On the Passing of Three Paulines...

This year's Feast of Blessed James Alberione (today!) is particularly poignant for the Pauline Family in the United States. In Canfield, OH, our Society of St Paul brothers are gathered with other Paulines (especially the many local members of the Holy Family Institute) and family for a double funeral. Father Jeffrey Mickler and Brother Paschal Duesman died within hours of each other last week; Father Jeffrey in a sudden fall that resulted in a death-dealing blow to the head, and Brother Paschal

of a cancer that was only discovered this year. And this afternoon in Boston we will begin the vigil for our Sister Domenica Sabia, who died Saturday night after complications set in from a hip fracture (she, too, suffered a fall just two weeks earlier, but her death at 87 was less of a shock than the sturdy Father Jeffrey's at 72).

Our morning prayer offered a perfect thought from the Founder for a day like this, taken from a sermon he gave in 1938 to the then newly-founded Sisters of Jesus the Good Shepherd (nicknamed "Pastorelle" Sisters): "Our offering must be total: not a fiber of our being, not a beat of our heart, if not for the Lord. Thus shall we consume our energies only for his love up to the point of possessing him in eternal life, in paradise, with all the saints."

Daily we pray for new Pauline vocations, and in our "Pauline Offertory" we ask for an increase in the number of Catholics dedicated to media evangelization and the efficacy of their works. This past week saw not a numerical increase of earthly media evangelizers, but a net decrease (at least among Paulines), so please join us in praying for a threefold (or more!) increase in Pauline vocations as the Lord's "recompense" for calling these three from us (in the words of a prayer by Blessed Alberione from 1946; hence the dated language):

Mary, Queen of Apostles,
Grant your motherly protection to all those who dedicate themselves to this urgent apostolate of the press.
Make their words, their sacrifices and their footsteps bear fruit.
Obtain for their efforts the sweet reward of seeing a wider diffusion of those writings that unhesitatingly promote Jesus Christ.
O Mary,
Obtain for us at the end of our life the crown promised to those who have fought the good fight and kept the faith intact.
Amen.