An American Dream … Come True
The video of the exhibit presentation by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Matt Malone, S.J., and Claire Vouk, Co-Curator of the exhibit, Saturday, January 14 at 4:00 p.m.
60-MINUTE LIVE PRESENTATIONS WITH STAGED READINGS, IMAGES AND MUSIC
Friday, January 13, 2017
7:45 p.m.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
9:45 a.m. | 11:00 a.m. | 12:15 p.m. | 1:30 p.m. | 2:45 p.m. | 4:00 p.m. | 5:15 p.m. | 6:30 p.m. | 7:45 p.m.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
10:30 a.m. | 11:45 a.m. | 1:00 p.m. | 2:15 p.m. | 3:30 p.m. | 4:45 p.m. | 6:00 p.m. | 7:15 p.m.
Exhibit Panels (PDF) | Exhibit Booklet (PDF)
A journey with Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf, and Companions, Junípero Serra, Damien of Molokai, and Katharine Drexel. The exhibit will be presented by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, Matt Malone, S.J., President & Editor in Chief of America Media, and Claire Vouk, Co-Curator of the exhibit, on Saturday, January 14 at 4:00 p.m.
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An American Dream Come True: A Journey With Some American Saints is a voyage in the company of a group of American saints through space and time, crisscrossing the immense North American continent and spreading across four centuries. The exhibit was created by a group of university students and professors from the United States, Canada, and Switzerland who, out of an interest in understanding what holiness amounts to, studied the lives and works of a selection of saints from North America. Our reading and discussion brought us to a better knowledge of our own history, and of our very selves. The exhibit’s title An American Dream Come True is intended to be provocative; we aim to show that running through the history of North America are the stories of men and women who dreamed of bringing Jesus to this land, and who, by doing so, began to build up a new humanity.
Several important themes appear as one moves through the exhibit. In the course of their missions, all of the saints whose lives we present encountered men and women who were very different from themselves. Indeed, their zeal to communicate the Good News led these saints to make often astounding efforts to understand and embrace the other. The conviction that the other was a fundamental good for them thus profoundly inspired them.
Another significant characteristic of these saints is their humanity. The exhibit depicts them as they are given to us through the historical sources, as products of their time, full of limits and contradictions, but also as individuals embarked on gradual paths of conversion, experiencing personal dramas, and enduring significant hardships. Each human detail renders more and more evident the exceptionality of their witness, and encourages us to ask questions about the source of their strength.
Finally, there is the discovery that, in reading the lives and letters of these saints, their initial distance from us, due to language, culture, and sensibilities so often different from our own habits of thinking, gives way to a surprising sense of familiarity. They have become our travelling companions, and the Church, in canonizing them in recent times, has suggested that their witness has a value for the contemporary world. This leads us to ask: What do these saints have to say to us today?
This journey offers four presentations of the lives of saints who lived from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and, in a concluding section, offers a glimpse of some of the fruits of their vocations.
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The exhibit is sponsored by America Media.
