure that I really should have started with this theme.  It is in the context of this invitation, I think, that Our Lady of Sorrows and “The Cross, Our Only Hope” reflect the fullness of the CSC charism.

The Stability Stanza

Here is the story about how “Come, Follow me” worked its way into Sorin Starts a School.  

A cohort of formidable folks read early drafts and gave thoughtful feedback on the text.  Their insight made my writing far better than it would have been on its own.

I was very interested in the book feeling like Holy Cross, and so I gave it to as many CSC religious as would read it.  I begged perhaps more time than I ought to from their thoughtful, considerable talent.  And in this early round of feedback, “Come, Follow me” worked its way onto this page.  

Then, in the final stage of revision and in generosity I can never repay, the minds of Mary Ann and Ben Wilson sifted through the text over a number of weeks.  (We would often be working on the same Google doc, 1,500 miles apart, at night after children were asleep.  It was a delightful feeling of togetherness in a year that has been considerably isolating.)

During these weeks, in a stroke of genius, MA offered the idea of a “stability stanza,” a repeating, evolving set of lines that would structure the narrative.

I considered this insight for some days, and then wrote “Come, Follow me” into three more moments of the book, for a total of four.

First, with Sorin as a young man, first discerning God’s Call for himself. (See below.)

Second, as Sorin and companions set out on the American mission. (See ship picture a few paragraphs up.)

Third, with Sorin in desolation, praying for clarity of the call.

And on the final page of the book, in a turn toward the reader, welcoming them to listen for their own call.

Is this not how “Come, Follow me” operates, in evolution, throughout a life?  First, with clarity and single-minded passion.  Often, in community and graced consolation.  Sometimes without clarity, in loneliness or confusion.  Or in welcoming another to join us on the road. 

I am thrilled to share how the call operates in the book.  And no way would it have evolved as it did without the generous insight of the book’s feedback team.

One quick thought from the CSC Constitution 1.

There is a line that I find a bit haunting, in paragraph 8.  It is:

We wished to abandon all to follow Christ. We learned in time that we still had it within ourselves to hold back.

Right?

This is a theme I will pick up tomorrow, addressing the question of: Why a book about Edward Sorin?

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Order Sorin Starts a School: The Foundation of Notre Dame today! All proceeds support the work of the Holy Cross in Bangladesh.

Excited about this project and want to work together to share it? We’d love to hear from you.

Today I promised to write about the CSC motto of “The Cross, Our Only Hope.”

This motto is best articulated and lived by the women and men of Holy Cross, and I feel generally inadequate to explain it here.  But I will share one related text that has meant a great deal to me as well as two stories of compassionate accompaniment that I believe to be rooted in this motto.

Constitution 8: The Cross, Our Hope

So!  In September of 2007, four ‘07 ND grads and I moved to Uganda to work alongside the Holy Cross as lay volunteers.  For me, it was a tough transition.  It took me about a month to share these difficulties with our volunteer community.  The perceptive and generous Joe Wysocki (the recipient of Dick Stout’s white mug from yesterday’s post) listened to what I was saying, disappeared into his room for a moment, returned with his copy of the CSC Constitutions, and offered me the book opened to the final chapter: “Constitution 8: The Cross, Our Only Hope.”

Joe lived at Old College for a time, and knew Constitution 8 from his formation there. He offered it to me then, without presumption or interpretation.  His care in that moment was one of the finest gifts I received during those years.

And so I offer it to you now.  Here is an online version of Constitution 8.  (And here is an index of all eight sections of the CSC Constitutions.  I find them to be extraordinarily well-written, and a window to understand, in a partial way, the gift and challenge of religious life for those of us living the lay vocation.)  

Modeling the wisdom of Joe, I will not over-interpret them here.  I will, though, offer brief context about something I feel rather strongly.

I realize that the themes of today and yesterday (loss, sorrow, the Cross) are some pretty high octane stuff.  There is much power there within one’s soul and psyche and I believe the particularities of these themes are best worked out with perceptive, loving friends, in spiritual direction, and, often, in counselling.  (One of my favorite stories of my favorite saint, Oscar Romero, is that a crucial part of his conversion was working through tough stuff in therapy.  We don’t tell this type of story enough, I think.)

So, for example, I recall talking about Constitution 8 with a Holy Cross spiritual director, and being reminded: “It is possible to carry more than God requires, and love less than God desires.”  While infuriatingly vague, it gestures to the point I am trying to make… namely, that interpretation of “the Cross” is subtle, depends a great deal on one’s personality, and is best done with trusted, skilled interlocutors.

Two more observations, then I’ll wrap this up.

“The Cross, Our Hope” is Not a Personal Experience

First.  Read paragraphs 115 – 117 with me here.

115. To struggle for justice and meet only stubbornness, to try to rally those who have despaired, to stand by the side of misery we cannot relieve, to preach the Lord to those who have little faith or do not wish to hear of him … our ministry will hint to us of Jesus’ suffering for us.

116. To spend ourselves and be spent for the needs of neighbors; to be available and cheerful as a friend in Holy Cross and to give witness while others hesitate; to stand by duty when it has become all burden and no delight … community too can draw us nearer Calvary.

117. Whether it be unfair treatment, fatigue or frustration at work, a lapse of health, tasks beyond talents, seasons of loneliness, bleakness in prayer, the aloofness of friends; or whether it be the sadness of our having inflicted any of this on others … there will be dying to do on our way to the Father.

Often, when I experience the above, I tell myself the lie that I am alone in it.  Lies have that pesky disadvantage of being untrue, and those paragraphs reveal the merciful truth that I am not at all alone in these things.

The words of Sorin Starts a School that resonate these ideas were the hardest to write, I suppose because they mean a great deal to me.   Here is the page where they will appear.

Learning the Acceptance of Sorrow

Second, and finally.  Over the thirteen years I have read Constitution 8, one bit returns to me repeatedly.  It is this line from paragraph 118:

If we, like [Jesus] encounter and accept suffering in our discipleship, we will move without awkwardness among others who suffer.

I think of this a great deal when I give thanks for the quality of accompaniment that I have received from CSC folks, particularly from a sister of the Holy Cross, Sr. Judith Anne Beattie, CSC.  Judith Anne is an extraordinary spiritual director and was a faithful companion to me as I travelled through my 20s.  

Often, in direction, I would share deep sadness, and I am at a loss to describe the remarkable quality of presence with which my stories were received.  She communicated composure, care, patience, trust, and a startling clarity of perception.  Judith Anne is my model for one who is able to “move without awkwardness” in the presence of suffering, and I think it must be the grace of a vocation lived with “The Cross, Our Hope” as the motto, in sincere discipleship, and in the presence of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows.

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Order Sorin Starts a School: The Foundation of Notre Dame today! All proceeds support the work of the Holy Cross in Bangladesh.

Excited about this project and want to work together to share it? We’d love to hear from you.