Christmas, 1992

Dear Friends,

Thank God for the Feast of Christmas! I say that, not only because without it, we would never have gotten to “see” and “know” the HEART of our God, as revealed in Jesus, His eternal, only begotten Son, made Incarnate for us in the womb of the most pure, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, but also because it forces us, at least for a little while, to put aside our ordinary concerns, and to give some thought to the so many individuals, who, throughout the course of our lives, like our Gracious God, have decided, for reasons we cannot fathom, to befriend us and to show their affection and esteem for us in so many ways. As we do so, we deplore the fact that our respective journeys through this world do not bring us together as often or for as long a time as we would like, in order to gather strength and courage to persevere faithfully in our respective vocations in the Church and in the World.

Christmas certainly gives us the opportunity to remember how much we need one another, and that our need for one another is a sign of, and a participation in, our respective need for Jesus, without Whom human existence WOULD NOT be light, warmth and Life, but a most cruel torture leading to eternal darkness, coldness and Death.

At Christmas our mutual need for one another also helps to remind us NOT ONLY that we need Jesus, BUT ALSO that He needs us. His utter helplessness as a little baby, making Him so completely dependent upon the love, good will and total dedication of Mary and Joseph, is repeated in one way or another in each and every one of us, that is, ourselves and the vast number of those who have been truly “friends” to us throughout the years. Jesus LIVES in each and every one of us as long as we remain in the state of Grace, and until we become Saints, that Life of His IN US is so at risk, especially in this very moment of history, when it appears that evil of every kind: greed, envy, lust, pride, hatred, and violence have triumphed over all that is OF GOD, over all that is GOOD in human nature. How important it is for me to remember, at least once a year, that you are all out there, daily rejecting greed, envy, lust, pride and violence, and striving to replace it with an unselfish love that can only have its origin in God Himself, a love that makes us as vulnerable as the Love of God revealed in the Infant Christ. By doing that, you strengthen and affirm the Jesus who abides in my soul along with His Father and the Holy Spirit. I can never thank you enough for that.

It is with such sentiments, then, that I send this Christmas remembrance out to you all. I regret that I am unable to reach all who, despite my not deserving it, have nevertheless been so kind, cordial and generous to me in so many ways. So I ask those of you whom I do reach, to join me in thanking God for each of those I do not, and to ask Him in some way to let them know that they are esteemed, appreciated and sincerely loved.

When I sat down to begin this letter I had the intention of giving you a resume of the year that has transpired since my last Christmas letter. I couldn’t seem to get it started, so in desperation I decided to go in the direction this letter did take. Now, however, I realize that the difficulty lay in the impossibility of using a whole page to say that this past year has been pretty much a carbon copy of the year preceding, since of course, it was another year of “business as usual” in my job as Provincial delegate for our Secular Discalced Carmelites. Those of you, who did not receive that letter last year and want to see it, can just let me know and I’ll send it along.

Be assured of a remembrance in my prayers and masses during the entire Twelve days of Christmas! God grant that this Christmas may be the very best ever for each and every one of you and your families. Please continue to pray for me and the good of my soul.

Yours with fraternal affection in

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

At Christmastime 1992, Fr. Bruno didn’t include news about himself and so he

sent out the following letter in Lent of 1993.

Dear friends,

My first and foremost reason for writing this letter is to thank you for your generous gift at Christmas time. As always, it was not my intention to wait so long to do so. But again, as always, there was not only the “natural inertia” I always seem to experience when it comes to doing a good work, but also the “handy excuses” that enable me to “kid” myself into believing I am justified into putting it off till another day. May the Lord deliver me!

The second reason is that in my Christmas letter I really didn’t give you any news about myself. All I said was that 1992 was “business as usual” in my assignment as Provincial delegate for our Secular Order Communities.

That Province “ministry” involved my remaining in touch with our over 85 communities of Secular Discalced Carmelites, chiefly by means of a Quarterly Newsletter called the CARMEL CLARION, but also by answering the mail that comes in daily from the communities. I maintain a central office here at Peterborough where records are kept: membership lists and dates of admission, promises and vows of the individual members. We even record the dates of death of our members, since after all, whether in Heaven or still in Purgatory, they are still Carmelites, and we do not want to forget them, either to ask their help, on the one hand, or to help them with our prayers, little sacrifices and Masses, on the other.

As most of you know, the job requires quite a bit of Travel. It is also the duty of the Provincial delegate to visit, at least once every three years, each of the various communities all over the eastern part of the United States and part of the Midwest. I haven’t done any traveling for that purpose since last May, and I will try to visit six or seven in April of this year right after Easter. I will have visited all but about seven or eight out of the 85 or so established communities.

It is kind of ironic for me to be telling you all about my job, since our Provincial has told me that he wants me to take over a different “province ministry” in June after the Province “Chapter”, in which Superiors are traditionally elected and a “new” triennium begins. That job is the Office of Mission Procurator. It sounds fancy, but all it means is that I have to visit parishes assigned to us each year (which we solicit by writing to individual Dioceses) for the purpose of making a ”mission appeal”. I will have a small office, but I will not be nearly as busy in that job as I am in this one. Thus I’ll be able to do more of my share in the priestly ministries of the Monastery, which will be the one in Brighton, MA. I also will be able to remain as Spiritual assistant to three Secular Discalced Carmelite communities in Massachusetts, though on occasion our weekend meeting will have to be postponed or rescheduled when I will be away soliciting money in a particular parish somewhere. Also, hopefully, I will be a bit more prompt in answering personal correspondence.

‘Nuff said about that. A third reason for writing is to comment upon the “inertia” I feel when it comes to doing something good (and necessary) and of my tendency to justify my failures by “handy excuses”. To some extent that is found in all of us, and it is one of the reasons for which we have the Holy Season of Lent. They [moral inertia and the tendency to make excuses] are in all of us because of Original Sin. We know that only the Grace of God can heal the “wounds” left in us by the disobedience of our First Parents. We cannot “earn” that healing in the strict sense, but we can all “dispose ourselves” to receive it from the infinite, merciful Bounty of God Our Father. We dispose ourselves, of course, by penitential practices: acts of self-denial and mortification, increased prayer and works of charity, more frequent reception of the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist.

An amazing thing, though, is that, again to an extent differing in each of us, we don’t like to think of ourselves as “wounded” by Original Sin and thus in need of the forgiveness and healing by our Gracious God. That is why we have to approach each Lent with the idea, “Yes, I am direly in need of spiritual healing, even though I am not aware of the extent, nor of all those areas of my human behavior that need it most!” The Church is good to us by giving us Ash Wednesday and all of Lent. What we usually cannot do for ourselves, our unaided efforts, is done for us very often by our sharing in the official “Liturgy” of the Church. The Liturgy and discipline of Lent, if faithfully adhered to, which includes the reception of the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist as well as the penitential practices mentioned above, really does help to remove our blindness to our own sins and spiritual wounds, does help us to acknowledge our guilt, and does help to remove the “inertia” that inhibits our journey toward union with God in Faith and Love. Then Lent becomes truly fruitful for us.

Of course, a single Lent does not usually suffice to make saints of us, but each succeeding Lent, lived in a spirit of generosity and gratitude for the special helps given by God through the Church, will infallibly bring us a bit closer to our goal.

Neither must we keep our attention focused only on ourselves during the Holy Season of Lent, however. We must also meditate upon the boundless, (immeasurably high, wide and deep) Goodness, Love and Mercy of God. In our present day and age both Our Lord and Our Lady are appearing in various places all over the earth reminding us of how desperately God wishes to extend His Mercy to forgive and renew our poor, suffering humanity, overwhelmed by so many evils, ALL of them brought about by pride, greed and lust, surely, but more surely by Modern society’s total rejection of God. Developed nations in particular seem determined not to be influenced by biblical and Gospel truths.

The message of Christmas is PEACE ON EARTH TO MEN OF GOOD WILL. How can we be sure we have the good will necessary to attain peace? We have that “good will” if we humbly acknowledge that we are in need of spiritual healing, and if we are convinced in all humility that Lent is God’s special gift to us through His Church and powerful evidence (Lent ends with the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus, His only-begotten Son) of His infinite Mercy and Love. God grant us all the grace gratefully and generously to embrace that gift.

May God bless and reward you for all your kindnesses to me over the years. Be assured of a remembrance in all my prayers and Masses. Please remember to pray for me, too. As ever,

With much, much love in JMJ,