HCH Photo By Anna Weaver

Father Stephen Rossetti speaks in the co-cathedral, Jan. 22.
 

In an accessible and engaging presentation at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa on the evening of Jan. 22, Father Stephen Rossetti spoke to 50 people about keeping thanksgiving and joy in their lives.

Father Rossetti, who was in Hawaii to lead the weeklong diocesan priests’ retreat from Jan. 20-25, is a priest of the Diocese of Syracuse and president and chief executive officer of the St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., a treatment center for clergy and religious with psychological problems.

Before becoming a priest, he attended the U.S. Air Force Academy and was an intelligence officer for six years. Father Rossetti later got a doctorate in psychology from Boston College and a doctor of ministry degree from Catholic University of America. He has written several books on religious topics.

Father Rossetti used a PowerPoint presentation to guide his talk, with quotations from the Bible and people such as St. Thomas More and Meister Eckhart projected on a screen for everyone to read.

In speaking of “thanksgiving,” he pointed out that the word Eucharist comes from the Greek word “eucharistia,” which means Thanksgiving. “To be a Eucharistic people is not only to gather around the altar at the peak moments [at Mass] … it’s spread out through our entire lives,” he said.

“It’s kind of the Christian attitude to give thanks,” he said, later adding that the “quintessential reasons we’re grateful” are because of the gift of life and the gift of God in Jesus’ life.

The second part of Father Rossetti’s lecture focused on joy. He used the example of his time studying to be a Carthusian monk, which he said was a very ascetic but joyful lifestyle.

One day while on a rare trip away from the monastery on a public bus, he looked around and wondered if something terrible had happened in world events to make his fellow riders so sad.

“Then I realized, nothing happened,” he said. “These people are always this miserable.”

“A lot of times, people think to be holy is to be miserable,” he said. “When you think about the saints in your life, often they are joyful, happy people.”

Throughout his talk, Father Rossetti gave several concrete recommendations to people on how to improve their spiritual lives, including taking a moment daily to have a mental gratitude check, saying “thanks” to God after receiving Communion, and searching the Bible for the number of times the word “joy” appears in the New Testament.

Father Rossetti ended his lecture by reciting Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice.”

He then took about 10 minutes to answer questions, which ranged from the importance of inner peace to the joy of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

On the latter, he said that after reading “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” the recent book on the Missionary of Charity’s experience of the dark night of the soul, “I realized that Mother Teresa is going to be one of the greatest saints of all time.”

One of those who came to hear Father Rossetti speak was Maria Barnes. She said that she originally thought he would focus his talk on his work at the St. Luke Institute and the recent clergy sexual abuse scandal but that she liked his message about rejoicing.

“God created us not to be sad or lonely,” Barnes said. “He created us to be happy and to have joy in our lives.”

Another audience member was Dustin Downing, who liked Father Rossetti’s connecting of peace, gratitude and joy. “In order to have joy we must recognize what we have been given by God,” he said. “The fruit of gratitude is joy and peace.”