A Trip to Bardstown, Kentucky and a Mission for the Handmaids Completed
In 2010, His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke, then Archbishop, met with Rev. Mother Marietta at the Heart of Mary Priory in Lake Villa, IL while visiting our community there. He expressed his desire that we work to help complete the digitization and archiving of the massive collection of audio and video retreats we possessed of the Servant of God Father John A. Hardon, S.J.
Father Hardon, a spiritual father to our Handmaid family for decades after the death of our Founder had given us many retreats in person over the years which were transcribed as well as recorded on both audio and video. In addition, we had received other additional recordings from the Institute on Religious Life (IRL) on both reel-to-reel and cassette tapes of Father’s many other retreats, conferences, and classes over his life of prolific service to the Church. The need to transfer this perishable media to a digital format was imperative and Cardinal Burke’s urged us to devote resources to it. So, with lots of prayer, patience, and painstaking effort one tape at a time was converted to mp3 format and cataloged. The final step was not only making the mp3s available to online resources such as www.therealpresence.org but delivering the original tapes (masters, copies etc) to the physical archive, presently located at Eternal Life Apostolate in Bardstown, KY.
On 3 December 2014, the Handmaids in Benton, TN gathered for a last minute assembly of the precious cargo about to be delivered to Eternal Life Apostolate. Tapes, serial numbers, and packing lists and labels were all cross checked as boxes were tied together, labeled, and loaded into the car. The next day the archived materials were delivered in Bardstown marking a milestone for our part in the effort to assemble and catalog Father Hardon’s work.
Many of his audio tapes can be found here: http://therealpresence.org/archives/MP3/MP3.htm
Many of his videos can be found here: http://therealpresence.org/archives/Video/video.htm
For more information on the status of Father Hardon’s cause, his archive, and guild, please visit: http://www.hardonsj.org
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- Sisters gather to carefully cross check each cassette against the printed lists the archivists will receive to document what Father Hardon material is on the tapes.
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- Double and triple checking the paperwork accompanying the master and duplicates so all the numbers match.
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- Recognize this? It’s called a cassette tape. Once upon a time music and audio recordings were found on these and played in things called tape recorders and tape players.
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- Literally thousands of tapes, including reel-to-reel magnetic tapes were digitized in the effort to preserve the audio recordings of Father Hardon.
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- Sister displays other treasures being packed for the archives at Eternal Life…raw, handwritten retreat notes by Father Hardon.
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- Servant of God Father John A. Hardon, S.J. handwritten retreat notes.
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- Father Hardon’s Handwriting
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- Catalogued, cross referenced, and labeled. Complete sets of entire retreats given by Father Hardon in each box.
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- Halfway packed and already very full! Mother Marietta and Sister Anunziata pause during loading of the packaged audio tapes.
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- It is finished. A tied and labeled box full of archived magnetic tapes awaits loading and shipping to Father Hardon’s Archives.