Columban Fr Charles Duster RIP

Fr Charles Duster

(15 September 1934 - 7 March 2017)

Father Charlie was born on 15 September  1934 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, where his parents Charles Henry Duster ['DOOster'] and Cleo Catherine Handley Duster owned and operated a supermarket. He has an older brother William C. Duster (Audrey) of Littleton, Colorado, a sister Mrs Robert Enns (Katie) of Fort Pierce, Florida, and eleven nieces and nephews and their families. His older sister, Margaret Jeanne Duster, died in 1972.

Cedar Rapids, on the Cedar River [Wikipedia]

Fr. Charlie attended Immaculate Conception Grade and High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, (1952). After high school he attended Regis University, Denver, Colorado (1952-53) and Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1953-1954).

After briefly considering medical school he instead decided to enter the seminary to become a Columban missionary priest in 1955. He studied at St Columban’s Seminary, Milton, Massachusetts. As an exchange student, he studied theology at St Columban’s, Dalgan Park, Navan, Ireland (1958 – ’61). He did his fourth year of theology at St Columban's, Milton, where he was ordained a priest of the Missionary Society of St Columban on 21 December 1961. He celebrated his first Solemn High Mass at Immaculate Conception Church in Cedar Rapids on 31 December.

Immaculate Conception Church, Cedar Rapids [Parish website]

In 1962 Father Charlie was assigned to Japan where he spent the next six years. The first two of these were spent studying Japanese language in Tokyo, the third one as Acting Regional Bursar, and the last three years as Associate Pastor at Shingu Catholic Church, Wakayama Prefecture, in the Diocese of Osaka.

In Japan

In July 1967 Father Charlie visited the Philippines, accompanied by a Columban confrere. After spending some days with Columban colleagues on the island of Negros, they narrowly missed their flight from Bacolod City to Cebu on 6 July because the plane departed a few minutes ahead of schedule, due to severe weather conditions. The next morning they learned that the plane, a Fokker F27 Friendship, had crashed into a mountain and all 17 passengers and four crew members perished. Father Charlie wrote about this in A Close Shave in the May-June 2016 issue of MISYONonline.com.

From 1969 – 1972, Father Charlie was the Columban Vocation Director for the Midwest Region of the USA based in Omaha. Afterwards, he continued a similar ministry while residing at the Columban house in Chicago. He then served a year in the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis as chaplain at Hennepin County General Hospital in Minneapolis accompanied by studies in Clinical Pastoral Education.

With the late Archbishop Petero Mataca of Suva

In November 1974, Father Charlie was assigned to Fiji, Archdiocese of Suva. After initial language studies, he was appointed as Associate Pastor in Holy Family Parish, Nabala, Macuata, and a year later as Pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Solevu, Bua, where he served for six years. 

Following home leave in 1980 he did renewal studies at Notre Dame University. On his return to Fiji he became the Regional Vice-Director. He returned to the USA to undergo by-pass surgery in Houston, Texas, in 1982. Upon returning to Fiji later that year, Father Charlie was appointed Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Suva, and served in this position for four years.

Offices of the Archdiocese of Suva [Wikipedia]

In September 1986, he was appointed Rector of Collegio San Colombano in Rome where he was Superior of the sixteen-member community. During his eight years in Rome, he also earned a licentiate and doctorate in Canon Law at the Angelicum University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. Before being reassigned to the Fijian Region, he worked for six months in the Marriage Tribunal in the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa, in order to gain experience in matrimonial law. 

Father Charlie returned to Fiji in November 1994 and served for six years as the Coordinator of the Columban Lay Mission Program, while teaching Canon Law at the Pacific Regional Seminary. In December 1998 he returned to the USA to undergo by-pass surgery for the second time, but returned to Fiji seven months later to continue his ministry to Columban Lay Missionaries. In December, 2003 he was appointed Associate Pastor at Holy Family Parish, Labasa, where he served until returning to the USA in September 2005. This was prompted by the recommendation of his doctors that he should reside in a place where he could receive monitored medical attention, which was unavailable in Fiji. 

With old friends in Fiji

He was assigned to the Columban Magnolia house in Chicago where he worked on Mission Promotion and Vocations (2005 – 2011) and served as house Superior (2008 -2011). In 2011 he began work at the Omaha office in Planned Giving and Development, and later combined this ministry with Superior of the Omaha community (2012 – 2016).

Father Charlie’s warm and outgoing personality, many talents, and deep commitment to his vocation as a Columban missionary priest, drew many people to God in the various places where he ministered. Wherever he was sent, his ability to recognize and celebrate all that was good in the world around him made him a truly joyful messenger of the Good News.

There is one thing I ask of the Lord,

for this I long,

to live in the house of the Lord,

    all the days of my life,

to savour the sweetness of the Lord,

    to behold his temple (Psalm 27:4).

Some Personal Memories

With Fijian Columban Lay Missionary Serafina Vuda in Peru

Serafina died unexpectedly on 31 May 2014

I met Father Charlie at long intervals over the years. My abiding memory of him is that he was a joyful person, as the photos of him above indicate. I visited Rome for the first time in April 1988. My first full day there happened to be my birthday and he insisted on taking those of us in the house at the time to a restaurant to celebrate the occasion.

In 2007, if my memory serves me right, he gave a retreat to Columban priests in the Philippines at St Scholastica's Center of Spirituality in Tagaytay City, south of Manila and much cooler than the latter because of its elevation. The retreat was truly a fraternal one, exemplifying what the psalmist wrote:

How good and how pleasant it is, 

when brothers live in unity (Psalm 133[132]:1).

My first time to meet him was in St Columban's, Dalgan Park, Ireland, during Easter Week 1961 when I went there to be interviewed and to have a medical examination before entering the seminary the following September. I went back to Dublin, where I lived, with a group of the seminarians going to the city for the afternoon. I remember him singing a parody on a popular song from 1911, I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl That Married Dear Old Dad). I never heard Father Charlie's version again until today when I found it on YouTube.

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also (John 14:2-3). 

May Fr Charles Duster enter the place prepared for him by Jesus and may he add to the joy of the saints in heaven.

Opening of the Jubilee Year to mark the 1400th anniversary of the death of Saint Columbanus.

Statue of St Columbanus in Luxeuil, France

Yesterday morning, 12 October, Cardinal Seán Brady, retired archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, was the Principal Celebrant at Mass at the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, at the opening of the Jubilee Year to mark the 1400th anniversary of the death of Saint Columbanus. The Irish missionary saint, also known as 'Columban', died in Bobbio in northern Italy, on 23 November 1615. He is the patron saint of the Missionary Society of St Columban, formally established in 1918, to which I belong.

Cardinal Seán Brady [Wikipedia]

Pope Francis greeted the pilgrim group marking the centenary at the end of his address today after praying the Angelus.

Interior of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome [Wikipedia]

Here is the homily of Cardinal Brady, published in Zenit. 

I am very pleased to see you all here in Rome, in this beautiful Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.  We are here to celebrate the opening of the Jubilee Year of Saint Columbanus. The Jubilee Year commemorates the 1400th anniversary of the death of that great monk and missionary, who died in Bobbio in AD615. 

The Jubilee Year was opened yesterday in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, after the arrival and solemn reception of the relics of the saint from Bobbio, followed by a Mass, celebrated by Cardinal Vallini, Vicar General of Pope Francis for the Diocese of Rome. 

Monastery ruins at Annegray, France [Wikipedia]

In a sense, the ceremony brought closure finally to the earthly pilgrimage of Columbanus who ardently desired to reach Rome, but failed to do so since he died at Bobbio – a diocese and a city which not only preserves his mortal remains, but admirably keeps alive his memory, example and spirit to this day.

In fact, we Irish are profoundly touched by the fact that so many parishes in Italy and elsewhere, so reverently keep alive the memory of Columbanus – an outstanding monk and missionary and saint.

Basilica of San Colombano, Bobbio, Italy [Wikipedia]

I remember the first time I visited Bobbio – some 50 years ago and the warm welcome we received - simply because we were Irish.  I remember the bunch of fresh flowers placed on his tomb – clear proof that someone, with a grateful heart, after all the centuries, had remembered the poor abbot – come from a distance to announce the Good News. 

But what has Columbanus to say to us – citizens of the third millennium – after fourteen centuries?  Sure, Columbanus is far distant from us in time and space, but the relevance of his thought and spirituality is extraordinary.  This was underlined by Saint John Paul II in a message to the people of Luxeuil in 1990 to commemorate the foundation of the monastery there by Columbanus fourteen hundred years earlier when the Holy Father wrote: 

You are recalling a past that is still alive and recognising the gift, given by God, to the Church, in the person of great pioneers like Saint Columbanus.  For the Lord has marvellously combined in Saint Columbanus, love of evangelisation, devotion to monastic life and the fullness of human dignity.

Abbatial Palace, Luxeuil, France [Wikipedia]

In this Mass of Thanksgiving, we too express our gratitude to God for the gift of the faith and for the goodness of all those who played any part in handing onto to us the Good News.

To help us to do so better, we recall the example of Columbanus.  During the long years of being a monk in the monastery of Bangor and earlier in Cleenish – it obviously became clear to him that, in every age, the Church is called to make all its members disciples and missionaries of Christ – Christ who is the way – the truth and the life.  So he sought the permission of his Abbot – the renowned Comgal - to leave the Monastery of Bangor and to set out as a pilgrim for Christ.  Abbot Comgall eventually agreed and so it was that Columbanus set out, on his missionary journey, accompanied by twelve brothers from the community.  So there began the long journey which would take them first to present-day France, then Germany, Switzerland, Austria and finally to Bobbio in Italy.  It was the summer of 592 – Columbanus would have been fifty years of age and rather old for such an adventure in conditions of those days. 

St Columbanus, stained glass window, Bobbio Abbey crypt [Wikipedia]

Over the next twenty years he founded a number of monasteries:  Annagray and Luxeuil, in France; Bregenz in Austria and Bobbio here in Italy.

Saint John Paul II often called for a new evangelisation of Europe after the decline in faith of recent decades.  Saint Columbanus could be seen as a model and a patron of this new evangelisation.  His missionary work could also be described as a second, and new, announcing of the Good News after the damage inflicted by the invasions from abroad and by the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.  Columbanus and his monks brought the light of faith to people who, themselves, in turn became evangelisers until Europe became, once more, a Christian continent. 

Everywhere he went, Columbanus remained devoted to the monastic way of life.  He founded monasteries; he wrote his own Monastic Rule.  It can be truly said that the ways opened up through Europe, and the monasteries founded by him, were often the places where, later on, the Benedictine rule would flourish.  With Saint Benedict, he helped to lay the basis for the European Monasticism of the Middle Ages.

The rule of Columbanus recommended that the monks should confess privately, and often, to one particular confessor. It was an effort to address the crisis that flowed from having only public confessions which were rarely celebrated more than once in a lifetime.  Perhaps he has something to say to all of us today on that topic.

Columbanus loved the monastic life of prayer and contemplation; the silence and the solitude; the fasts and the penance.  He would have seen them not alone as the golden way to a closer union with God but also as the indispensable pre-requisite of successful conversion and the winning of hearts and minds to the following of Christ. 

It is the same spirituality that saw Saint Thérèse become the Patroness of the Missions because of her prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the missions.  There can be no renewal of faith that is not preceded by a renewal of prayer because to evangelise is to transmit life and is the fruit of holiness.

Bregenz, Austria [Wikipedia]

In Saint Peter’s Basilica there is a mosaic dedicated to Saint Columbanus.  It bears the inscription – If you take away freedom you take away dignity.  The phrase is taken from one of the letters of Columbanus.  Indeed it is something that could have been written, not only by a seventh century missionary, but also by a citizen of today’s world, where so many people live in terrible conditions of slavery, fear and oppression.  In addition to the ancient forms of oppression such as war, poverty, loneliness, violence and exile, the modern world has new forms of slavery such as drug and alcohol addition, which are particularly destructive of human dignity.

The glory of God is the human person – fully alive.  Columbanus succeeded in uniting faith with human dignity and freedom.  These are the values on which, for centuries, the identity of Europe was founded and without which the Europe of today risks failing to have a future. May the jubilee year of Saint Columbanus, as well as his life and his writings, inspire all of us to strive for the defence of basic human rights for all.

We make our own the prayer of Saint John Paul II who, writing to the people of Luxeuil, expressed the hope that all who would commemorate the great founder of their famous abbey would be spurred to even greater fidelity to Christ and enthusiasm for His Kingdom.

My hope and prayer is: that by participating in this pilgrimage and Jubilee celebrations, and through the intercession of Saint Columbanus, we may all draw closer to Christ – the way, the truth and the life.                           

AMEN

Statue of St Columban, St Columban's, Bristol, RI, USA

"He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went." Sunday Reflections, 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

St Matthew, El Greco, 1610-14

Museo de El Greco, Toledo, Spain [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

Gospel Matthew 21:28-32 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition: Canada)

  

Jesus said to the chief priest and the elders of the people:

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

The above scene, at the Coliseum in Rome, comes shortly before the end of the 1983 made-for-TV move, The Scarlet and the Black, which tells the true World War II story of Vatican-based Irish priest Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, known as 'The Vatican Pimpernel' and played here by Gregory Peck, and Colonel Herbert Kappler, head of the Gestapo in Rome during the Nazi occupation from September 1943 till June 1944, played by Christopher Plummer. The priest has managed to save the lives of many Allied soldiers and others, getting under the skin of Kappler.

When the German knows that the Allies are about to liberate Rome he sends for the Irishman at night, guaranteeing his safety. The Wikipedia article on the movie tells us what happens after their exchange of 'pleasantries' above. 

[Wikipedia]

Colonel Kappler worries for his family's safety from vengeful partisans, and, in a one-to-one meeting with O'Flaherty, asks him to save his family, appealing to the same values that motivated O'Flaherty to save so many others. The Monsignor, however, refuses, disbelieving that after all the Colonel has done and all the atrocities he is responsible for, he could expect mercy and forgiveness automatically, simply because he asked for it, and walks away in disgust . . .

Kappler is captured in 1945 and questioned by the Allies. In the course of his interrogation, he is informed that his wife and children were smuggled out of Italy and escaped unharmed into Switzerland. Upon being asked who helped them, Kappler realizes who it must have been, but responds simply that he does not know.

At the very end we read on the screen: After the liberation Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty was honored by Italy, Canada and Australia, given the U.S. Medal of Freedom and made a Commander of the British Empire.

Herbert Kappler was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes. In the long years that followed in his Italian prison, Kappler had only one visitor. Every month, year in and year out, O'Flaherty came to see him.

In 1959 the former head of the dreaded Gestapo in Rome was [received] into the Catholic faith at the hand of the Irish priest.

The real Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (1898 - 1963) [Wikipedia]

[You can view the whole scene between the Colonel Kappler and Monsignor O'Flaherty on Gloria TV here, starting at 06.10. The whole movie is available on Gloria TV in ten segments.]

St Paul tells us in the Second Reading, Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. The priest has been putting his life at risk time and again to save the lives of others, while the soldier has been taking the lives of others. But now Kappler looks beyond himself and wants to save the lives of his wife and two children.

St Paul tells us that Christ Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. Kappler in a real sense can be said to have emptied himself when he compares himself to a beggar and lame dog as he requests the priest to help his wife and children get to safety. Saving others is all part of your faith, he says to the priest. Brotherly love and forgiveness - that's the other half of what you believe.

When the priest storms off with I'll see you in hell first! Kappler says to himself, You're no different from anyone else. Your talk means nothing. Charity, forgiveness, mercy - it's all lies.

But when Kappler is being interrogated by officials of the Allies [here from 1:30 to 3:06]  we discover that the Irish priest too had emptied himself by overcoming his anger at the request to help his enemy's family to escape, and by enabling them to get to Switzerland. 

Very few of us will have to face the kind of danger that Monsignor O'Flaherty faced. But every day we have to make choices, often between good and bad. The choice to forgive his enemy that the Irish priest made is the kind of choice that faces all of us, even if the perceived crime or 'crime' of our enemy or 'enemy' is rarely on the scale of those of Colonel Kappler. But the latter, in his need, felt the stirrings of hope in his heart, the stirrings of faith in a merciful God, when he approached his nemesis with his plea. 

Those stirrings were dashed by the priest's angry refusal. Charity, forgiveness, mercy - it's all lies. But those stirrings were raised again when he learned that his wife and children were safe and knew that only one person could have seen to that. Then he knew he was wrong when he said, Charity, forgiveness, mercy - it's all lies. Now he knew it was all true.

I don't know if the Irish priest was familiar with these words of St Caesarius of Arles (c.470 - 27 August 542): Whenever you love brothers or sisters you love friends, for they are already with you, joined to you in Catholic unity. If they live virtuously you love them as people who have been changed from enemies into brothers and sisters. But suppose you love people who do not yet believe in Christ, or if they do, yet believe as the devil believes - they believe in Christ but still do not love him. You must love just the same, you must love even people like that, you must love them as brothers and sisters. They are not such yet, but you must love them so that they become such through your kindness. All our love, then, must be fraternal.

Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went.

[You can read a fine article by William Doino Jr published in First Things, November 2013: Hugh O'Flaherty, Ireland's Shining Priest.]

Antiphona ad communionem   Communion Antiphon Cf Ps 118 [119]:49-50

Memento verbi tui servo tuo, Domine,

Remember your word to your servant, O Lord,

in quo mihi spem dedisti;

by which you have given me hope.

haec me consolata est in humilitate mea.

This is my comfort when I am brought low.

Persecution of Christians in Iraq and Syria

Though the video above was uploaded in 2010 it shows what many Christians in Iraq have been suffering in recent years. As we continue to pray for the Christians in Iraq and Syria, many of whom have been driven in the last two months or so from the ancestral lands, may we and they find hope in the suffering of Christians and Muslims in the post-World War II decades in Albania, a country that is now free.

Last Sunday Pope Francis, before celebrating Evening Prayer in St Paul's Cathedral, Tirana, was moved as he listened to the testimony [video below] of Fr Ernest Simoni, 84, and Sister Marije Kaleta, 85, who had survived that persecution. To hear a martyr talk about his own martyrdom is intense, the Pope told journalists on the papal plane back to Rome the same evening. I think all of us there were moved, all of us.

'A Trip to Rome'

I got this story from Jackie Parkes who got it from Aussie Coffee shop who got it from Abbey at Abbey’s Road . . . I decided to add a few pictures.

This is something to think about when negative people are doing their best to rain on your parade. So remember this story the next time someone who knows nothing, and cares less, tries to make your life miserable.

A woman was at her hairdresser's getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband.

She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded:

"Rome ? Why would anyone want to go there? It's crowded and dirty. You're crazy to go to Rome .

So, how are you getting there?"

"We're taking Air France," was the reply. "We got a great rate!"

"Air France?" exclaimed the hairdresser. "That's a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they're always late.

So, where are you staying in Rome ?"

"We'll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome's Tiber River called Teste."

"Don't go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks its gonna be something special and exclusive, but it's really a dump, the worst hotel in the city! The rooms are small, the service is surly, and they're overpriced.

So, whatcha' doing when you get there?"

"We're going to go to see the Vatican and we hope to see the Pope."

"That's rich," laughed the hairdresser. "You and a million other people trying to see him. He'll look the size of an ant.

Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."

A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome

"It was wonderful," explained the woman, "not only were we on time in one of Air France's brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot.

And the hotel was great! They'd just finished a $5 million remodeling job, and now it's a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner's suite at no extra charge!"

"Well," muttered the hairdresser, "that's all well and good, but I know you didn't get to see the Pope."

"Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I'd be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me.

Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me."

"Oh, really! What'd he say ?"

He said: "Where'd you get the terrible hairdo?