Author Archives: Ronald Patrick Raab, C.S.C.

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About Ronald Patrick Raab, C.S.C.

Ronald Raab, C.S.C.,serves as religious superior at Holy Cross House, a medical and retirement home for the Congregation of Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana

Day of Prayer for Peace

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Learn more about today’s day of prayer for peace: Click here

 

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“God, help us rest in you” Drawing: Ronald Raab, CSC

God, help us rest in you.

We are exhausted by our grief.

We ache for our families to be united around a common table.

We grieve our daughters who carry drug needles in their backpacks.

We grieve our sons who carry guns around their ankles and hatred around their hearts.

We grieve our children coming back from wars without limbs and hope.

We grieve the inner battles of emotional illness and rage.

We grieve our inability to be humble enough to see that people have dignity.

We stumble in our solutions and fall in our hardness of heart.

 

God, help us rest in you.

We do not know where else to turn.

We are restless in our unanswered prayers.

We are hopeless when we feel your absence.

We squirm in rage.

We fidget in our guilt.

We twist in our uncertainty.

We sweat through our sleepless nights.

We panic in our disrespect.

We struggle in our shame.

 

God, help us rest in you.

In your arms we find our home.

In your embrace we discover we are loved.

In your hold we rest the pain of our world.

 

God, help us rest in you.

Today, we pray for the peace in the healing of your embrace.

 

Amen

Is: 64:8 “The Potter”

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Is: 64: 8

But now, O Lord, you are our father. We are the clay and you are the potter; and all of us are the work of your hand. 

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“The Potter” Painting: Ronald Raab, CSC 2016

Prayer text: Ronald Raab, CSC

God, our Creator,

Open our imaginations and our creative efforts to express our faith.

We ache for wisdom in dealing with violence, hatred, neglect, racism and hunger, poverty and ignorance.

We can only find solutions if we ignite our imaginations, explore our talents and take responsibility in faith and love for our future.

We cannot blame people for their diseases, their mental illness or even their poverty and situations in life.

God, continue to call us through our creativity to build up people, to heal our nation and to offer consolation to those who hurt and who are alone.

God, help us believe that our voices expressed through art are important and that our talents are needed to create community.

Help us not shun our gifts or think that we are not good enough.

Help us get over our shyness and our reluctance to dance, paint, write poetry, sing, create, design, preach, draw, and imagine and explore the Holy Spirit in all we do.

God, our Creator, help us become your co-creators to heal and console the pain and suffering of our people.

 

Amen

Luke 6:6-11, “Stretch out your hand”

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Finger painting: Ronald Raab, CSC

LK 6:6-11

On a certain sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him.

Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored.

But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Prayer text by Ronald Raab, CSC
Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy of me, a sinner.
Help me stretch out my ailing heart where hidden grief wraps endlessly around the illusion of how I think life should be. 
My heart is often tied up with strings of control, lies and words of fear.
Give me the courage to untie my inner life, the life I hide even from myself.
Give me patience when I am tied down with defensiveness and self-sufficiency. 
Allow me to live without my comfort of control, doubt and anger. 
Help me offer you my entire being to be restored in your mercy. 
I want to hear you say, “Stretch our hand.”
Mend my heart with threads of love. 
Amen

The Canonization of Saint Teresa of Kolkata

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Saint Teresa of Kolkata. Painting: Ronald Raab, CSC

Response: Jesus, love us and send us forth in peace

Mother Teresa, you modeled simplicity of spirit…

Mother Teresa, you opened your heart to love…

Mother Teresa, you let go of your past…

Mother Teresa, you understood your true vocation…

Mother Teresa, you inspired others to follow your lead…

Mother Teresa, you spoke with integrity…

Mother Teresa, you gave up everything to start anew…

Mother Teresa, you showed us true poverty and injustice…

Mother Teresa, you understood the needs of people…

Mother Teresa, you held the bodies of the dying…

Mother Teresa, you challenged the world to wake up to people…

Mother Teresa, you entered into relationship with all people…

Mother Teresa, you lived a life of peace…

Mother Teresa, you followed your gifts and talents…

Mother Teresa, you lived and served with humble faith…

Mother Teresa, you spoke truth to the world…

Mother Teresa, you ministered to the ill, the fragile and helpless…

Mother Teresa, you model for us how to serve today…

Mother Teresa, you show us how to love our children in our time…

Saint Teresa, pray for us…

 

 

 

 

National Catholic Reporter: On Rev. Bob Epping, CSC

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(This article is from the National Catholic Reporter. I am grateful to Melissa Nussbaum for her insights about our parish community and the election of Fr. Bob as our Superior General of the Congregation of Holy Cross. I am honored to be the pastor now of Sacred Heart Church.)

Good shepherds from out-of-the-way places

 My husband entered the University of Notre Dame in the fall of 1970 as a business major. Most of the adults he knew were in business, so it seemed like the logical next step. Random selection for the required first-year theology credits placed him in an “Introduction to Bible” class, taught by Holy Cross Fr. James Burtchaell. That class changed his major and his life. He would go on to receive his undergraduate degree in theology.

Notre Dame is the Congregation of Holy Cross “brand.” So durable is that brand that NBC keeps broadcasting Notre Dame home football games, even though it’s been almost 30 years since the team won a national championship.

Notre Dame is the most visible of the four Holy Cross colleges and universities in the country. Thousands of students, like my husband and my children, have studied there, and thousands have had their lives changed by Holy Cross professors and campus priests.

But there is another group of Holy Cross fathers who live and work far from the shadow of the $400 million additions to the Notre Dame football stadium. They will never show up on television. They are the pastors who serve in parishes and missions around the world. They, too, are changing, and, in some cases, saving lives. One of these pastors, Fr. Robert Epping, was elected superior general of the order July 16.

We heard the news sitting in the pews of our daughters’ parish, Sacred Heart Church, here in Colorado Springs, Colo. Sacred Heart is located on the west side of the city. It is a poor parish. The floors have a suspicious softness in places. The boiler has not been replaced in 50 years. The roof leaks. The rectory is uninhabitable.

Yet it supports more than 40 ministries, many of them founded to help the poor in the parish and surrounding neighborhood. They host the Lord’s Supper for the hungry every Sunday at 6 p.m. They offer a food pantry for families and individuals in need every Monday and Thursday 1-3 p.m. They sponsor a Faith and Light group for people with developmental disabilities and their families and caregivers.

Sacred Heart is one of the parishes — in Colorado Springs, in South Bend, Ind., and in Watertown, Wis. — that Epping has served in a life devoted primarily to parish ministry.

For several years, Fr. Bob, as he is fondly known, was pastor at Sacred Heart. One of my daughters called him Friar Tuck, for his “chapped rosy cheeks and jelly belly.” She could imagine him as a member of some merry band, as, indeed, he was. For he came to love Sacred Heart and its people.

She remembers how he wept when he announced that his order had called him to leave Sacred Heart and go to St. Stanislaus Parish in South Bend. He had no higher ambitions than to remain with and in a community that he hoped to serve until his retirement.

“This is very affirming for me as a pastor,” said Holy Cross Fr. Ron Raab, who knows Epping. “We are a religious community whose charism is education and the focus seems to be on our four colleges. But we are priests first and then educators, and I fear for a priesthood that is not grounded in the reality of people’s lives.”

Raab was not at the general chapter when the votes for superior general were cast. He was in his church, doing the daily work of a parish priest, which he describes as “33 years spent mostly working with people on the margins of society.”

“It’s good for the order’s health to be led by a man who has an intellectual life and who has sat with the sick and the dying,” he said, adding that Epping “understands poverty in all its forms as a pastor and not solely as an intellectual.”

Raab reminds me that there is a Holy Cross world beyond the Notre Dame campus and beyond the borders of this country into Africa and Asia. He thinks it is good experience for the leader of the order to know what life is like in the out-of-the-way places Holy Cross serves.

We all know the pattern in which priests rise to the top, whether in a diocesan or archdiocesan chancery or an order’s general chapter. There is a premium placed on educational credentials and administrative experience. But the faithful are looking for a shepherd, not an MBA or a CEO.

Raab speaks of the emergency phone that the priests at Sacred Heart take turns carrying. When the phone rings at 3 a.m., a priest will answer and set out to help. It’s never someone with an urgent question about the doctrine of subsidiarity or ad orientem, pro or con.

It’s a woman, beaten and out on the street with her children. They need a safe place to stay. It’s a man, drunk again and hoping for help to get and stay sober. One more time. It’s the person threatening suicide. It’s the official voice asking for Father to come to scene of the accident. It’s the family wanting anointing and viaticum for their child or parent. It’s a member of the flock, looking for the way home, to shelter and to peace, to living water and to the bread of life.

A good shepherd is harder to find than a good administrator. But it may be worth remembering Jesus’ words to Peter as recorded in the Gospel of John. Jesus didn’t say, “Feed the parish building fund.” He said, “Feed my sheep.”

[Melissa Musick Nussbaum’s column for NCR is at NCRonline.org/blogs/my- table-spread. Her latest book, with co-author Anna Keating, is The Catholic Catalogue: A Field Guide to the Daily Acts That Make Up a Catholic Life.]

Column from parish bulletin: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

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August 28, 2016

Dear Believers,

Next Sunday, September 4, the Roman Catholic Church will celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. This is an extraordinary event in that most canonizations take place at least fifty years after the death of the individual. For Mother Teresa, so many people remember her work and prayer. Her religious community remains in mission to serve people most in need.

I remember very well the day Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. This was an amazing day for the Catholic Church and our world. Her simplicity of thought, presence and speech formed me in ways I still cannot articulate. I remember that Mother Teresa was asked about world peace and the best way to promote it in our Church and world. She replied, “Go home and love your family”.

 I certainly did not understand her reply as a young seminarian in 1979. I wanted something more. I think the world wanted something more academic, more complicated and more thorough. My heart now clings to such an idea as I live out my priesthood. I believe that our children are the best antidote to violence, hatred and neglect. The problem is that we just need to raise them to become such people.

Luke’s gospel (14:1, 7-14) today states, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Not only is Mother Teresa a model for this gospel text but also she invites us to be such people in our world.

Christianity is very complicated today. We are so divided. Some people want the Catholic Church to stand up for issues in our world and others walk away from such a notion even here in our parish. Some people think our church affairs belong only in the sanctuary while others want radical change in the ways we live the mission of the gospel. Some people want change in one area of life while others want change in the complete opposite way.

I still believe the one thing that unites us in the Church is the love of Jesus. The other thing that unites us is our children and how we raise them to befriend faith and the people in our world who most need us. I invite you into this unifying life of the Church.

As we know, Mother Teresa also struggled in her personal life of prayer. She did not always feel the presence of Jesus. Yet, she was compelled by the love of God to continue her mission to serve people. This is so important in our efforts to live our lives of faith as well. We must continue to do the right things, to live out the mission of the Church even though on some days we may not feel like it. We must continue on bringing our children to Mass even when there is resistance. We must form them in the love of God even when this seems to be so counter-cultural. We must find ways for our families to be involved in service even when we think we cannot make a difference. Jesus needs us to live our lives in the world with faith and integrity.

Here is a litany that I wrote for our community to ask for Mother Teresa’s intercession:

Response: Jesus, love us and send us forth in peace

Mother Teresa, you modeled simplicity of spirit…

Mother Teresa, you opened your heart to love…

Mother Teresa, you let go of your past…

Mother Teresa, you understood your true vocation…

Mother Teresa, you inspired others to follow your lead…

Mother Teresa, you spoke with integrity…

Mother Teresa, you gave up everything to start anew…

Mother Teresa, you showed us true poverty and injustice…

Mother Teresa, you understood the needs of people…

Mother Teresa, you held the bodies of the dying…

Mother Teresa, you challenged the world to wake up to people…

Mother Teresa, you entered into relationship with all people…

Mother Teresa, you lived a life of peace…

Mother Teresa, you followed your gifts and talents…

Mother Teresa, you lived and served with humble faith…

Mother Teresa, you spoke truth to the world…

Mother Teresa, you ministered to the ill, the fragile and helpless…

Mother Teresa, you model for us how to serve today…

Mother Teresa, you show us how to love our children in our time…

Blessings,

Fr. Ron