Dear Beloved Parishioners,
The Parish Mission is upon us. I hope to see many of you tonight at 7pm. As Fr. MacDonald said during his homily at Mass, each evening will have a different focus, as we contemplate God’s mercy. And they are great opportunities to invite inactive Catholics, as well as neighbors who are not Catholic, to come and see, without them having to go through an entire Catholic Mass. (that will be Wednesday night.)
Tonight focuses on the Word of God.
Tuesday night focuses on Christ our Light who forgives the darkness of our sins. We will have 7 confessors available starting about 7:45 for those who wish to make use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Wednesday night WILL be a celebration of Mass.
Each night will end by 8pm, with some light food and various beverages and time for fellowship in the Parish Center. (Confessions will continue until we are done, but the social will start once the talks/prayer are done.)So, come and join us tonight. And Tuesday night. And Wednesday night. You will be glad that you did!!!!
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Listening Session(s) follow up…
Thanks to the 352 of you whom attended the parish Listening Sessions last Monday and Wednesday. That is a great turnout. (I know of some other parishes twice our size that did not have those numbers of folks in attendance.) So, thank you for helping to shape the future of our Archdiocese through your input.
And, as you heard, you will be (if you have not already) receiving the link to a follow up survey. Just a thought or two as you fill that out. I heard at both sessions that it is hard to recommend one option over the other without knowing what the school configurations will be. Though I don’t know the exact questions that will be asked, if they are similar to the listening sessions, you would have noticed that you were not asked which option you preferred. Rather, you were asked in each option – “What makes sense and would work? Why”, and “What is headed in the wrong direction? Why?”
Those are different questions that which of these options is better and what is worse. We might “hear” them that way, but that was not the input we were asked to give. (and I am presuming that we will be asked to give on the survey.) So, as you fill out the surveys, your answers to the questions about the various options IS NOT A CHOICE or REFERNDUM about the future school configuration. That will be a separate determination, on a timeline that is not known to me at the moment. (I presume it will be by January of 2024, but I have not heard anything official.)
If you ever saw the movie: The Sum of All Fears, the Ben Affleck character, at a pivotal moment says something to this effect: “I am just trying to get this information to the people who are making the decisions, because right now, they are making decisions based on the wrong evidence. My job is to get the best evidence to them so they can make the best decisions…”
Right now, the decisions on the table are all about the parish configurations. So, hear the survey, not as which option is “better or worse” – but as your chance to get the best information to the All Things New teams and the Archbishop for their prayerful discernment.
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The Deeper Dive into the Sunday Scriptures comes to us from the Pauline Evangelization Ministries and Fr. Frank Desano
We modern people have our own ways of imagining the end of the world. We see asteroids coming from a distant part of space. Our earth choking on the fumes we find necessary for our modern way of life. Some people even imagine aliens coming in space saucers and occupying our planet. For over 50 years the idea of total nuclear destruction seemed to recede; but it has returned with the invasion of Ukraine. Such are some of our modern images. Of course, Covid gave us yet another threat.
Our Scriptures, as they near the end of the church calendar, typically turn to a kind of literature we call “apocalyptic.” The word actually means “reveal what is hidden” but we take it to mean the definitive end of everything. Jesus and his contemporaries were quite familiar with this kind of literature and speaking which our Gospel plainly shows us.
The idea of the end of the world is strange. One the one hand, wow, it’s terrifying to think about. On the other hand, what are we supposed to do about it? Some early Christians sat around most of the time, talking about the end of the world, but used that worry as an excuse to do very little. Should we run around and panic? Should we live paralyzed in fear?
Jesus takes an entirely different approach in the Gospels. “When you see these things happen, do not be terrified. Such things are bound to happen.” Rather, Jesus invites his disciples to look upon their lives as people filled with hope, people who cannot be shaken by fear. Our first reading sees the end of things as the coming of justice, the coming of the time when everything will be lit up by the sun of God’s justice.
When you think about our Catholic faith, it is one unending participation in the victory that Jesus has already won. Isn’t baptism our sharing in the death and the resurrection of Jesus? Aren’t the sacraments of marriage and holy orders ways to arrange life in order to serve and give ourselves, and, in this way participate in the fullness of life? Isn’t Anointing the sacrament when we anticipate God’s healing of all creation through the healing you and I receive in our lives? And Reconciliation states that we have already discovered God’s peace and reconciliation. We Catholics don’t panic; we rejoice in the victory which is constantly being given to us.
The second reading is a very sober one. Paul is talking about people who refuse to live the life they are called to live. Maybe they think that, because they are saved, they are no longer responsible for anything. Paul tells us, rather, to imitate him, a man completely filled with the belief of Christ’s Resurrection and victory and, for that very reason, a man able to dedicate his life to helping others experience Christ’s victory too.
These apocalyptic images that we have are not to frighten us into immobility nor paralyze us in terror. They are to point out the terms in which you and I live, that the moment we have here are important because of the way they anticipate the promised fullness of creation. We go about our daily lives and work not because they are pointless exercises. Rather, the moments we have are shaping that ultimate event when God is all in all.
We may not know how or when the world will end. But we certainly have been taught how to live in the meantime.
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The Song for the Day:
Where did the Time Go? By Neil Tater an David Darling
Blessings,
Fr Bill