Montréal en Lumière - Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel Welcomes the Blues
On Friday, February 19 at Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, the 2016 edition of Gospel Fever opened with a “gospelizing” concert, featuring blues giant, Bob Walsh, with Guy Bélanger, harmonica virtuoso, Jean Fernand Girard on keyboard and Jean Cyr on bass.
Hosting a blues concert in Bon-Secours Chapel may seem like a stretch from the traditional Gospel hymns and spirituals. Some may even say that it is inappropriate. In fact, the blues are a direct descendant of Gospel music. If Negro slaves in 19th century United States sang about back-breaking labour in the cotton fields, blues songs like Sixteen Tons written in the 1940s about labour in the Kentucky mines, deal with the same preoccupations.
Book – The Name of God Is Mercy
The Name of God Is Mercy. (Random House: 2016. 150 pages).
This little book has come from an interview of Pope Francis with Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielle. It relates Pope Francis’ candid and clear responses to questions about why it was important to him to proclaim a Year of Mercy. He says, “Mercy is the first attribute of God.”(p. 62) and “There are no situations we cannot get out of….” (p. 85). “Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth.” (105) and “God forgives, not with a decree, but with a caress. (xvi). Questions are brief and clear and the Pope’s responses are simply voiced. I personally found it necessary to keep moving past the translator’s constant use of male pronouns for God. I don’t know Spanish or Italian; perhaps these words are a non-issue in languages other than English.
Reflection Day
Sr. Kay Duffin presented a Lenten day of reflection at the mother house in Montreal on Feb. 13th for the Montreal associates and their invited guests. We were twenty-one in attendance and it was a graced filled day.
Sr. Kay started off the day with the word Metanoia, repentance, change of direction, to go into our larger mind, re-wiring of our conscience to see further then what we are, going inward and outward in order to go forward... transforming our consciousness from the Spirit.
