“Come,
let us return to the LORD, it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has
struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on
the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence. Let us know, let us
strive to know the LORD; as certain as the dawn is his coming, and his judgment
shines forth like the light of day! He will come to us like the rain, like
spring rain that waters the earth.” Hosea 6:1-3
”But
the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to
heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I
tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be
exalted.” Luke 18:13-14
Piety
All the reflections
of Christ in our lives are the piety of who we are in Christ. All the ways we
are lifted up with Christ bring us his salvation and make us his
representatives in life. God so loved the world that he sent his own Son to be
our salvation. How we join ourselves to Christ in his dying brings us to share
his mission from the Father. We become God’s so great love for us in how we
carry our crosses of life in the name of Christ. There is no bypass of the
cross if we are to share the work of Christ. We too need to be lifted
up.[i]
Study
Let us strive to know the Lord. Through Cursillo weekends, group reunion and
life, maybe we do start to take on the mantle of the tax collector if we
actually listen, hear and put into action the Word. However, we do not get to that attitude on
our own without great teachers and preachers.
Jesus sent one of his angels to be among us in the person of his servant
Joseph McCloskey. This week, nearly a
year after his stroke and 83 years after he came into this world, St. Fr. Joe,
our humble smiling teacher and companion on this journey returned to the
Lord. Since his stroke nearly a year
ago, I bet the Father was looking down the road just waiting to great his son
as he walked down the road to his eternal home.
The earthly job of our good and faithful
servant finally complete, he returns to his Prodigal home. St. Fr. Joe now takes up his heavenly task
with the choirs of angels to drill the hole to pull us through when our day
will come.
St. Fr. Joe helped us in our piety. He helped us in our study. He helped us in our action. Pull out your notebooks. The words are all there. Probably none more profound than his mantra
that echoes through weekends when he was not on the team but was quoted by
others who had gotten spiritual direction from him. “Am I willing to be who
Christ would have been if he had been lucky enough to be me?”
God, rich in mercy
has given us his Son to be our redemption. How we look at the Christ on the
Cross opens our heart to the mercy and the love of God. In the Old Testament,
the people looked at the serpent that Moses showed them and they were healed.
We look at Christ on the Cross and call him to save us.[ii]
Action
Our world is saved
through the dying of Christ. He is the love of the Father by his obedience to
the Father. Our acceptance of his being the Father’s love for our world allows
us to be the same. How we offer ourselves in the name of Christ allows us to be
partakers of the sharing of the Father’s love for our world. The sacrifices of
Lent we offer for each other are the way the love of God reaches the world
through us. We take up our crosses in his name and find the joy in fulfilling
what is wanting to the sufferings of Christ in our day and age by carry our
crosses in his name. No sacrifice is too great or too little to fulfill what
the Father is asking of us to do in the name of his Son. We become the love of
the Father by offering ourselves in the name of Christ.[iii]
Fr. Joe’s words echoed the Gospel. He reflected Christ and the poetry of St.
John as well as the spirit and grandeur of Gerard Manly Hopkins, and other
member of the Society of Jesus.
St. Fr. Joe accepted the love of the Father
53 years ago when he was ordained. He
offered himself, Christ-like to his family, to us in Cursillo, to the Gonzaga
community, to the Woodstock community, to his spiritual direction students in
the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, to the poor served by the McKenna Center, and
many others. St. Fr. Joe was the
handiwork of the Lord to whom he now returns.
Relatives and friends may call at St.
Aloysius Gonzaga Church, 900 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC on Sunday,
March 6 from 5 to 7 p.m. and again on Monday, March 7 beginning at 11 a.m.,
where Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 12 noon. (PLEASE NOTE: There
is free parking in the Gonzaga underground parking garage for late Sunday
afternoon and evening ONLY. You enter it from 1st Street NW
on "I" Street, through the traffic circle and down the ramp on
the right.)
Following the Sunday wake, there will be a
gathering for shared remembrances in the Upper Commons of Gonzaga. The
family would love to hear some of your favorite memories of Fr. Joe and perhaps
a few Joe-isms.
The Mass of the Resurrection will be at Noon,
Monday March 7. All priests in attendance are invited to
concelebrate. Before the Mass there will be a viewing in the Church for
the Gonzaga community. On Tuesday, the burial will take place at noon
at Woodstock, Maryland where he was ordained nearly 53 years ago.
Fr. Joe's favorite charity was the McKenna
Center for those inclined to give a gift in his honor. The Father McKenna
Center is a nonprofit social service agency in the Jesuit tradition serving the
poor and homeless of Washington, DC. Located
in the basement of the former St. Aloysius Church (and currently on the campus
of Gonzaga College High School), the Center operates four principal
programs:
- A Day Drop-In Shelter for homeless men
- A Hypothermia Program for homeless men (from November 1 – March 31)
- Food Pantry, providing supplemental groceries for approximately 200 families per month
- An Immersion Service Learning Program for college and secondary students that exposes those young women and men to the issues of homelessness and poverty, in an effort to change minds and hearts about the people who are poor and homeless.
The Father McKenna Center was established as
a ministry of St. Aloysius Parish in 1983 to carry on the legacy of Fr. Horace
B. McKenna, SJ, considered by many people as Washington’s “priest to the poor.”
In 2012, the Archdiocese of Washington
announced the closing of St. Aloysius Parish. Gonzaga College High School
affirmed that the Center was a vital part of life in the community, and wanted
the Center to continue to operate at Gonzaga. The Center sought and was granted
independent tax-exempt status.
Click on the Donate button at the top of the http://fathermckennacenter.org/home-page/
to make a tribute gift in honor of St. Fr. Joe.
Eternal rest grant unto him. May perpetual light shine upon him and may
the soul of St. Fr. Joe, and all the souls of the faithfully departed, through
the mercy of Christ, rest in peace.
Rev.
Joseph M. McCloskey, SJ
1933-2016
The world is charged with the grandeur of
God.
It will flame out, like
shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness,
like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his
rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with
trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and
shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest
freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West
went
Oh, morning, at the brown
brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm
breast and with ah! bright wings.
Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems
and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)
[i] (St.
Fr. Joe McCloskey, SJ from his final reflection in Your Daily Tripod, March 14,
2015 – The Fourth Sunday of Lent) http://www.yourdailytripod.blogspot.com/2015/03/his-handiwork.html
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