continuation…

As you can see, our Men’s Club has grown in number:

October 2012, you can read about it HERE

April 2013

In keeping with the tradition, during EP in Omaha there is one evening out for men exclusively. The menu and the place remain the same: Anthony’s Steakhouse.

Of course “to have a steak” was just an excuse – the real goal was to meet again, talk, be with one another. Every of us has a different story to tell, and different experience, so it is good to listen to one another and discover how much we can share and pass forward.

This time we were joined by guys from France, Poland, Mexico and Peru – and apart from other new men in the club, we also had two American priests. How good it is to know we can count on each other. If need be, we know were to look for each other. Because the support among men is always necessary. And what’s more – women liked the idea of men’s evening a lot. They know that men need their own company  from time to time. And afterwards, they come back as better people. 🙂

Fr. Jay

When I look at the education program participants, it feels like home. They look just like our external students. The overwhelming majority are women, some of them expecting children, there are the husbands who look after children while their wives have classes. The breaks are filled with convesrations and the classroom is filled with prayers, becoming a chapel for us. It’s no wonder we had the sense of proximity right from the start.

Maybe that’s why it’s easier to endure the sense of longing for home. In places like that everyone feels important, needed, loved. So this is the time not only of an intense immersion study, but also of a retreat. You can pull yourself together, get ready for the mission, for the service. And the first and foremost message is: “I want to help you, because you are a very important person to me.”

Remembering all of you, especially those at Home,

Fr. Jay

How very different is the House which was for 10 days since morning until late evening (the longest working day finished at 00.30) so full of life. Now the corridors are empty, there are no people in the rooms and there’s no-one in our small, nice cafe.

But there are memories. The chapel is still full of prayers left by the participants of the courses, the rooms are filled with words that have not yet died away, the corridors echo countless conversations and consultations.

It’s so good to have been part of it. Many people said – this was a real retreat, we leave strengthened (although dog-tired), it’s pity it’s the end… 

We were bound by something important. Each of us could, through the example of others, believe in love again, because love comes on so many paths, in so many ways.When there’s love, it gives strength for everything.

I wish you a good Sunday so that you won’t forget that it’s given us to find each other, to get closer to each other than every day, to look for love in places  different than every day.

With my warm support

Fr Jay

is not only the day of farewells, this time until we-don’t-know-when and we-don’t know-where but also the day of exams, so in the Institute we have an atmosphere of reflection and solemnity. Because of the written and oral exams and presentations the students were divided into small groups:  Educators, Practitioners, Medical Consultants and  Double Programme participants.

And besides – we care for each other, support each other and consult quickly. It’s exams’ time after all…

Archbishop Henryk Hoser, who visited us today and held the Holy Mass, explored with us at depth NaPro  both as a doctor and a theologian. We needed this very much. We will gladly publish the sermon once it is published. And now we come back to work because there’s s still a lot to do. See you tomorrow.

I always remember you warmly.

Father Jarosław

Just before eight o’clock life in our Institute quickens its pace. In the lecture hall, the computer has already been connected to the multimedia projector which is showing the first slide of the presentation. Dr Hilgers, standing with the mocrophone, is ready to start the lecture. Faculty members are in place, and the students are filling the hall. In a while there will be a common prayer at the beginning of the day. In contemporary lingua franca – in English. Those who can’t speak English – pray in their own language, so sometimes you get the impression we’re praying in tongues.

As soon as the lecture hall door shuts,  participants’ children appear in the lobby outside – with their fathers or baby sitters. It’s another opportunity to meet and exchange experience.

Today it’s similar, though a bit different. There is one husband who came with his wife, but without the kids (the’ye been left with their grandparents). He takes part only in the Mass and some of the lectures.

After the prayer, he sat down at a small table and opened the Bible. He became engrossed in his reading. When I came back, he was still praying. Next to him was the I-Pad. There will be a time for checking the mailbox, “what’s on the news in the politics”, maybe something more… But first – the meeting with the word spoken by God. It’s also the way to “believe Love.” Who can tell you about it better, after all?

With loving memory of you,

Fr Jay

Ever since last Thursday, Łomianki near Warsaw, Poland, have become the European NaProTechnology center.

The team from Omaha arrived first. Starting on Monday, we were preparing lecture rooms, places for individual meetings with the Instructors, checking if the equipment works properly. On Thursday the Educators started their course: students from Africa, Croatia, Ireland and Poland. They are the most advanced – they’ll be licensed to teach the Instructors.

On Saturday we began classes for those who had come across Creighton Model System in other places than Omaha and Łomianki. There are the students from France, England, Scotland, Lithuania and, of course, Poland. Today the participants from Education Phase 1 in September will start arriving, mainly doctors, and tomorrow – all the remaining students. That makes up altogether almost 120 participants from 12 countries.

So this is a challenge, not only related to logistics, but also the chance of experiencing something axtraordinary: meeting people from different parts of the world, who have various jobs and life vocations, but who share one desire to serve married couples and those who wish to fulfil their parenthood in God’s way. So what’s to be expected is not only very intensive immersion course, but also the time of great prayer. It was wonderful to see and hear Our Father spoken in so many languages, to experience the sense of being united on one faith. Even though the responses to the priest celebrating the Mass were given in different languages, they only confirmed the universality of the Liturgy.

Each participant has brought their experience of meeting married couples. They are here to learn to help them better. Now it’s time for us to help the participants and to support them with our prayer.

From the heart of the events,

the eye witness

Fr Jay

Father Captain returned to his homeland and together with him the boat is mooring in the local landscape of the Harbour.

And yet the Travel Journal contained no too many exotic elements. If I was to tell how our everyday life is related to NaProTechnology and I+YOU=WE, I’d say all the paths come together. If we’ve been created to exist in relationships, only then do we feel happy when our relationships make sense, improve, let us BE more. So we would love this I+YOU to represent a true equation.

NaProTechnology, in turn, enables one to go beyond their illiteracy in the area of the language of the body, to which this world is basically deaf. Creighton Model system questions the wild utlitilitarism which exploits the body and refuses to grant due respect to it.

So ‘”The Harbour,” to which Fr Jay has directed us for the last month, is a good place for the whole human being. For the marriage and the family. A place which helps in the process of civilizing our inner “savage” towards love.

Travel boradens the mind. Thank you, Fr Jay, for taking us with you.

Małgosia

Because entering Creighton Model System is a new beginning in  marriage. Creighton Model, using the system of biomarkers, empowers both husband and wife to become more conscious of their talents and enables them to use those talents to take care of each other. To align their common goals practically to the Will of God in their unique life. It opens a window for lifelong support through NaProTECHNOLOGY in the monitoring their health.

It seems to be a difficult record including signs, like Balance Score Card under Kaplan´s for businesses. Comparing it, is less an accounting system, it is more a control system, using entrepreneurial language. But it is much more than this: Creighton Model System is a “decoder” of the language of the female human body – and of the procreative human body that marriage is.

The System is like “Mercedes Benz” if it were a car, or a new Mac if it were a computer, or “Rollex” – if it were a wrist watch… If you choose to follow CrM System, you have in your hands the most outstanding tool to manage and direct your life in love.

Beatriz

It’s year 1974. Thomas W. Hilgers, MD, after completing his study comes here with his wife Susan to begin residency at St Mary’s Hospital. For the 4 years to come.

One day in 1974 he accepts the invitation from Missouri Nurses for Life (by the way, I wonder since when we’ve got to tell the pro-life doctors from the others – and shouldn’t we have in that nomenclature: pro-life and anti-life doctors – the neutral doctors do not exist, or do they?).

That group of nurses included Ann Prebil and Diane Daly. Dr Hilgers was asked to give a lecture on a pregnancy resulting from a rape and the special role of pro-life nurses in handling the patient after such a trauma.

A year later he called Ann with the offer of cooperation: she’s asked to take the post of an  Education Coordinator of a new program for Natural Family Planning at St Louis Univeristy. Ann accepts the offe, and initially shares her time between her work as a lecturer in a nursing school and this new program.

On February 12, 1976 the first meeting of the new program was held. It looked a bit like contemporary Education Programs. 6 people took part in it: Sue Hilgers, dr Thomas Hilgers, Ann, Diane and one more married couple who later left the project.

In January 1977 Dr Thomas Hilgers with his Wife and two sons, Paul and Steve, left for Omaha. A year later the first FertilityCare Center was opened in St. Louis.

What happened next and where the name Creighton Model of FertilityCare System comes from – in the subsequent parts of the story.

Fr Jay

houses a truly beautiful Chapel on the last storey, actually in the attic. Next to the Chapel there is a meeting room with a library, and from there you can also participate in the Holy Mass. But this happens very seldom. Because the opportunity to take part in a Mass is rare here. There is a daily Service, for years faithfully celebrated by Deacon Tom. Traditionally, while I’m in Omaha, there is the Eucharist for all the staff.

Today we also had the Mass and then the visits to all the departments, with prayer over each staff member, together with blessing the Institute. Everyone here is very moved by the good things which have happened here and they all know it is a gift of God’s Love. And they ask for prayer, for God’s protection over the Institute, over their families and themselves. They too know that in all the places where good things happen – also the difficulties and hardships come along. As anywhere else.

It was good to be here.

Tomorrow I’ll have to be on the move again. It’s time for a “sentimental journey.” But I’ll tell you about that – tomorrow…

Fr Jay