Chocolate and Crucifixion

(Lenten reflections courtesy of Pauline.org)

And so the Church year turns again to Lent.

It’s a tricky season to navigate. As Catholics, we’re called to penance as we contemplate the journey of Our Lord through betrayal by his friends all the way to his torture and death. But let’s face it: 40 days is a long time to keep doing anything, especially something that you don’t like to do.

Catholics traditionally “give up” something for Lent. We return to meatless Fridays. We deprive ourselves of something that we really like—chocolate, for example. And we feel the pinch of the loss and sometimes we even make it through to Holy Week without cheating.

And somehow in all of that we lose the point of why we are doing it, because we’re so caught up in the how of doing it. God forgive us, we sometimes even feel sorry for ourselves for missing out on the glories of chocolate!

So this year might be the perfect year to look at Lent a little differently. Maybe it’s time to disassociate it from chocolate or meat or any of the luxuries we give up and that we generally substitute for prayer and penance.

Jesus made what we are supposed to do very clear. In the Gospels he set forth what would become the three “pillars” of the early Church, so called because they hold up the faithful, keep the people of God from falling into self-absorption and sin.

"Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life." 
Pope Benedict XVI 

What if Jesus gave you a theme for 2017?

Most of us turn the page from December 31 to January 1 with mixed feelings. There may be regrets for what we’d planned to see accomplished in the year that is over. For many people, probably for most people, there is hope that the new year will be different.

And most of us make new year’s resolutions. We decide that this is the year we’re going to lose weight, or start a new career, or take a class. We’re all about self-improvement, about making changes that will—we believe—make us happier.

But how many of us make resolutions that will deepen our connection with Jesus? When January 1st comes around, how often do we focus on our spiritual lives?

In the classic He And I, French mystic Gabrielle Bossis, like the rest of us, started every year with something new. But her “resolutions” were very different from ours. Her conversations with God, recorded in her journal according to the date they took place, always started on January first with something called a “keynote,” what we might think of as a theme for the year.

And all of these themes have one thing in common: they have nothing to do with self-improvement, with losing weight, with working out, with getting a better job. They’re all about becoming closer to God.

Here are a few examples:

• January 1, 1937: “Here is your keynote for the year: Purely and simply.”
• January 1, 1938: “This year you will love Me in My brothers. Do for them what you would do for Me.”
• January 1, 1943: "In each other’s hearts. You will keep yours in Mine and I’ll be in yours.”
• January 1, 1947: “Keep going. Do good.”
• January 1, 1949: “Serve. Find your joy in serving God and your neighbor.”“

All of these themes are simple and loving and could be easily repeated every morning as inspiration for the day. And they all bring the human soul into closer contact with God.

What would happen if we thought about how to get closer to God in 2017 (starting now during Lent), instead of how to have a better figure? What would a new year look like if we listened to God’s voice instead of all the secular culture's voices that make false promises about true happiness?

What if you prayed for God to give you a sense of what your theme for the year might be, and you built your plans and hopes around that theme? Your life would probably change even more dramatically than it has with past new year’s resolutions. You might be inspired to go to Mass an extra day every week, or to read more Scripture, or to volunteer at a shelter or soup kitchen.

Here’s what would probably happen if, like Gabrielle Bossis, you listened carefully to God’s will for your new year: your resolution would be less about you and more about others. You’d find yourself wanting less and giving more.

Perhaps this is the year to make changes based not on what the world tells you that you should want, but instead on what your heart tells you that Jesus wants of you. Perhaps this is the year when you give up trying to do something that you’ll abandon after a few weeks, and instead focus on the One who will never abandon you. Perhaps this is the year you can throw away the “resolutions” and embrace a theme, a keynote, a closeness with God.

And that money you were going to spend on the gym or the diet or the organizational tool? Put it in the poor-box instead. It’s a better investment for a far better year than you’ve ever had before.

Why not share your keynote for 2017 below?

by Jeannette de Beauvoir

Jack Snow – His Cause Continues

Former Notre Dame football
player, Jack Snow

Strong of Heart, Profiles of Notre Dame Athletes (written by Randy Covitz, courtesy of Stephanie Snow Gebel)

Jack snow’s daughter Stephanie pleaded and finally persuaded him to be in the birthing room when she was about to deliver her daughter Raquel.

Tears filled Snow’s eyes when he held Raquel, his seventh grandchild, with the steady hands that caught 60 passes as an All-America wide receiver at Notre Dame in 1964 and 340 more passes and 45 touchdowns in an 11-year National Football League career with the Los Angeles Rams.

Snow would never live to see Raquel grow up, nor would he know that she would be diagnosed at age 4 with a rare disease known as Wolfram syndrome. He died on Jan. 9, 2006, of a staph infection at age 62. It was nine months and a day after Raquel was born.

But the legacy and memory of Jack Snow could be the catalyst that leads to more effective treatments, if not a cure, for millions of patients who suffer from diabetes and related illnesses, including Wolfram syndrome.

In 2011, Stephanie Snow Gebel and her brother, former Major League Baseball star J.T. Snow, established the Snow Foundation to raise awareness and funding to fight Wolfram.

Wolfram presents itself as Type I diabetes and ultimately leads to vision loss, hearing loss and cognitive decline. There are about 25,000 known cases of Wolfram in the world, and 60 percent of the patients die by their 30th birthday.

“From the time of diagnosis, they decline a great deal within five to eight years,” said Stephanie Snow Gebel, who with husband Barclay has four children, including Raquel, now 10.

“Raquel is legally blind now … she can’t see five feet in front of her. She has to go on medicine to control her bladder. She gets awful headaches and choking episodes.”

During Jack Snow’s playing career, he represented several charitable causes, including the Susan G. Komen (breast cancer), the Epilepsy Foundation and, most dear to his heart, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. His other daughter, Michelle, has a son, Jacob, who was first afflicted with diabetes as a young child.

“He was an out-of-the-norm athlete,” Stephanie said of her father, who teamed with Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback John Huarte in 1964 and left Notre Dame as the school’s all-time leader in single-season receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns. “He would go out and publicly speak and give his fee to the Rams’ charitable foundation. He was always doing things for people, and he never expected anything in return.”

Unlike the many charities Jack Snow endorsed, the Snow Foundation is one of a kind. It’s the only organization in the world dedicated to conquering the lesser-known Wolfram syndrome.

The Snow Foundation has raised close to $2 million for research, but it is about $2 million shy of the necessary funds to complete drug trials.

“We’re learning that lesser known diseases don’t get a lot of attention and have a hard time with fund raising,” said J.T. Snow, a former Gold Glove first baseman for the San Francisco Giants. “We’ve reached out to a lot of people. We got this thing rolling. We need to raise a lot more money to make sure people like Raquel are going to be taken care of.

“We’re kind of bummed out that my dad’s not around because he would have taken this and would have gotten a lot of attention for it. He would get people to buy in and to get into their checkbooks and help us raise money for these doctors who are studying Wolfram syndrome.”

Three generations…Papa Jack, Stephanie and tiny Raquel…

As analyst for the Rams’ radio broadcasts after his professional football career ended, Jack Snow accompanied the club when it moved to St. Louis in 1995. In a stroke of good fortune, the doctor who began researching and discovered Wolfram syndrome was Dr. Alan Permutt of Washington University in St. Louis.

Permutt, a diabetes victim himself, treated Raquel for nearly two years until his death in 2012. His work is being carried on at Washington University by Dr. Fumihiko Urano, whom Stephanie convinced to relocate his family from Japan to St. Louis.

“In focusing on a rare disease like Wolfram, we have uncovered a lot about common problems—that’s what is so exciting about it,” said Dr. Saad Naseer, chief executive officer and chief medical officer of The Snow Foundation.

“It’s diabetes, vision loss, hearing loss and brain deterioration. Those four collectively affect hundreds of millions of people. You probably know 10-12 diabetics personally. You know people whose vision and hearing deteriorate or have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or some sort of other brain deterioration.

“The research we’re doing is applicable to all those people. If we find a new treatment for diabetes, it’s not just for Wolfram syndrome patients, it’s for every diabetic. The same goes for any treatments we develop for vision loss, hearing loss or brain deterioration.”

The doctors at Washington University recently received encouraging data from its first testing of mice.

“We actually prevented diabetes in all of the mice we gave our test compound to,” Naseer said. “We’re close, but the problem is we need a minimum of $2 million to complete all these studies in mice.”

To help come up with more funds, the Snow Foundation established a website, thesnowfoundation.org, to raise awareness and has staged events including golf tournaments, celebrity bartending functions and other activities to raise funds.

Stephanie and J.T. also reached out to the Notre Dame family, including former Fighting Irish quarterback Rick Mirer, whom Gebel calls “her little Notre Dame angel,” and Brian Murphy, an NFL player agent and Notre Dame graduate whose wife Lauren is a diabetic.

Mirer, who operates the Mirer Family Foundation that provides help for youngsters with health and educational needs, said Raquel’s illness reminded him of former Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian’s three grandchildren who died from a rare genetic disorder.

“I ran with this because I had a lot of sympathy for Stephanie’s situation, and I wanted to introduce her to people who may be able to help,” Mirer said. “The Notre Dame family rallied around Ara’s situation and made an impact, hopefully eliminating a lot of other kids having to go through that.

“It’s been a little harder because she’s not Ara Parseghian. Eventually, we’ll get the right people aware of it and she’ll get the help she needs.”

Mirer hopes members of Notre Dame’s Monogram Club respond to the cause— and Murphy, who represents current and former NFL players from Notre Dame, believes they’ll step up to the plate, similar to how Jack Snow contributed his time and resources to worthwhile causes.

“This is going to sound corny,” Murphy said, “but this is what they teach you during your four years under the Golden Dome, that part of our purpose here on earth is to make our community better and to help those less fortunate and to give and to give and to give.

“It’s an old philosophy that you give what you get. Jack Snow was actively involved in all these charities, and now it’s time to help his family and a lot of people are anxious to give back to him because he helped so much.”

Once the doctors at Washington University complete the mice studies, the Snow Foundation will have sufficient data to approach a pharmaceutical company and ask it to take over the project.

“Our foundation is the Little Engine That Could,” Stephanie Snow Gebel said. “Keep your eye on us. We’re getting positive hits on the diabetic rounds with the drug we’re working on and positive hits on a drug we’re working on with vision.

“It’s going to be revolutionary. I think there’s a reason my child got this disease. I am a fighter, I am a momma bear, I’m not going to sit back and watch her deteriorate if I can do something about it. I’ve got my dad’s personality. I’m a mini-Jack Snow … ”

In all, Jack Snow had three children and eight grandchildren. In this quest to find a cure for Wolfram, the family still derives inspiration from Jack nearly 10 years after his death.

“He’s watching, and he’s helping out best he can,” said J.T. Snow. “We know that because little things here and there pop up and let us know that he’s paying attention, both he and my mom, Merry Carole, who we lost way too early (to cancer in 1998).

“We see the No. 84 a lot, his number with the Rams. Things that remind us of him, things a family would know. You go to the grocery store, and your grocery bill is like $84 … or a lot of times we travel, and we’re leaving out of Gate 84. Just random things like that let you know my mom and dad are watching.”

Our foundation is the Little Engine That Could”

If you would like to learn more on how you can help the Snow Foundation, please visit their website: http://thesnowfoundation.org/

Cheers!!