Jubilarians: Time for thanks

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As a hospital chaplain at Touro Infirmary, Father Douglas Brougher experiences through the eyes of a pastoral minister the suffering that patients regularly endure.

One of the amazing things about his ministry, he told priests, deacons and religious  who were celebrating anniversaries of ordination or religious profession March 4, is that people who live with a “spirit of gratitude” offer incredible testimony to the power of faith in their lives.

And that spirit of gratitude is something that can help all religious men and women in both their mountaintop and Calvary experiences.

“St. Ignatius of Loyola felt that ingratitude was the worst sin of all,” said Father Brougher, a golden jubilarian, in his homily at St. Rita Church, New Orleans.

“Ingratitude means we forget God’s grace, God’s gifts, God’s blessings,” he said.

He said one blind patient he knew was confined to her bed, but she never despaired.

“Her whole world was that bed and her bedside table, but she told her caretaker how much she enjoyed rearranging that bedside drawer,” he said. “She said, ‘Did you notice it’s lined with satin, and they tell me it’s colored pink.’ We ask for the grace to say yes again to the Lord in gratitude.”

Religious of the Sacred Heart Mary Pat White offered her reflections after Communion on her 50 years as a nun, saying she has “flourished through our charism of being wholly contemplative and wholly apostolic.”

“I ask myself this question – for me, today, what is my vocation? What’s my call today? What is my passion?” she said. “It’s really simple. I just love being a Religious of the Sacred Heart.”

Sister Mary Pat oversees a house where college-age students come to stay for a year to do recovery work in the New Orleans area, and she also serves as vocations for her order.

“In that one, earnest wish of my early childhood, I live and continue to live my dream, which I totally believe is the dream that God had for me,” she said.  

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org