Mercer School of Theology Fall 2014 Catalogue

Dear Friends,

As the season of fall comes nearer, we are releasing details about Mercer School's programming for the first semester of academic year 2014 - 2015.  You can access all the listings, including event/course/retreat descriptions, introductions to the instructors, and registration information by navigating to this web address: www.tinyurl.com/MercerFall14

Plan to visit more than once.  Each time you refresh your web browser as you visit, you will see the latest updated version of the document as additions or changes are made.

A print version of the catalogue is also under preparation for the first time in a few years.  It will be mailed to parish offices in the Diocese of Long Island, to arrive during the second week of September.

Do especially consider joining us for the academic convocation to open the new year at the Good Shepherd Chapel at Mercer School on Wednesday, September 10 at 6:00 pm.  Bishop Lawrence Provenzano will lead us in Evening Prayer.  Bishop Allen Shin, Suffragan Bishop of New York, will address us.

Blessings,
John+

The Very Rev Canon John P. McGinty
Canon for Formation
Dean, Mercer School of Theology

The George Mercer Jr. Memorial 

School of Theology

Bernard of Clairvaux Today

August 20, 2014

Dear Friends,

Saint Bernard of Clairvaus died on this date in the year 1153.  Though his last years were darkened by the burden of the Second Crusade of viollence into the Holy Land, this wise Cistercian monk and abbot has left us wisdom still well worth considering.  It was Bernard who said that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

Speaking on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Bernard shared words that seem quite apropos to this present moment and the current fractured state of the world.  He said:

"“Blessed," he says, "are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Mt 5:9). Consider carefully that it is not the people who call for peace but those who make peace who are commended. For there are those who talk but do nothing (Mt 23:3). For just as it is not the hearers of the law but the doers who are righteous (Rom 2:13), so it is not those who preach peace but the authors of peace who are blessed.” 

May God bless us all, and make us true doers of peace,

John P. McGinty+

Dean,
Mercer School of Theology
Garden City, NY

Smile

August 13, 2014

Dear Friends,

Do not neglect to smile today - and to laugh when there is reason.  

The world needs both, and you can provide them, free of charge.

Blessings,

John P McGinty+
Canon for Formation
Dean, Mercer School of Theology

Faith in Days of Violence

In a world suffering such pain, should we not seek to be healing?

In a landscape of houses destroyed, should I not desire to be a home?

In a time of unrest, should we not be refuge?

In a scene of blood, should I not be a tourniquet?

In an era of belief armed and firing, should we not be faith unarmed?

In a moment of fear, should I not be courage?

In a world at a loss, should we not share fullness?

In a place of crying, should my silence not embrace?

In a era of absolute answers, should we not pose a question?

In a wounded world, should we not willingly share the pain?

[JPM 8.11.14]

News: Bad and Good

August 6, 2014

Dear Friends,

I do my best to keep up with news around the church and the world, without being overwhelmed by it.  A couple of weeks vacation - which happened to coincide with the Gaza-Israel war, the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, the painful arguments in the USA over immigration reform in the face of thousands of unaccompanied minors at the southern border, and the worst outbreak ever of the Ebola virus in West Africa - showed me that sometimes it is simply not possible to keep up with the news and remain unmoved.  Or much more than that.

Sometimes I wonder what the events of this world look like on the celestial monitor.  How does God see all this human pain and cruelty, misunderstanding and suffering?  The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures indicate that the God of the universe is not only not indifferent to all this, but rather that God is vitally concerned.  The lives of the prophets, and above all the life of Jesus the Christ, indicate that this God who is concerned is also willing to intervene.

"Willing" in continuing sense: God's will, I believe, is to intervene now.  This divine intervention takes place with human cooperation.  When I see and hear all that is happening, apparently for the bad, for the lessening of human unity, possibility, and joy, I see at the same time the Gospel of Christ in our hands inviting us, if we will, to a human life that is suffused with the divine.  And I see as well a world filled with grace, with God's own loving presence, a grace often going unseen and ignored.  Nonetheless, it is there.  It is real.  And it is an answer ultimately, if we took it seriously and took it to heart, to the increasing pain that cries out from brothers and sisters near and far.

May we be the people of Jesus.  May the spirit of Christ live in us, be heard in us, bring hope through us and through all of every faith who will to hope.

Peace,
John+

The Very Reverend Canon John P. McGinty
Canon for Formation
Dean, Mercer School of Theology