Precious in the Eyes of the Lord

 Happy Thanksgiving to all.  I hope it was filled with many blessings.

A final toast.  You can see Fernando and me in the background

Here at the College there was quite the celebration.  Because it’s the first major holiday of year, and the uniquely American holiday, we make Thanksgiving as big as we can.  Everyone is keep busy getting ready, partly to ward of homesickness and partly to build a community around this privileged time of being countrymen in a foreign land. 

Though it’s by no means a holiday for the Roman universities, we take the day off which

starts early with the Turkey Trot race around the Vatican – as the t-shirts said “The only 5k around an entire country”.  Those not participating in the run, work to ready the hall breakfasts on the 8 corridors of the NAC.  The breakfast for my floor was a ridiculous amount of food that I think we are still eating.  After breakfast (and for some a nap) we had mass. The Eucharist is really the core of a day dedicated to giving thanks; the word itself, Eucharist, is Greek for thanksgiving and so it was a beautiful moment to gather around the table of Christ body as brothers to give thanks to God for all the good he has brought us.

 

And finally comes the big turkey dinner.  The whole event was just an amazing.  The newly ordained priests that have returned for a final year of study served and even at times entertained.  We sat by states and it turned into a real competition to see who can decorate their state table best.  Now Fernando and I didn’t know about this until the day of, so our decorations were pretty meager, but we are looking to acquire as much Arizona paraphernalia as we can over the next year (especially as our centennial is coming up) to be ready for next year!  The food was great- though I was still full from breakfast.  Of course, the cooks were still Italian, so we had to have a pasta dish before getting to the turkey, but at least all the pumpkin pies were seminarian made.  

Yet this week of fun was marked by a tone of mourning.  Early this week a priest, Msgr. Bill Lyons, who worked as a spiritual director here at the NAC for years, died.  He was about 81 and a cancer, which he beat when young, finally over took him in the past month.  He was an inspiring man.  He had been a priest for 55 years in which he worked mostly with youth and seminarians.  He was the first faculty member we new men really got to know.  He came to our Italian immersion program in Assisi to get to know us and help us with the crazy transition we were going through.  He said mass, help holy hours, and heard confessions daily; like a true spiritual father, he did all he could to meet our spiritual needs.

 

We were blesses this week to have a number of American bishops here on their ad limina visists with the Pope, including Archbishop Dolan of New York.  The archbishop gave the Thanksgiving homily, in which he recounted his last conversation with Msgr. Lyons.  After it was determine that there wasn’t anything else to be done for the holy priest at the hospital, they were moving him to a religious house run by the Little Sister of the Poor, and the archbishop said Msgr. Lyons was very happy about that, because there “the seminarians could come for spiritual direction and confession.”  A true priestly heart.  Literal on his death bed and Msgr. Lyons’ life is still given to minister to those God has given to him.   His life was a beautiful sacrifice of thanksgiving, a life poured out in love. 

We have had a lot to be thankful for in the model that this priest gave us in his life and, if not more importantly, in his death.  Please pray that he may find his reward in the arms of the heavenly Father

 

Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful.  (Ps 116)

Committal of Msgr. William Lyons at NAC Mausoleum in Campo Verano

Eternal rest, grant to him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.  Amen.