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STM The Magazine of The Catholic Chapel & Center at Yale University Fall 2016 Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” Isaiah 60:1In This Issue 268 Park Street, New Haven, CT 06511-4714 Phone: 203-777-5537 Fax: 203-777-0144 stmchapel@yale.edu Follow us online: stm.yale.edu STM Chaplains Rev. Robert Beloin, Ph.D., Chaplain Sr. Jennifer Schaaf, O.P., Assistant Chaplain Rev. Karl Davis, O.M.I., Assistant Chaplain Carlene Demiany, Assistant Chaplain STM Magazine Editors: Robin J. McShane, Director of Communications Sarah L. Woodford ‘10 M. Div. Director of the Vincent Library Frank Greaney, ‘68 M.P.H., Associate Editor STM Magazine is published twice yearly for our alumni, parents and friends. Opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the entire STM community. All photos by Robert A. Lisak unless otherwise noted. 1 Each Wednesday, for more than three decades Yale students, faculty and community members have welcomed New Haven’s most vulnerable into STM for a hot lunch and a chance to come in from the cold. 1 SOUP AND MUCH MORE 3 A YEAR OF MERCY 5 A PRIZE WINNING KYRIE 8 A CALL TO MERCY 11 WITNESS TO CHANGE 13 MEET CARLENE DEMIANY 14 MORE HOUSE LECTURE Features STM MAGAZINE FALL 2016 7 THREE QUESTIONS 9 FROM THE ARCHIVES 13 OPEN BOOK 17 DONOR RECOGNITION 20 SNAP SHOTFROM THE Chaplain’s Desk Dear Friends, Another school year has begun and students have settled into their academic routines. STM has also settled back into its routine of worship, hospitality and programming. Sunday Masses in the Chapel are special times for prayerful worship. While in the Golden Center, our community gathers each Sunday over delicious dinners to listen to challenging lectures. The Golden Center is busy every night of the week as several Small Church Communities (SCC) meet during the week and our reading groups and spirituality groups offer opportunities for continued growth in faith. Our Soup Kitchen is open and our dedicated volunteers are once more serving over 350 nutritional lunches to our guests each week. Offsite, retreats offer undergraduate and graduate students opportunities for deeper prayer, while contacts with cultural houses on campus invite further opportunities of involvement with Yale. In the article that chronicles the STM community trip to Nicaragua this past July, the author notes that a line from the Prayer of St. Francis impacted his experience: “for it is in giving that we receive.” In the midst of all that is done here, upon reflection, we realize that through sharing time, talent and resources, we, in turn, receive new perspectives on faith and further understand how to put our faith into action. Forming future leaders to be selfless and generous in service to others remains our focus. I want to take this opportunity to thank you, our generous donors named in the back pages of this issue, for being agents of God’s love for the STM community. Your donations allow a vibrant Catholic community to thrive at Yale. These articles are concrete evidence that your generosity is continuing to create an impactful Catholic ministry on Yale’s campus. It would not be possible without you. I hope that your financial support for our ministry will remain a philanthropic priority because your generosity certainly makes a difference in the lives of students every day. Be assured of my appreciation. You are a source of encouragement to me! You are always in my prayers, Sincerely, Fr. Robert Beloin Chaplain “Thank you, our generous donors, for being agents of God’s love for the STM community”. Ten years ago, the Golden Center was dedicated, the culmination of many years of purposeful expansion of Catholic life at Yale. For a full decade, the Golden Center has served as a place of replenishment, spiritual formation, prayer and inspiration. We are grateful to all – students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors and Catholic luminaries – who contributed in so many ways to bring this Center and the ministry within the Center to where it is today. Photograph by Robin J. McShaneSoup and Much More: Three Decades of Desserts, Community and Service Beverly Waters 1. hree decades ago, I had a newborn at home, and the thought of my child—a child, any child—going hungry, suddenly terrified me. I knew that I could not conquer world hunger, but I decided to attend that first meeting in the Chapel basement where the Wednesday Soup Kitchen came to life. My role was to find and deliver enough desserts each week to feed a large crowd. For the first few weeks, I contributed my own baking, but I quickly made arrangements with managers of bakeries, donut shops and grocery stores in New Haven and the surrounding towns, who were willing, sometimes against store policy, to contribute day-old donuts, bagels, muffins and cakes to help feed the hungry. Every Wednesday for the past thirty-three years, dozens of generous shopkeepers have filled boxes and large plastic bags with these goodies. In driving rain and heavy snow, many have helped me load my car. Since retiring from my job at Yale University two years ago, I not only deliver the desserts each week to the soup kitchen, but I work there as well. Besides the energetic students who volunteer, the soup kitchen is run by a core group of dedicated people. A husband-and-wife team sets the menu, based on the availability of food supplies, and then orchestrates the preparation. An eighty-plus-year-old woman greets the steady stream of guests and hands out plastic cutlery. One gentleman stands at the metal sink for hours, washing pots, serving trays and enormous, stainless steel bowls. A woman who sailed to the United States from Scotland in the early 1950s, passes out the desserts. Some volunteers regularly use vacation time to be there, while others are retired from careers in medicine, business or academia. They cook, slice bread, prepare beverages, ladle soup, dish out food, wipe tables, prepare take-out bags and mingle with guests. 2. The cast of characters who work at the Wednesday Soup Kitchen are as complicated and interesting as the 300 to 400 people who we serve each week. Those guests include a man who lost a job paying $80,000 a year, but was too embarrassed to stay for lunch. Another gentleman, dapperly dressed, admitted that he was an alcoholic, and lost his job and his family “to the poison.” There is the man in a wheelchair who patiently waits outside the soup kitchen before it opens and a gentleman who often hands out a signed “thank you” card to the volunteers. There is also the agitated, middle-aged woman, obviously burdened with a serious drug habit; a sweet, elderly lady who might easily be taken for the grandmother of one of the undergraduate volunteers; a teenage girl who is constantly looking over her shoulder for someone or something lost. It is the women who come with small children who appear to be the most desperate. They are the ones who remind me why I initially made this commitment to volunteer. These Wednesdays have become the most hallowed hours of the week for me. They have helped me to understand that we are all givers and takers. Depending on the day or the year or the minute, we routinely shift from one role to the other. I have taken, and benefited profoundly, from the generosity of those who donate desserts, from the tenacity of those who volunteer and from the gratitude of those who are fed. A Year of Mercy: Welcoming the Stranger Sr. Jenn Schaaf, O.P. round the same time their journey began, a small army of volunteers from the STM community began the tasks of final preparation. High school students washed windows in the newly acquired apartment. Those who owned trucks drove all over the county to pick up donated furniture. Graduate students, faculty and other members of the STM community cleaned furniture, purchased clothing, raked leaves, shopped for food and undertook a myriad of other tasks that needed to be done in a limited window of time. The family is from Syria, but has spent the last few years in a camp in Jordan. Two adults and six children, the totality of their belongings crammed into eleven suitcases: pots and pans, fine china, all they thought they may need, put on an airplane as they left their temporary home forever. They arrived at 9:30pm, hands outstretched and offering a greeting of, “Hello. Nice to meet you.” They had been traveling for three days. 3. Photograph by Robin J. McShaneAs refugees, the family is entitled to the assistance that United States citizens qualify for. In their first week, that meant trips to social security, the Department of Social Services, ESOL assessments, part one of two visits at the pediatric refugee clinic and enough paperwork to fill a filing cabinet. Within a six-month timeframe, the family is expected to learn English, find jobs, become financially independent of the supporting agency (in this case, STM), and begin paying back loans to the United States government for their airfare. Whether or not it is reasonable, this is the price refugees have to pay to come to the United States. The refugee family has met other Syrian families and Muslim families through the Islamic Cultural Center in nearby West Haven. They are a caring family, offering water or coffee to the many volunteers who come in and out of their house. Both the mother and father are attentive to the children. The ten and twelve-year-olds pick up the four-year-old and eighteen-month old like sacks of potatoes, hugging them when they cry. The six, eight, ten and twelve-year-olds have already begun to learn English and will probably begin teaching their parents the language very soon. In this Year of Mercy, we have been challenged to show mercy to those most in need. Pope Francis led by example in his own hosting of refugees. However, in receiving refugee families, we are also the recipients of mercy: for the action and inaction of United States foreign policy in the Middle East; for our nation’s prejudice toward Muslims and their loving openness to us; for our not living up to the promises of worldwide relief assistance that we made to the United Nations. Although it is in a very small way—and in a very particular setting – hands outstretched and offering a greeting of, They had been traveling for three days. the doors of mercy are open and we are beginning to walk through them, hand-in-hand, with our now Syrian-American brothers and sisters. 4. Top photograph by Kathleen Cooney Bottom photograph by Sr. Jenn Schaaf5. Photographs by Adriano Scognamillo A Prize Winning Kyrie: Fulfilling the Center for Music and Liturgy’s Global Mission V. J. Tarantino, Paul Chu “The singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love. It is the utter depth of love that produces the singing. Cantare amantis est, says St. Augustine, ‘Singing is a lover’s thing.’” – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger he Center for Music and Liturgy at STM is a major initiative to create and nurture excellent music and musicians for the Catholic Church worldwide. Its mission is to create and disseminate the finest sacred music and to train Yale students as leaders, musicians and Catholics. This opens the possibility for singers of all levels worldwide to make sacred music for liturgy – or for concert performance – to the love and glory of God. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later, Pope Benedict XVI) has stated “The singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love. It is the utter depth of love that produces the singing. “Cantare amantis est,” says St. Augustine, ‘Singing is a lover’s thing.’” In September, CML’s mission came to greater prominence in the wider Catholic church, as the Kyrie of Julian Revie, CML’s Composer in Residence, won first prize and the audience choice award at the “Francesco Siciliani” Prize: International Competition for a Composition of Sacred Music. The event was presented by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture and was held in Perugia, Italy at the Basilica of San Pietro. Revie’s piece was chosen from more than 120 submissions from around the world by an international panel of judges chaired by conductor Helmuth Rilling and composer Arvo Pärt. At the close of this Year of Mercy, reflection on the Kyrie draws us into a renewed awareness of God’s mercy in Christ, already expressed in the central phrase from The Blood of the Lamb, which Revie composed for last spring’s Good Friday liturgy at STM—“Blood and water flowed out.” Pope Francis notes that the Latin word for mercy, misericordia, means “opening one’s heart to wretchedness.” As the Heart of Jesus on the Cross is opened with a lance, the wretchedness of the world is bathed in blood and water. Yet this also invites us to open our own hearts to God and to our neighbor; as Pope Francis writes, “…a shattered heart is the most pleasing gift to God. It is the sign that we are conscious of our own sins, of the evil we have done, of our wretchedness, and of our need for forgiveness and mercy.” If this music of Julian Revie and the CML were to occasion such an openness of heart, the love of God would surely grow in the worldwide Church, something which Center for Music and Liturgy clearly seeks to foster. In The Composers Words T his dramatic setting of the Kyrie for twelve-part mixed chorus expresses three contrasting yet complementary facets of the human experience in our shared, and much needed, plea for divine mercy: despair, longing, and hope. These aspects of our cry for mercy are expressed in the subtitles I have added to the three sections of the piece: Out of the Depths, I Cry to Thee (Ps. 130:1); The Soul and Her Savior; and God is My Help, My Soul Is at Rest (Ps. 62:5). The piece is based upon the tenth century plainchant Kyrie melody from the Missa Cunctipotens Genitor Deus (Mass of All Powerful Creator God), a beautifully rich setting filled with expressive leaps and flowing stepwise passages. My compositional process was to begin with this long melody, de-compose it by breaking it down into its smallest identifiable units, and then allow these musical atoms to engage with and react to one another in the freedom of a twelve-part space, where, like an apostolic community, the parts each discover their own voice while also developing in relation to the others. Over the course of the piece, the intrinsic unity in individual identity and mission of the twelve voices is manifested. - Julian Darius Revie ‘02 6.Next >