November 29, 2024
Dear Friends,
As we approach the beautiful seasons of Advent and Christmas, we thank you for your prayers and support for our work.
Over fifty men attended our annual Men’s Conference at Arnold Hall Conference Center in October. They heard talks and came to break-out sessions related to this year’s theme, that of living Authentic Masculinity. Speakers included David Holzweiss, Gordy DeMarais, Emily and Mike Marcucci, Peter Buckley, Mark O’Donnell, and Myles Harrington. The men spend time together, attend Mass, and play basketball! A good group of young professional men came for the weekend.
Many of our programs are underway for the school year. The Edge, the high school seminar program, is forging ahead. Andy O’Meara, Raymond Le Grand, JP Lechner, Matt Reilly, Tony Janeiro, John Dempsey, and Dwight Duncan oversee the classes each month. Many men assist us in making presentations on career areas for the sophomores and juniors. So far this year, Andrew Starr, Dan Taylor, and George O’Neill have made presentations on medicine, engineering and architecture respectively. The men are available to have further conversations with the young men about their field and to arrange visits to their offices for shadowing and possible summer internships.
Frontiers, our father and son club, embarked on another year, under the direction of Nick Wells, Erick Diaz, Sam Pinto, and other dads. The boys and their dads hear talks on living virtues, work on projects and play sports. Frontiers takes place at Sparhawk Academy in Millis. Some of the high school boys in the Edge give the talks on the virtues, like fortitude, patience, and charity.
Tony Janeiro launched Navigators again last month. Navigators is a club for fifth, sixth and seventh-grade boys that takes place at Sparhawk Academy twice a month on a Friday afternoon. The boys play sports, work on projects, spend time in prayer in the chapel, and finish with pizza. The seventh-grade boys help Tony to run the program. Dads can join in for pizza at the end.
Please consider making a retreat next year at Arnold Hall. Go to www.arnoldhall.org for dates and to register. A retreat is a wonderful way to have quiet time to pray and to make resolutions for growth. I think of the scene in the Gospel of Zacchaeus’ efforts to see Jesus. He climbed a tree to see Our Lord. What effort do we make to see and learn from Jesus?
The Christmas season enkindles our desire to be more closely united to Jesus. One way to accomplish this goal is to consider the mystery of our divine filiation. As noted in a recent posting on the Opus Dei website, “We call the awareness of God’s love for us a sense of divine filiation: it’s knowing that He loves us as a father loves his children, ready to give his life for them. This conviction is rooted in the supernatural reality of the new relationship that God the Father establishes with us through grace, making us his children in his Son, Jesus Christ, by giving us the Holy Spirit as a gift.”
I invite you to attend our Christmas Open House on Sunday, December 22 from 2:00 to 5:00 pm, for a short meditation around our Nativity scene, Christmas treats, and Christmas carols.
Joe Billmeier, Director