Circular letter from Fr. James O’Mahony

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Αριστ Cαρυγιπιαες, Saint Bonaventure's, Corporate. ST BONAVENTURE'S, CAPUCHIN HOSTEL, CORK. Ireland 19th., May, 1960 My dear Fathers and Brothers, It is with sincere regret that I must renounce the privilege, on this occasion, of coming to you in person to make the Canonical Visitation of our American Custody. It would have been with pleasure I should have come, knowing from past experience your princely hospitality and religious cooperation, hadnot the Lord decided ptherwise. But I am happy in the knowledge that our First Definitor, V.te Father Virgilius of Abbeylara, is undertaking the task in my name. He has been empowered to do so by an Obedience from Most Reverend Father te General in Rome, who sends him to you with his personal good wishes for the success of the Visitation and with the blessing of our Seraphic Father, Saint Francis of Assisi. You will extend to Father Virgilius the same courtesy that you would have shown me as Provincial of the Irish Province; and you will find in him one who will return to the Province with a sympathetic account of your needs and requirements. The present occasion is a very special one. It marks the Golden Jubilee of the departure of the Friars from the home-Province to the United States. As it happens, the first venture took them to the West, and the Diocese of Baker City became a kind of focus from which which they radiated in time. It was in the year 1910 that the first Bishop of Baker City, Most te Reverend Doctor O'Reilly, appealed to us for help. His appeal found a sympathetic hearing even at a time when we were not rich in numbers. But it must be borne in mind that missionary Apostolate, even when it takes men into untilled fields, is an essential part of our Capuchin Franciscan heritage. It is gratifying to know that the first Capuchins, who went from Ireland to the West, participated from the beginning in the life of the Diocese of Baker City. But it is with a certain exaltation of spirit that one recalls the fact that the great pioneer, Father Luke of Cork, distributed the Palms and said Mass at Hermiston in 1910 for the first time in the history of that town. Beginnings are always significant. By a kind of instinct the human mind returns to them. The Church herself is constantly going back to Αριστ Cαρυγιπιαες, Saint Bonaventure's, Corporate. ST BONAVENTURE'S, CAPUCHIN HOSTEL, CORK. her birth on Calvary, and to Pentecost when she celebrated that birth, and it is She who teaches us to commemorate. But commemoration is never without a purpose; it is not merely to recall a past that is dead but to bring into a living Present events and deeds that are of the past. On this occasion we celebrate a Jubilee because we wish to thank God for the part that the Irish Capuchins played in evangelising this part of Western America; and we are glad to know that the Triuliary occasion will be graced by the presence of in person of His Lordship, Doctor Leipzig, who is a accessor to Bishop O'Reilly who dediced the…