Delegation House, Wayne, New Jersey
Xaverian Missionaries – The Delegation House
12 Helene Court – Wayne, NJ 07470
973-942-2975
Fr. Mark Marangone SX, Superior Delegate | marangone@xaverianmissionaries.org
The Delegation Administration: wayne@xaverianmissionaries.org
The Mission Media Office: missionmedia@xaverianmissionaries.org
We Say Farewell to Fr. Michael Davitti after Twenty Six Years of Mission Service to USA Delegation
Fr. Michael Davitti is a long time missionary, first serving many years in Sierra Leone, West Africa and afterward in the United States. He served as pastor of the parish of St. Therese in Chinatown, Chicago and later in the work of interreligious dialogue, a then new burgeoning mission of the Xaverian Missionaries in the US. We share with you his own letter of farewell.
Dear Friends,
In April I will be leaving the USA, bringing to an end my American saga that started in 1998 when I set foot on American soil after many years in Africa.
The beautiful time spent together first in Chicago Chinatown and afterward in Wayne, NJ will come to an end, but I will treasure those years as the most precious gift God could give to me.
I am deeply grateful for the many friends God gave me during this time: Darline Chan, George Lee, Bruno Bertucci, while in Chicago, and Fr. ST, Carol Bielous, Aurora Trevor and many more others who brought me joy and encouragement. Their prayers and their friendship gave me the support I needed in difficult times. I will keep all of them in my heart and in my prayers while in Italy. They made a difference in my life: their dedication to Christ and to the Church have been for me a source of inspiration and great joy.
In Italy, I will use the experience accumulated during these years in USA. While in Chinatown I was made aware of the complexity of Asia and its rich traditions and cultures falling in love with it. In Wayne I found how the “holy fire’ burning in the heart of one person, is contagious and creative: The Bible Group. It has been growing from the initial five or six people to a core group of 12/14 people coming faithfully, to our house every Friday for sessions that have gone from an initial two hours to now four hours, ending with extended time in the chapel. I learned that people are deeply thirsty for God.
We have become not only friends but brethren, who care for the welfare of each other. We celebrated together birthdays and other happy occasions such as the Chinese New Year when we committed ourselves to Family and Life.
Gleaning from past events I can say that I have experienced, almost a physical touch, God’s love for me, for us. Ours has become a sacred story, where God’s providence is at work for our good. This awareness gives me the strength to bid farewell to my many friends with gratitude and turn a fresh page, most probably the last one, of my life, in the new setting that God has prepared for me. The end of something good is the beginning of something better.
My senior age is the time for rejoicing and singing. In the words of Scripture:
“He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”Ps.126:6 Senior age is the “harvest time,” the time for songs of gratitude, in the awareness that the fidelity of the Lord, so evident in past events of our life, is the securest foundation for our hope.
We can make our own the words of St. Augustine at the end of one of his sermons:
“I feel that your spirits are being raised up with mine to the heavens above, but the body which is corruptible weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind. I am about to lay aside this book, and you are soon going away, each to his own business. It has been good for us to share the common light, good to have enjoyed ourselves, good to have been glad together. When we part from one another, let us not depart from him.”
Fr. Michael Davitti, sx
Fr. Michael’s Farewell Luncheon
Photos courtesy of Pauline Maria Heizmann.
Message of the Superior Delegate, Fr. Mark for Easter 2024
“Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, while anyone who hates his life in this world preserves it to life eternal” (John 12:24-25).
Some years ago, Catherine Marshall wrote an article titled: “When we dare to trust in God.” In it she tells that a serious lung infection had left her bedridden and no drug or prayer seemed to help her get better. She felt terribly depressed. One day somebody gave her a pamphlet with the story of a missionary who also suffered from a strange sickness. She had been bedridden for eight years and couldn’t figure out why God had allowed such tragedy to happen to her. She would pray daily to get better and resume her missionary work, but her prayers seemed to go unheard.
One day, in desperation, she cried out to God with these words: “O.K. I give up. Oh God, if you want me to remain an invalid, that’s your business.” Two weeks later she was back to her work in the mission, healthier than ever.
Catherine set the pamphlet aside. That story left her very much perplexed: apparently, there was no logic to it. “And yet,” she would say later, “I could not forget that missionary and what she went through.” Then, one morning, Catherine found herself crying out to God almost the same words of the missionary: “O God, I’m tired of asking you to heal me. You decide whether you want me sick or healthy again.” “Immediately,” Catherine would confirm later, “I regained my health.”
The two stories of Catherine and the missionary illustrate what Jesus teaches us: “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit…” In other words, unless we die to our own will and search for God’s, we won’t bear fruit for God.
If Catherine and the missionary had not died to their own will and projects, they would probably have remained bedridden and sick. Instead, both of them got better and bore much fruit.
Their stories take us back to Gethsemane, where it all started, when Jesus, in agony, prayed to God with the words: “Father… not my will… but yours be done” (Lk 22:42). If Jesus had not died first to his own will… and then on the cross, by giving his life out of love for us, we would not have been saved from our own sins. Catherine, the missionary, and Jesus teach us the same lesson and offer us the same challenge: to be ready and willing to die to our own will, to put all our faith in God, and entrust ourselves to him, so to bear fruit for God and gain eternal life.
Do we, do I accept the challenge? It may not always be easy. Let us do it together since we all have been called to holiness. Consider how many priests, religious, missionaries, moms and dads, and children have become saints… Many of them experienced some Good Friday in their lives… Yet, the final fruit was Easter, Resurrection, New Life… and endless joy.
COMMON GROUND: Conference of Dialogue Between Secular Humanists and Religious Believers
The Xaverian Missionaries and the American Humanist Association organized a special conference of dialogue that brought together religious believers, secular humanists, and nonbelievers in conversation to gain perspective on each other’s ways of seeing the world while embracing commonalities in our human experience that unite us for social change. We called it COMMON GROUND 2015.
Through four panel sessions and networking participants joined academics and leaders from national and local organizations to discuss views on finding meaning in life, ethics and values, and how to collaborate for social action.
Check out and share our Common Group Social Networks: Facebook page and CG Twitter Feed
Common Ground “Meetup” at the Provincial House
Conversations among Atheists, Humanists, and Religious Believers take place on the last Sunday of each month at 3 p.m. via Zoom. Topics center on the values and ethics that we share. Click here for more information and to join the group.
