Fr. Bob's Corner

She Loved God and neighbor well!

Sister Emmanuelle devoted her life to helping the poor in Egypt. This week she died. She was one month short of her 99th Birthday. Tributes to her life have been printed in News Papers around the world.

Sr. Emmanuelle was born Madeleine Cinquin in Brussels on Nov. 16, 1908, she spent her childhood between the Belgian capital, Paris and London. She received a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne, and in 1929 she took her final vows as a sister of ‘Notre Dame de Sion’.

At retirement age (1970) she moved to Egypt and thus began her tireless efforts on behalf of the poor – the scavengers of garbage in Cairo’s garbage dumps.

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Here is an excerpt from an article in Jewish Magazine on five cultural forces that challenge us today. It was written by Stephen Bertman a professor at the University of Windsor.

Dr. Stephen Bertman is Professor Emeritus of Classics at Canada’s University of Windsor. His books include Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed, Cultural Amnesia: America’s Future and the Crisis of Memory, and Climbing Olympus: What You Can Learn from Greek Myth and Wisdom. This essay is adapted from a talk he presented at Temple Kol Ami in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on September 11, 2004. It was published in the November 2004 Edition of the Jewish Magazine.

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At least five major cultural forces can be identified that conspire to challenge our souls today: the influence of materialism, the power of technology, the impact of speed, the increase of artificiality, and the decline of historical memory.

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Thanksgiving is a time to take the time to explore and count. our blessings, so look around and I am sure that you will find more things to be thankful for than you ever thought possible. Life is such a glorious gift, and when it is lived with the love of God in our hearts all that we see and do in life is transformed. Bishop Fulton Sheen said something many years ago that will help me explain:

To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane – it tells of something beyond….a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
- Bishop Fulton Sheen

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