"BROTHER MICHAEL HELPS US TO REMEMBER."

MICHAEL MORAN, C.P., born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, has been a Passionist Brother for twenty-nine years. He is a part-time chaplain with the Supportive Care Program at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center, as well as an artist. Michael shares with us where he sees the charism of the Passionists in his ministry.
 

I was sitting in the patients' lounge with Jude, a man with AIDS in his early thirties. Handsome and engaging, over the year or so that I worked with him, he had deteriorated. He was thinner, sicker, more withdrawn and suffering from dementia. Often he would forget where he was, what he was doing or the location of his room in the hospital.

Another patient in the lounge struck up a conversation with me, asking what I did in the hospital. Suddenly, before I could respond, Jude spoke up: "Brother Michael helps us to remember."

I thought a lot about Jude's characterization of my job. I work two days per week as a chaplain for the Supportive Care Program of St. Vincent's hospital in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. True to its name, our program supports people with life threatening illnesses. The more I thought about it, on a deep level "helping to remember" is an apt description of what I do.

Having been a Passionist Brother for twenty-nine years, I'm at a point in my life and ministry where the Mystery of God, especially in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, has become a preoccupation for me. Our Passionist charism is often described as keeping alive in the minds and hearts of people the "Memoria Passionis", the "Memory of the Passion". Not merely remembrance of what happened to Jesus two-thousand years ago, but a living memory, encountering the Christ who still suffers today, in myself and in those to whom I minister. Jude was right I help people to remember the great love God has for each of us, never more so than when we are conformed to the Passion of his Son.

God is Mystery and Presence, and can never be captured in the words or theological concepts we use to attempt to describe him. Mystery or Presence is not so much to be explained as to be encountered.

I'm also an artist, working out of my studio in our Bronx residence. I also run an art class for senior citizens three days per month. Just as we encounter the Mystery that is God when standing in solidarity with those who suffer Christ's Passion in our world today, so we encounter the Mystery in form, color and symbol.

All art is deeply spiritual. If we open ourselves to a work of art, risk spending time with it, we can be deeply moved and transformed. In the work of art we encounter something familiar, yet our experience is not entirely explainable in words. Some people describe it as a feeling of connection, of being embraced, of a feeling of belonging. We have come close to the Mystery of God. Beyond the distraction of words or thoughts about God we have been connected to, embraced, by God. We experience a brief fulfillment of that deep longing we have to belong, a oneness with the One who grounds us in being. We have come close to the Mystery of God.

I mostly paint icons, "windows to heaven" as they are called. It is a privilege for me to create a painting that has the potential to allow people to connect in some way with God. It is also for me a deep form of prayer. Whether an icon, landscape, still-life or figure, expressing what I see through my own heart, soul, beliefs and personal experience, is a prayerful and transfiguring process.

Yes, I'm more concerned these days with Mystery. Whether ministering to people in their pain and death, or creating a work of art, I am being transfigured. Slowly, gradually, I am being "deified" , moving Godwards. This, as I see it, is the aim and goal of my Passionist religious life.
 

May the Passion of Jesus be always in our hearts