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  "Mystic
maneuverability" was a provocative phrase Passionist Father Augustine
Paul Hennessy sometimes used in conversations with those who knew him.
Former editor of The Sign magazine and a past president of the
Catholic Theological Society of America, he was a thinker who challenged
others and one who loved words.
He died on
Holy Thursday, April 8, 2004.
Some months
ago an admirer of his writings suggested that we publish some of his
past editorials in Compassion and offered one for consideration.
It was called "Atonement is More Than a Word,"
and we begin this issue with it.
Jesus is more
than a word or a theological symbol, Augustine writes, he was a man
"who has felt the world's pains," who was plunged in the maelstrom
of "this messy, disrupted, mixed-up world," and "made
his own destiny at -- one with ours until the end of time."
For the last
12 years, Fr Augustine was plunged into a suffering world of his own
-- acute Alzheimer's disease. A lover of words and conversation, he
entered a world of silence, which so often seems to us lifeless. But
is it lifeless, if the One "who made his own destiny at-one with
ours until the end of time" is also there?
Surely, Augustine
Paul was a mystic, a maneuverable talented mystic, author and speaker
of many thoughts and words, a priest his community esteemed. But he
knew that thoughts and words and esteem are not all. In ways we don't
understand, God's work of redemption goes on, even in the silence.
email
questions or comments
Copyright 2004 - all rights reserved - Passionist
Missionaries of Union City, NJ, USA
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Publisher: Terence Kristofak, C.P., Provincial
Eastern Province
Editor: Victor Hoagland, C.P. • Coeditors: Mary Ann Strain, C.P.
and Kevin Dance, C.P.
Art Director: Sr. Mary Clement • CSAC Circulation: James Fitzgerald
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