The year comes to an end. As all things must. It gives us thoughts of our own end, which comes as inevitably as the end of the year. My recent bouts, with whatever it was, made me think of the fact that no one lives forever. It gave more meaning to the sign by my door, which reads. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life!” And so it is. While harboring these thoughts recently I had added to them, by way of a sermon, as to how we are conditioned to think of life in cyclical terms. By that is meant that we think now of the events of Christmas and all it entails, then of New Year’s celebration, and then of what the New Year will bring, as so on. We seldom recall or think of our lives in terms of a line, linearly. We are here and now but soon we will be but a memory since our line of time will run out. This is not meant to be morose or gloomy but just realistic about something we seldom speak of or discuss. It is interesting to see that “Tuesday’s with Morrie”, a best seller, in which there were a series of discussions or sermons by a teacher waiting to come to the end of his life. His reflections were on the making use of the time we have in that line called life to make our lives more meaningful. He notes that it get its meaning from the giving of love and help to others. It was a best seller I suppose since people could “read” it. It was not meant to become talk at a round table, much less the dinner table.
Time has been one thing I have had much more of since I am not hopping into the car to go off to hither and yon. (I received permission to drive again on December 3.) When you limit your car travel to only necessary journeys, and those by other drivers, it reduces them quite a bit. You need to call on friends, and we have had plenty of offers, which requires that the journey should be a required one. Whenever I think of “time” and its proper use I hear my father speaking once again. He constantly reminded me to “Stop wasting your time! Use it for something good!” We differed often on the meaning of “good”. It was a worthwhile idea and as did the character in the Irish play “Da” I feel him in the room whenever I find myself playing one more game of computer ‘free cell’, or the likes, while projects like these jottings, or reading to be finished, are left un-attacked.
There being more time available led me back to playing chess on the computer. I have had the CD for sometime and only used it occasionally. Well, after a few losses from stupid moves I found myself angry. I laughed when I read in the life of the sixth President of U.S., John Quincy Adams, that he too had a tough time controlling his anger when losing a game. He had given the game up while in Europe but then on the long boat ride home, not having his books to keep him occupied, he took it up again. He even found some books in the Ship’s Library, which helped him, improve his game. “Yet rage at losing continued ‘to a degree bordering on madness’. He feared that since chess was such a ‘painful test of intellect’, it affected his emotions too much to be a sport”. That raises the question, “When is a ‘game’ not a ‘game’? “The answer for some is, ‘when it is golf’, or maybe chess. I read the excerpt from the Adams biography to June and she smiled indicating her agreement. Yes, it sounded like her husband and his reaction to losing any game!
In reading the life of JQA, or John Quincy Adams, I have now completed the biographies of four of the first six Presidents. I missed Washington and Monroe. I hadn’t planned to go down any list of President bios but it just occurred to me as I was reading JQA’s. While reading JQA’s bio I was also reading a novel about the revolution called “Rise to Rebellion” which of course had Washington, the Adams, Samuel and John, Jefferson, Franklin, and others discussing in public and private the dastardly acts to the colonies by George III and his Prime Minster. It was fun hearing John Adams talking in the novel while walking his son John Q. of what was going on in Philadelphia. Then at the same time I am reading about that son’s actions in places like St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Ghent and London as a representative of this newly born country.
The islands of Sulu Archipelago are in the news. It is an island in the Philippines where the Muslims have once again taken over the island. A short while ago they even held some Americans as hostage, but I think that matter was resolved. Even now though the Muslims hold the island. Sulu is a stretch of some 400 islands, which run from the bottom of the Philippines over to Borneo. The Philippines and Sulu have often been in the McSorley’s lives. I was reminded of Sulu both by those recent reports in our newspaper and to the problems in the Philippines in the first term of Teddy Roosevelt. This I learned from a biography on Teddy, entitled “Theodore Rex”. He inherited the problems when President McKinley was assassinated and we were still governing the islands in our benign imperialistic age of 1895 and on. Both items brought back the visit I made to Sulu in l970 and the many contacts the McSorley family have had with the Philippine Island. When I was ten, in 1939, my oldest brother, Frank, was ordained a priest and went to the Philippines as a missionary. My next oldest brother Father Dick who went out to teach as a scholastic in the Jesuits followed him. Part of the training of the Jesuit is a three-year term of teaching and his was to be in the Islands. Frank was down in the southern end, at Cotabato, and Dick was in the middle on the western side of the islands. Along came the Japanese in 1941 and with the capture of the Islands both brothers were interned. Frank was taken from Davao, Cotabato up to Manila, to Santo Tomas University which became a concentration camp. When MacArthur returned to the Philippines among the troops if not exactly then but later, my brother John was sent there with a Marine Air Squadron. On a routine mission to ascertain what if any Japanese troops remained his plane was shot down. He was transferred to Manila and was about to have a leg amputated when Frank some how or other discovered he was there. He interceded and John did not lose his leg. Sometime later Dick was also released and ended up in Manila. Dick then learned that part of John’s squadron had assisted in the chasing off Dick’s Japanese guards. The air-raid over the place where they were resulted in the prisoners being abandoned quickly instead of being killed. The three, Frank, Dick, and John appeared on the front page of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin some time in 1944-45. I remember the great relief my mother and dad had in as much they had no certain knowledge that Frank and Dick were alive. They had no information on where John was until that picture. My brother Joe a Naval officer was around the same time in Manila Harbor. So he added to the McSorley’s who made a stop in the Philippines. In 1948 my brother Jim, an ordained priest, selected the Philippines as he first mission. John son Richard went of to Philippines to attend a college being run by the Oblate fathers some time after 1958 when Frank was now the Bishop of the Sulu Vicariate. Lastly, sister Marge and I went to Sulu in l970 to represent the family in the burial of Bishop Frank who died there. Of the seven boys only one Pat never paid a visit or worked in the Islands. So any news of the Philippines, and most of it recently has been of the area of Sulu, brings back memories of the family members whom at one time were there. The news indicates that Sulu is now completely under the control of the Moslems. When Frank was the bishop in Sulu he built several schools and medical centers. He permitted the student who attended his schools to have classes after the school day in the study Islam religion. The classes were on the same property as the schools. This was before the Vatican Council and was unheard of in Catholic schools in U.S.A. It was ecumenism before I ever heard of the word. When he died there was a long delay in naming a successor, and in the interim the radical Muslims groups began again to gain control. There was finally named Bishop but apparently the gap in time caused a loss of the ground Frank had gained. Some time in 1997 or a bit earlier the Catholic newspaper in Philadelphia reported the news that the “first Bishop of Sulu had just be appointed, and he was a Filipino”. My sister Winnie got off a note advising them that they were dead wrong since the first bishop of Sulu was none other than a Philadelphian. Sic transit gloria mundi!
“Since 9/11 has been an unmistakably Clausewitzian flavor to American foreign policy. War, it seems has made a comeback this year as a legitimate tool for the ‘continuation of political intercourse'” (N. Ferguson, 12/15/02 N.Y Times Mag.) How sadly true this is! Christmas brings thoughts of peace. “Peace on Earth!” was the cry and song of the angels. How devoutly we do wish that it would be. Every day another war seems to be continued or started and peace is no where evident in many parts of the globe. It seems the Angels cry has fallen on deaf ears. May the Peace of the Season be with you all and bring you a New Year full of even more.
Until next time, Dominus Vobiscum. The Lord be with you !