|
|
|
Fr.
Terry Charlton, SJ
Fr. Terry opened St.
Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School in Nairobi, Kenya
to serve students affected by HIV/AIDS. This page includes
webcast stories
and prayers from Fr. Terry Charlton, SJ, a Chicago Province
Jesuit.
A
Welcome Message
Fr. Terry's Welcome from St Al's Website
A Spiritual Exercise
Fr. Terry's shares a Spiritual Exercise
|
| Calendar
Date(s) |
Message
Format |
December
29 – January 20
The New Year & Beginning
of the School Year |
|
January 21 – February 15
St. Claude La Colombiere |
|
February
The Three Weeks Before Easter: Lent |
|
Three
Weeks Before Easter
to Holy Saturday
Paschal Mystery |
|
April
20
Easter
|
|
April
21 – May 10
Peter Canisius (27 April) |
|
May
11 – May 31
Pentecost |
|
June
1– June 15
The Sacred Heart of Jesus |
|
June
15 – July 8
St. Aloysius Gonzaga (21 June) |
|
July
9-31
St Ignatius Loyola (31 July) |
|
1-23
August
Blessed Peter Faber (August 2) |
|
August
24 – September 15
St. Peter Claver (September 9) |
|
September
16 – October 11
Isaac Oigo’s Anniversary (October 11) |
|
| October
12 - November 5
KCSE |
|
| November
6th to 4th Thursday of November Thanksgiving Day (22 –
28 November) |
|
Day
after Thanksgiving to December 10
World AIDS Day |
|
| December
11 – 28
Advent/Christmas |
|
| |
|
29
December – 20 January
New Year & Beginning of the School
Year at St. Al’s
Loving Father, the coming of the New Year
is always a double looking, a looking back and a looking forward.
I look back over the last year, and I do that especially with
gratitude. I am so thankful to you for giving me this last year.
Another year of life, another year of living in your love. I
thank you for so much for all the St. Aloysius Gonzaga High
School Community from students and graduates to teachers and
staff to parents and guardians to partners and friends and benefactors.
It is so wonderful to be a part of this circle of receiving
and giving. I think of the touching moments, for example, when
one partner told me: “I thought of the youth at St. Al’s
as victims; now, I see that they are agents and actors accomplishing
great things in their environment.” I think of the joy
of graduating more students in 2008 than in the previous two
years put together. There was also the faculty and staff retreat
when, far beyond any expectations I had, the retreatants were
so desirous to share their life stories with one another to
build their community of service. Then, there have also the
hard moments in the mystery of human living: like the death
of a student’s surviving parent. I also remember one boy
being thrown out of he house by hi stepmother months after the
death of his father; there were just too many mouths to feed,
and our seeking the right way to respond to this crisis. Let
me remain grateful for everything of this past year, Father,
and let me carry all I have received into the year ahead.
In this year beginning, let me move ahead,
let me re-commit myself. I don’t much believe in New Year’s
resolutions; but, if there are any, shall we say, orientations
that I need to put into my life or life more deeply show them
to me, and let live them. I pray for all the St. Al’s
community. Especially, we at St. Al’s want to remember
out partners and benefactors around the world. And since we
start the new academic year at the beginning or the new year,
let our new school year be one of growth for all. And, since
we are beginning the building of the new school, may this project
prosper well. May this new year be a good year for all. May
we all live our lives more fully in your love and in openness
to your invitation.
I think of the words of Dag Hammerskjold,
the first Secretary General of the United Nation: “For
everything that has been, ‘Thanks’; for everything
that will be, ‘Yes’.” Gracious God, help us
all live this year ahead this way, and live it with eyes open
day-by-day.
Return to top of page
|
21 January – 15 February
St. Claude La Colombiere
Jesus, as I think of Claude de La Colomniere,
I think of your tremendous love, since as the spiritual director
of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and in the ways you revealed yourself
to him, he plays a special role in the spread of the devotion
to your Sacred Heart. You have revealed yourself in the symbol
of your heart as God Incarnate on fire with love for us. I recall
your words, “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and
how I wish it were blazing already! There is a baptism I must
still receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!”
During your life on earth, you were consumed by the fire of
love for your Father and for your fellow humans, and you gave
yourself completely in living your love. The love of your heart,
manifest in the way you lived day-by-day for us and in how you
were even willing to die for us, has brought fire to the earth.
I thank you for the many like Claude, who
have been transformed by your love. I really want to be transformed
by your love. Set me on blaze with your love. Let the focus
on all I say and do be about spreading your love to others.
I think of everyone connected with St. Aloysius
Gonzaga High School. Bring us alive in your love. Enable us
to share your love with one another until we are all afire with
your love. Help us feel the heat of your love for us in such
a way that we come ablaze. And work in us until we are realizing
your full potential in setting the world afire through us.
Return to top of page
|
February 16th
3 Weeks before Easter: Lent
Loving Father, the celebration of Lent is
so rich. We begin with receiving ashes to remind us of our frailty
and the need for salvation. Thank you for reaching out to us
in your mercy and compassion. You accept our weakness and reach
out to save. For me, one of the most powerful realizations of
lent is that you reach out to us sinners in compassion. Jesus’
story of the prodigal son is key for me in thinking about your
mercy. I like to think of it as the story of the prodigal father
because the father in the story really is profligate in the
way he dispenses his love. Yet, Father, the story gives only
a pale reflection of how you pour out your compassionate love.
I have no doubt that your love has touched me profoundly; it
rescues me from my sinfulness; it has brought healing into my
life and has gone far in making me whole. It is the love I know
in seeing how you gave us Jesus and in seeing how he gave himself
so totally day-by-day but especially in being willing to suffer
and die for us on cross. I think of Paul’s words in Romans,
Chapter 5: “We were still helpless when at [God’s]
appointed moment Christ died for sinful people. It is not easy
to die even for a good person – though of course for a
person really worthy, one might be prepared to die – but
what proves God’s love for us is that Christ died for
us while we were still sinners.” Lent is the season for
serious reflection and celebration of the numerous ways in which
you in your compassion have been setting me free from all that
binds me. I know I have a long way to go Father, but I am truly
grateful for the ways in which I have become freer to love
We speak of fasting during Lent. For me fasting
is first of all about recognizing my continuing need for salvation
and opening myself up further in my need. It is about relying
less on physical things and realizing that I most fundamentally
rely on you. You know that I can surely benefit from actual
fasting from food and the things of this world. Nevertheless,
I do not want to neglect the deeper fasting you desire when
you say through the Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 58: “Is
not this the sort of fast that pleases me – it is the
Lord God who speaks – to break unjust fetters and to undo
the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to
break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter
the homeless poor, to clothe the naked and not turn from your
own kin?” This kind of fasting for justice is really about
my commitment to live out of the freedom that you are granting
me in offering me your saving and compassionate love. It is
about working for justice in our world. It is about committing
to the poor and to the marginalized. Help me to live this fast
that you most desire. Give me the grace and the courage to work
for the students of St. Aloysius and for the destitute of Kibera.
Help me be a part of the work for a better world undertaken
by all those who have been touched by your compassionate love.
Return to top of page
|
3
Weeks before Easter to Holy Saturday
Paschal Mystery
“Unless the grain of wheat
falls in the ground and dies, it remains a only single grain;
but, if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” Jesus, as
we move toward the celebration of your Paschal Mystery, the
mystery of your dying and rising, we receive the invitation
to live what you lived in our lives. We call it mystery because
we cannot adequately understand it, we cannot adequately justify
it or explain it. We are called in faith to accept that this
is the truth of our existence, the truth of our being human.
We somehow know that it is true; even our secular wisdom says
things like, “No pain, no gain”. Yet we resist
this truth.
We never look for pain or suffering, but
it is somehow necessary for us to accept that these are part
of our lives and to say yes to them when we must in order
to move forward in our lives. Yet we resist this movement
of dying for the sake of greater life. As much as they desire
learning, frequently, for our students at St. Aloysius, the
last thing they want to do is sit down and hit the books.
When faced with so much hardship, one might want to escape
into drugs, but this is not dying for the sake of greater
life; it is only death.
The paschal mystery is really a choice
about what our lives are to be. Will my life be fundamentally
about living for myself alone or will it be about living for
and with others. Will it involve letting go, self-forgetfulness
for the sake of acting for others? Really, Jesus, this is
the way I want to live. It is hard, and I know I cannot live
t alone. Thanks, Jesus, for showing the way to live in the
way you yourself lived and died and rose again to fuller life.
May your example envelop me in your love and grace. May it
empower me to live your way. Let me enter once again into
your Paschal mystery this Holy Week so that I may live your
way of love, of letting go of my life for the sake of greater
life, every week of my life.
Return
to top of page
|
Easter
– April 20
Easter
Jesus, St. Ignatius emphasizes that,
after your resurrection on Easter morning, you come to your
friends to console them. With your victory over sin, death,
hatred and fear, you transform our perspective. You assure
us that whatever difficulties we are living through, whatever
hardships we are bearing, we are not laboring in vain. In
your resurrection, you have won the fundamental victory over
all evil. The pain and hard labor that we undergo help expand
your victory. Jesus, do come to us as your friends and console
each of us in our lives.
Jesus, you are alive, fully alive. That
is what we are celebrating at Easter. Death could not finally
win over the strength of the power of your life. Light conquers
darkness. Love overcomes fear and hatred. You rise from the
dead to share your life with us. You are totally about life.
Now the divine life which is the life of love totally permeates
even your humanity. As St Paul says, You, “the Second
Adam have become life-giving spirit”. You reach out
and touch us in every situation where we find ourselves. You
enable us to keep growing in living your life of love and
in bringing the power of your love to every situation that
we encounter.
Jesus, it is one thing for me, as a single
person, to be consoled in the face of the negativity of my
own life; but it is quite another to be consoled when we look
out at all the war, violence and poverty in our world. Console
us even at this level. Let us recognize that the power of
your love unites us. Under the power of your risen life of
love, we are drawn together into a community of love. Let
the power of you drawing us together give us the courage to
face together all that is wrong in our world. Jesus, small
as it is on a world-scale, I think of how so many people have
come together for St. Aloysius Secondary school to make a
difference in our world in the face of so many evils, the
AIDS crisis, poverty, division and corruption. Help us to
see St. Aloysius as one of the places where the power of your
risen life of love is at work. Let what we see you accomplishing
at St. Aloysius give each of us, as students and graduates,
guardians and teachers, partners and benefactors, the courage
to continue to accept the power of your love in your lives
so that we can grow, personally and together, in making the
victory of your life more complete in our world.
Return
to top of page
|
21
April – 10 May
Peter Canisius (27 April)
I knew the name, “Canisius,”
from the time I was a little boy. My third and fourth grade
teacher was Sr. May Canisius. I suppose that I celebrated St.
Peter Canisius at daily mass on 27 April during grade school
since we had daily mass. I probably read a few lines of his
biography in the daily missal I used at that time. Those were
the days when the whole church celebrated his feast on April
27th. Quite a few years ago, Peter was moved on the Church’s
calendar to December 21st, a date so close to Christmas that
he is hardly celebrated at all anymore. But the Jesuits keep
his feast on April 27th; does that make us traditionalists?
It’s funny, Father, the incidentals
that I connect with Peter Canisius, but he certainly is someone
worth celebrating. He was a gifted man, who decided to become
a priest; in the early years of the Jesuits, he heard about
them, sought out Peter Faber, Ignatius’s first companion,
and experienced your call. He was a fine theologian, a good
preacher and an effective administrator. The Pope sent him to
Germany to stem the tide of the Reformation, and he did a good
job. He was particularly effective because of the dissemination
of the catechisms he wrote for several different audiences that
he wrote, whether for the learned or simple, for adults or children.
Father, as I think about the example of Peter
Canisius, I see someone who used his talents and his acquired
learning for your greater glory. I see someone who listened
to your call and followed it day by day. He responded in terms
of what was going on around him with a discerning heart.
We often think about vocation as the big decision of whether
to marry or remain single or to be a sister or a priest or a
brother. Peter Canisius really is someone who followed his vocation,
not just in the biggest decision of his life but in the daily
saying, “Yes,” to your will, to your call, as you
spoke to him each day.
Now, I ask you to help me be a good listener
to your call, which comes daily in the events of my life and
in the ways you move my heart. Help me be sensitive even to
the subtle movements. Enable me, Father, to respond to your
love in my life by hearing your daily call and responding whole-heartedly,
each day of my life.
Return
to top of page
|
May
11 – May 31
Pentecost
Jesus, at your Ascension, you told your
disciples that they would receive “power when the Holy
Spirit comes to” them. What is this power? I think it
is most fundamentally the empowerment to accomplish all that
your saving work sets us free to accomplish. It is all you
invite us to accomplish as we see your example and hear your
call to respond. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love. As
Love, the Holy Spirit is the very glue that binds us to you,
that enables us to remain in your friendship. The Spirit is
Gift of Grace, and what is grace except relationship of love
with you and the Father! Fear is overcome, and the disciples
become courageous after the coming of the Holy Spirit. Our
empowerment that makes us secure and enables us to be courageous
is simply the assurance of the Holy Spirit, who binds us in
relationship to you and to the Father.
I think of St. Aloysius Gonzaga and of
how much I think has been accomplished there. We began the
school without knowing whether it would succeed. I believe
it is because we have begun in the power of the Holy Spirit,
who binds us to you, that we have been able to move forward.
The Holy Spirit binds us to you, but the Spirit also binds
us to one another in you. We are your body, the body of Christ.
Holy Spirit, come to us and renew us. Give
us courage as sisters and brothers of Jesus to accomplish
what he invites us to. Enable us to feel the strength in our
relationship to one another through you to accomplish much
in our situation, whether it be through the support of prayers,
through contributions, or through what we do on the ground
in Kibera. Empower every one of us to do our part to accomplish
your will in bringing the light of education, in working for
overcoming the AIDS pandemic, in alleviating poverty, and
in being a beacon of hope. Spirit of Jesus, enable us to bring
Jesus and to be Jesus to our world of today.
Return
to top of page
|
June
1 – June 15
The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Jesus, as we celebrate your Sacred Heart,
I want to be in touch with the meaning of your love. I think
of the words of St. John in his First Letter: “Here is
the love I mean, not our love for God but God’s love for
us in sending Jesus to be the sacrifice that takes our sins
away. Beloved, if God so loved us, we must love one another.”
This really is the heart of love: that the Father gave you to
us to reveal what love is, to reveal the fullness of his love.
You have held nothing back; in your infinite love, you save
us. Your personal sacrifice is at one and the same time both
your total dedication to the will of the Father for you to reveal
the true meaning of love and your commitment to realize the
Father’s will in loving us completely, even to the point
of laying down your life for us. Your sacrifice of love does
take away our sins because at once it shows us the way and it
sets us free to move away from the selfishness that binds us.
We are enabled to imitate you and to begin to join ourselves
in our weakness to your strength, to join our fragile commitment
to your total commitment. Truly, we are joining ourselves to
your commitment of love so that we are growing in our love of
one another.
Jesus, your heart was pierced on the cross
by the soldier’s lance. Let the power of your love pierce
my heart and let me become totally open to your love. Let my
heart not remain cold. Let your love pour into my heart and
break it open with your compassion to all those around me so
much in need. It is so easy for me to say that I am not responsible;
I can’t be concerned for everyone. But you are concerned
for everyone - including me. You say that you no longer call
us servants but friends because we know what is in your heart.
Let the fire of your love enflame my heart with love for all.
Jesus, I think I know my limits all to well. But I fear I sometimes
set them too close, in my comfort zone. Have mercy on my weakness,
yet somehow let your love expand my limits so that I can imitate
you in caring for all.
Return
to top of page
|
15
June – 8 July
St.
Aloysius Gonzaga (21 June)
Dear St. Al, thanks for the inspiration
of the example of your life. Those are big words. What I mean
is thanks for just being yourself. Thanks for letting the
love of Jesus capture your heart from your youth. You decided
that you were invited to be a Jesuit and would not let wealth,
power or even the pull of family stop you. I would like to
be as focused and as single-hearted as you are in following
my vocation.
What was it that enabled you to be a peacemaker
in the conflict that upset the Duchy of iiiii? Was it some
combination of sensitivity, compassion, and an ability to
sympathize with conflicting positions and to bring opposing
sides together to peace? Was it because you cultivated an
openness to all that could inspire trust? Whatever your qualities,
help us to make the most of our gifts and sensitivities to
be peacemakers in our families and neighborhoods and institutions
and countries and world which are so much in need today.
Al, you poured yourself out for the victims
of the plague, you risked your life and ended up giving your
life in your commitment to care for them. I ask you to help
us today to reach out to all those, who are sick and otherwise
in need. Support us especially in reaching out especially
to these infected and affected by our modern plague, the AIDS
pandemic. Intercede for us with God that we may care for them,
each of us according to our own potential.
We have named our school after you, and
we ask you to be our patron at St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School
serving AIDS-affected youth living in Kibera. We pray most
especially for our students and our graduates. Help them to
follow our motto: “to learn, to love, and to serve,”
in imitation of you. Let them learn well and be all they can
in living loving lives of service. Inspire all our community
at the school named for you, whether parents and guardians,
teachers and administrators, or friends and benefactors, to
really be people who work together to achieve all that we
can to provide a really transforming education to our students
so that we all may together be a force for good in our world.
Return to top of page
|
July
31
Ignatius
July 9-31 St Ignatius Loyola
St. Ignatius, thanks for the tremendous
example that you provide. I think first of your being a man
of passionate desires. You spent many years letting your desires
pull you in the wrong direction in selfishness; but, after your
conversion to giving your life to following Jesus Christ, your
desires were focused on doing all for the greater glory of God.
I also think of the commitment of your will to God’s will.
You put at the center of your life, “To seek and to find
God in all things.” Help us believe that God is constantly
present in every aspect of our lives. Help us to be sensitive
and to listen so that we can successfully discern how God is
calling us.
I also think of how your words, “In
all things to love and to serve,” have inspired us. I
am grateful to the member of CLC, who used your words as the
basis of our school motto at St. Aloysius: “To learn,
to love and to serve.” Help us to live up to your ideals
in living lives of passionate desires and whole-heated commitment.
Loving Father, help all of us who are connected
with St. Aloysius to live our motto, “To learn, to love
and to serve.” Enable our students and graduates to keep
growing in being passionate about learning, always inquisitive,
never fearful of the truth that it provides the light to show
the way. Give them your love and let them live in your love
so that they can experience the grace to use their knowledge
and use all of who they are in living lives of love and service.
Inspire the rest of us, teachers, parents and guardians, friends
and benefactors to give what we can and to be available to our
students and graduates so that they can be and act according
to their potential. Do bind us all together as a community centered
around your Son, Jesus, so that we can live in your love, supported
by one another and reaching out to others in service.
Return
to top of page
|
August
1-23 Blessed Peter Faber (August 2)
Peter
Faber
I remember the name of the biography
of Peter Faber that I read years back was called, The Quiet
Companion. He really was not very colorful; he didn’t
make a big splash, yet Ignatius said Peter was the best director
of the Exercises. Maybe that was because he was unfocused on
himself; he could really listen and bring out the best in others,
and maybe that made him the best in bringing others to you,
Jesus. Maybe Peter Faber should be the patron saint of collaborators.
Everybody has their special gift. You have something special,
Jesus, for each person that no one else can accomplish, it would
be left undone if they don’t hear and heed your call.
The Jesuits will speak about the importance of their lay collaborators,
but I also think of how we priests and religious are called
to collaborate with the laity. Maybe the way we should look
at it is that we all are really collaborators with you. Each
of us is called to collaborate with everyone else to accomplish
your things, both big and small. I guess it is all your great
work. It is all bringing about the Reign of God.
Jesus, make me sensitive to how I can collaborate
with others, how I can help others become all they can be and
achieve all in the realm of their possibility. Help me forget
myself. Jesus, I think of St. Al’s. I think of everyone
of us connected with that place, the faculty, administrators,
the benefactors, the board of governors, the parents and guardians,
all collaborators to enable our students to become men and women
for others. I guess we all are really collaborators in bringing
your Reign to fruition in our world. Help me in my life to live
the commitment that John the Baptist made, “You must increase,
I must decrease.”
Return to top of page
|
August
24 – September 15 : St. Peter Claver (September 9)
Peter
Claver
Now, here’s a guy, who gave himself
completely. Day-by-day, year after year, Peter Claver went to
the slaves, newly arrived in Cartagena in the ships from Africa.
They suffered so much in being captured, and imprisoned in chains
until they were put on a ship where they could hardly move for
the journey of months to America. The arrived, unwashed, undernourished,
and most often sick. And there was Peter to greet them with
a smile, even though they did not have a shared language to
communicate in. He cared for their every need, giving them food,
washing their bodies, giving them medicine in their illnesses.
What was there about this man’s ministry that so many
would be baptized because of the ways Peter was present to them.
Jesus, Peter really did imitate you. Help
me come closer to you through imitating him. Help me never think
that someone is not worth my care, even if all I can do is offer
a smile. It is easy for me to fall into the sin to think some
people are so unimportant, maybe because they are poor, that
they don’t deserve my time. I think the reality is that
I am unworthy to serve them. Jesus, make me worthy. Let me see
the dignity and the worth of every single person. You lived
and died for every single human person. Help me really respect
and feel the worth of every person, whom you have created. I
think of how, in his own blood, Peter Claver signed his final
vows as a Jesuit with the words, “The slave of the slaves”.
It’s difficult, but I really do want also to be the servant,
the slave, of all.
Return to top of page
|
| September16
– October 11 : Isaac Oigo’s Anniversary (October
11)
Issac
Oigo
Dear God, I can’t help but smile when I think of Isaac
Oigo, who died on October 9, 2002, at the age of 34. I am
so grateful for having known him and for having been able
to accompany him in the last decade of his life’s journey.
My first encounter with this young Kenyan, who worked as an
engineer on the radar at the Nairobi airport was at his baptism
in 1991. He had led a wild enough youth but decided that he
wanted to be a mystic and that led him to the Catholic Church
and to CLC. Not too many years later he discovered that he
was HIV+. I remember that I was the first person he told,
and how, with profound dejection, Isaac said, “I think
I’ll have to leave CLC.” I replied, “Did
you think that CLC is a place for perfect people?”
I’m grateful for the chance to be
with Isaac to explore your love for him in the context of
his HIV status. Not just your love, but also your call because
Isaac took the time to listen and to explore what was his
deepest desire. He said, “What I really want to do in
the time I have left is to lead others to God, to help them
know God.” He was timid to say it since these were not
normal expectations of a layman, but he vocalized, “I
want to help others by being a spiritual director.”
Father, I thank you for the chance to see Isaac step out in
courage by quitting his job at the airport and taking up a
master’s degree in counseling psychology to prepare
himself to realize his deepest desire, to become a spiritual
director, a desire, which I believe that you, Father, gave
him.
Thanks, Father, that together with Isaac
we could open the CLC National Office and begin the Zaidi
Centre for Ignatian Spirituality in the year 2000. I thank
you that the two of us could work together to help form our
brothers and sisters in CLC in Ignatian spirituality and share
who you are with so many more. I thank you for the privilege
to see Isaac blossom even as his physical health deteriorated.
I thank you for the wisdom beyond his years that you gave
Isaac and that he was able to share this with so many.
During the last weeks of his life, Isaac
especially opened to you. He prepared for death by joyfully
saying, “Yes,” to all that is your will. He found
you even in his dying. Isaac was always so special to me,
but it was only in the days after his death that I learned
how special he was to so many. I heard numerous stories about
how you touched persons through Isaac. I remember the rejoicing
at his funeral at his life so full of grace, lived so graciously.
Now, I know that St. Ignatius was right: we don’t need
to prefer a long life over a short life.
Return
to top of page
|
October 12 - November 5
KCSE
I remember how already in January,
the beginning of the school year the classrooms of the seniors
at St. Al’s had a corner of their blackboards dedicated
to noting the number of days Until the KCSE begins. Early in
January it might start out reading, “278 days to the KCSE.”
There is a sense in which the students have been preparing for
the all important Kenya Certificate for Secondary Education
exams from the first day they entered high school. The exam
begins on October 21st or the first weekday after that. Then,
for some 3-and-a-half weeks, they will be taking a couple of
exams almost every day.
It is not like it was when I was finishing
high school. There were so many factors that were considered
about getting into college. Here, in Kenya, qualifications for
any tertiary level academic education is simply dependent on
this one examination.
Jesus, I ask you to be with our students
at St. Al’s as they take this exam. Let them trust in
you, know you are with them and feel your support. Help the
students remember all they have studied, help them not to be
worried. Jesus, together with the Father, send your Holy Spirit
upon out students taking the KCSE. Let them just have an attitude
of calmness and confidence that they can perform at the top
of their ability. And if anyone has to guess, let them guess
correctly.
Enable them to come through the exam with
the knowledge that they have done their best and bring them
to their graduation day with a sense of the goodness and specialness
of each in your sight. Help us all at St. Aloysius to find the
right ways to affirm each of our students and to help them on
their way to becoming men and women for others. Help them all,
day be day to realize our motto, “to learn, to love and
to serve.”
Return to top of page
|
November
6th to the 4th Thursday of November
Thanksgiving Day (November 22-28)
Thanksgiving
Loving Father, you are giver of all good
gifts. As the American celebration of Thanksgiving arrives,
I want to thank you for so much we have to be grateful for
in the United States. Since we are commemorating the First
Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims, their first harvest feast, after
their survival of a harsh winter, I thank you, Father, for
all the fruits of the harvest. I thank you for the riches
of the land and for all the natural resources of the United
States which have enabled us to prosper. I thank you for the
founding principles of our country arising from the hopes
for freedom of people fleeing religious persecution, oppression
and poverty. I am grateful for the principles of human dignity,
freedom and equality which inform us. I pray that we will
live up to these principles in how we conduct ourselves at
home and in how we exercise our position of leadership in
the world. May we always act in terms of liberty and justice
for all.
I can’t think of giving thanks without
thinking of our students at St. Al’s. They have so little,
yet they are always turning to you in gratitude. As we come
to the end of another school year, I thank you for all the
good that has happened. I am grateful especially for those
who are graduating. I know you have been with them as they
took their final exams and enabled each to do their best.
I thank you for all our good administrators and teachers who
contribute so much to our students’ education and to
helping them become men and women for others. I thank you
for our many benefactors; without their prayers, encouragement
and financial support, St. Al’s would not be possible.
I thank you that our family of St. Al’s keeps growing.
Keep us grateful. In our gratitude, enable us to become all
we can become and, Father, enable us to reach out to others,
especially the most needy.
Return to top of page
|
Day
after Thanksgiving to December 10: World AIDS Day
AIDS
Day
Loving Father, we are celebrating World
AIDS Day. In many ways, it is not an easy day. I think of so
many people who have suffered without much hope, without much
to look forward to except a painful death for oneself or for
a loved one. I am so glad that today, with anti-retro viral
drugs, people living with AIDS can live a healthier and longer
life. Let this day be a celebration of gratitude. I am grateful
about how much has been achieved in overcoming stigma associated
with AIDS. I pray that prejudice can be wiped out. I ask that
the messages about how to avoid risky behaviors may reach people
and encourage them to make good choices that will give them
positive futures. Father, I pray especially for young people
who can so easily think of themselves as invulnerable; help
them make good decisions about how to live their lives especially
in the sexual area. I feel so sad for those mired in poverty,
who see no other option but to sell their bodies to survive
or to feed their children or brothers and sisters. Father, work
in all of us to make us more compassionate so that we can keep
reaching out to others, especially those living with AIDS. Let
us be people who live in hope and share hope that we can make
progress in overcoming the AIDS crisis. We keep looking to you,
Father, for hope, courage and compassion.
Return to top of page
|
December
11-28
Advent/Christmas
Jesus, it is easy to romanticize
your birth and all that surrounds it. I want to consider the
shepherds, who were actually at the margins of Jewish society;
yet, rather than the respected and proper people, it was to
them to whom the angels announced your birth. Everyone thought
the shepherds were the rascals of your time. Their clothes were
shabby, and they were rejected from proper society. Our students
at St. Aloysius can identify with the shepherds. They are among
the poorest, often stigmatized because they come from families
affected by AIDS. People think that nothing good can come from
youth from the slum. Yet, Jesus, they are special to you. You
don’t hesitate to invite them close to you. You want them
to know that they are special. You are offering them salvation,
you are offering them hope.
Jesus, let this Christmas be a special time of rejoicing in
your becoming human. You are among us; you affirm our human
situation in its totality. And you offer salvation for all.
Help me to see how I am called to participate in the meaning
of Christmas. In my celebration of Christmas, how do I include
those whom the world places at the margins? How do I reach out
to the shepherds of my day? Jesus, let this Christmas be a time
when I reach out beyond my comfort to those at the margins.
Return to top of page
|
Back
to top
|
|
