PAROQUIA – Nssa Senhora do ROSÁRIO
Residência Nssa. Sra. de Fátima 29 July, 2022 LII:2
Trav. Carlos Pontes, 171 fone: (55 088) 2145 0990
62.900-000 Russas, Ceará http://www.egfbenya.com
BRASIL e-mail: [email protected]
Dear Colleagues, Family Collaborators, Benefactors and Friends,
Time marks its presence and passage, usually in a slow, profound, pacifying manner, but at times in a brutal, threatening and destructive presence. The benevolence of time is chronicled in the quality of certain foods; cheeses and wines see their quality improving with age of maturity or vintage. Many fermented products in fact gain quality with age as the fermentation process runs its course. Impeding that course of time can, in fact, impede the envisioned quality of the product, desired and planned in and through the fermentation process.
Time can have a brutality of effect. Mariners, miners, navigators, soldiers, police, firefighters, explores and investigators can attest to the harshness of days, hours, moments and even seconds as the intensity of a crisis unfolds. Vengeance and intensity seem to mount as a crisis unfolds “…the waves turn the minutes to hours…”, as Lightfoot put it in his classic dirge on a shipwreck.
In those who are wounded, bruised and injured time can be a healer, a remedy in itself promoting and driving recovery whose possibility at one time seemed impossible.
The effects of time are present in our lives, sometimes recognized but at time not apparent. The beneficial effects are Divine, the malicious are not. Initial effect can be quite misleading. What one initially perceives as injury, over time may actually be virtuous. What at first seems as blessing may in fact be malicious. Time and the Emergence of Truth play their part; PEACE arrives.
Marking and celebrating these 48 years in Religious Life and 38 years in Holy Orders, I have had the experience of time as violence and as virtue. They are distinct although initially they may have been quite confusing. Maturity of vocation has been marked by time.
Your presence in my life, vocation, ministries, works and apostolate has been a support that is distinct to me for each of you. Different times, epochs and eras associate each of you with me, some already in Eternity, others still navigating this life with me.
I continually thank God for YOU, your families and your presence in my life and vocation. That presence is a distinct aspect of the Communion of Saints. I remain most gratefully as I remain
In the Love of Jesus Christ,
Pe. Ed Benya, S.J.