Refound in the Franciscan Tradition

8. Celebration 90

8 Celebration 90 In the midst of much activity, Holy Name Province turned 90 years old. It was an opportune time for a pause to celebrate our past and refuel for our future. Celebrations were organized in t h e regions of the Province. I used the occasion to reminisce and to challenge, looking to a history of cooperation with the local Church and the laity as present–day opportunities. The talk is presented here without substantial changes. On an August afternoon at the beach, I sat gazing lazily at the ocean and sky as they melted together into multishades of blue. From the corner of my eye I caught a brilliantly colored kite contrasting its reds and yellows with the azure heights. In a quick flashback, I was reminded of the Myles Connolly novel, Mr. Blue, required reading in Freshman English at Callicoon 39 years ago. In one enchanting scene, Mr. Blue, a modern day Francis of Assisi, who roams the streets of New York City, "sprinted to the edge of the roof" of a skyscraper, flying a green kite. He leans "backward over the city ... with nothing holding him but the uncertain pull of the kite on a piece of string." As the kite soars above the cityscape, Blue reflects: "I made a mistake.... Yes, I made a mistake. I should have painted the kite red or yellow. It would look much better against the blue sky." His buddy missed the point until Blue reminded him: "Think of all the people uptown. Think of them." 1 Watching the kite and remembering Mr. Blue, my mind turned to the impending celebration of the 90th anniversary of the official establishment of Holy Name Province. The symbol of a bright red and yellow kite contrasting the blues of sea and sky seems an appropriate one for Holy Name Province, which has added its own 1 Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961) 45, 46. 78 Anthony Carrozzo, O.F.M. contrasting brilliance to the already glowing, God-imbued world of people uptown and downtown, of people in the Western Connecticut hills and the mountains of Western New York, and beyond in foreign lands. It is a refreshing image. And this is a refreshing historical moment of both hindsight and foresight, of memory and prophecy, of gratitude and optimism, a convenient interlude for considering how we became what we are and where we go from here. Right from the beginning, the fraternal and ministerial atmosphere of Holy Name Province has been buoyant, energetic, cheerful, venturesome — typically Franciscan. It has constantly stimulated the friars to explore new ways of extending our charism into every area of Christian and human concern. And permit me to say so, we have thought of the people uptown — and everywhere we have been called. And we continue to do so. In this sense, our province has not changed a bit! What Holy Name friars have always been, we friars of today are proud to be, inspired as we are by the same tradition of Gospel life and by the one Holy Spirit. But let us not think of Holy Name Province as the creation of friars alone. That would ignore a great treasure — our partners-inministry . We have always depended on the hands-on cooperation of many people: bishops and other clergymen who encouraged and authorized our work; sisterhoods like the Peekskill, Allegany, West Paterson and Ringwood Franciscans, who put their hands to the plow with us and labored by our side; and high-minded lay men and women — some of them not even Catholic like Richard Butler of Butler — who made generous sacrifices to promote our ministry. Many of our partners struck such solid notes of good will and generosity that their names reverberate on every page of the Province's history. From our collective memory, I think affectionately of the colorful and candid Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Richard Cushing, an apostolic giant who made possible Boston's Arch Street Shrine and now lies buried in our Franciscan habit in a stone-bystone replica of the Portiuncula originally sent to New York by the Italian Government as an exhibit for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Celebration 90 79 Without effort I think also of Nicholas Devereaux, a lay apostle worthy of the name. He generously funded the present Sts. Patrick and Anthony Church in Hartford and his relentless dedication to...