During the past few weeks, I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about one of the outdoor movies we were able to show last summer: Mary Poppins.<\/p>\n
Not that I was ever expecting a Disney musical about a British nanny to have spiritual implications for my life, but when I was watching the end of the movie last year it struck me that in many ways the life of Mary Poppins has a lot in common with the life of a missionary.\u00a0 In the film, Mary Poppins comes from a faraway place in order to help two children connect with their father and to help their father connect with them.\u00a0 Missionaries do the same thing\u2026 except instead helping people connect with their individual fathers we strive to help people connect with Our Father.<\/p>\n
For the past 102 years in Canada, the Paulists have sought to help the people we have come across do just that.\u00a0 In Montreal, in Vancouver, in countless missions across the continent, and of course in Toronto.\u00a0 With the establishment of the University of Toronto Newman Centre, through Fr. Frank Stone\u2019s brainchild the Paulist Information Centre, and through and with the people of Saint Peters, we have sought to give the people of Canada an experience of God through our ministry.\u00a0 In the process, the people of Canada have also provided us with a constantly unfolding experience of Emmanuel, of \u201cGod with us,\u201d through your hospitality, kindness, faithfulness, and love.<\/p>\n
At the end of the movie, Poppins watches wistfully as the Banks\u2019 children skip happily with their father as the sing, \u201cLet\u2019s go fly a kite!\u201d\u00a0 The parrot head that makes up the base of her umbrella, rubbing salt in the wound, casually mentions that the children love their father more than they loved her\u2026 to which Poppins replies, \u201cThat\u2019s as it should be.\u201d \u00a0That sentiment sounds a lot like the message we have all been reflecting on these past few months as a Christian community: we are not people of the messenger, but the message.\u00a0 And so, just as Mary Poppins had to move on to help other families connect with each other, so too we Paulists must move on to continue the mission in which Saint Paul embarked so many millennia ago to help people connect to God through Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
Still, while Mary Poppins was trying to put up a brave front by saying that \u201cpractically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking,\u201d we all know that there is always sadness in saying good-bye\u2026 especially when we are talking about relationships that go as deep as the Paulist Fathers and the people of St. Peter\u2019s. \u00a0I can\u2019t help but wonder if Saint Paul also felt the same way when it was time for him to say good-bye to the people of Corinth, to the people of Thessalonica, to the people of Ephesus.\u00a0 I’m sure he did, especially given the enthusiastic greetings he began each of his letters to the communities he had once been a part of and the blessings with which he concluded those letters.<\/p>\n
And so, as Paul concluded in his second letter to the Corinthians, \u201cFinally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.\u00a0 All the saints greet you.\u00a0 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you\u201d\u00a0 Or, as Mary Poppins might put it, skip hand in hand with your Father and sing, \u201cLet\u2019s go fly a kite!\u201d<\/p>\n
Thank you all for allowing us to fly a kite with you for all of these years.\u00a0 God bless.<\/p>\n
-Fr. Tom Gibbons, CSP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the past few weeks, I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about one of the outdoor movies we were able to show last summer: Mary Poppins. Not that I was ever expecting a Disney musical about a British nanny to have … Continue reading