Summer Assignments in All

Ready to Fly the Coop! Most of our student Brothers are away from the Priory for the summer. Here Brother Sadoc Glau (left) and Brother John Martin Ruiz-Mayorga (right), a guest student this year from our Eastern Province, remind us of their intended departures for Las Vegas and New York, respectively.

Sundays

Brother Jeremiah Loverich,
Friar-Poet

Our Brother Jeremiah Loverich is an accomplished poet whose work has already appeared in print (see the last two issues of Ruah, A Journal of Spiritual Poetry).  Recently he generously agreed to provide us with an original poem for this issue of our bulletin.  Its title “Adoration,” promises a reflection especially appropriate for this issue since the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ (also called the Feast of Corpus Christi) is celebrated on the thirteenth of this month.

ADORATION

Far-spun, down-flung from familiar, nameless places,
Led from dreaming into seeming by book, by bed,
My bones, as virtue wrestles sin’s thousand faces,
Wince, squint to glimpse through gray days the Word unsaid.
 
Yesterdays die with the now, they say, as fresh bread
Odors and whispers from windows and walls: “Ye dead,
Heed now this—here is bright, here food to fend the night.”
And knowing, why, why do I, darkness-ill, still fight?
 
To my mind-mauled, sin-starved self, this a cold heat,
Quivering, with crumpled knee to break fast—feast. Light
Flashes the shadow, when then gold grains ground to wheat
For us, you, the blood-flood flush of flesh, you, Host white.
 
Down the round, broken body, sagging stiff, to His feet,
Runs my spirit, wrung of rebel, of wretch, of rust,
Because you, Christ, with nail-scarred hands, scrape scales from sight,
Because you, God-Man, yet re-form us from the dust.

Two New Dominican Priests

May 29th was a joyful day for the Dominican Order.  Two of our friars had completed their formation studies at Saint Albert Priory and the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theo-logy and were ordained to the priesthood. Bish-op Allen Vigneron con-ferred the Sacrament of Holy Orders at St. Ther-esa Church, Oakland. Father Francis Hung-Le (above left) and Father John Evans (above right) are now visiting with their families and friends prior to reporting to their first assign-ments: Father Francis will be going to our parish in Antioch, Cali-fornia, and Father John to our Newman Center Eugene, Oregon.

Update on Priory Projects

We are very grateful to report that a generous friend of the community has agreed to completely finance the rebuilding of our front entranceway.  We had hoped to be able to retain the brick and wrought-iron fence-work found in the original structure, and with this gift, we were able to do so. The project will be completed within the next several weeks.

We are also at the point of beginning some of the work on the kitchen renovation.  Certain  aspects of the job couldn’t wait until next summer for attention and so we have decided to break the job into smaller parts and accomplish them piecemeal.  We are just shy of realizing half of the $200,000 needed for this project, and we would be grateful for any help.