Express Announcements ~ June 5, 2016

Express Announcements ~ June 5, 2016

* Join us! Our PARISH PICNIC at Holy Cross Academy is Sunday, NEXT weekend, June 12, 3-7pm in the afternoon. Please note: we are still in need of volunteers for the CCW to help serve meals from 3-6pm. Sign up for a one-hour shift. See p. 6.

* Save the date. Our next annual Called and Gifted Workshop will be held on August 26–27, 2016. Mark your calendars and invite your friends! Registration opens June 1.

* The “Believe Group” is a new Health Ministry discussion group for those facing a cancer diagnosis and for those sharing this experience with a loved one. Our first meeting will be Sunday, June 12 from 9:30-11:30am in the Courtyard Meeting Room, see page 11 for details.

* Join us next week for the Taizé Prayer Service on Monday, June 13 at 8:15pm. Now in our 9th year, we have met each month to pray for Christian unity in our community and in the world. All Christians are warmly invited; invite your friends! Please note that Taize for the month of July, will be moved to Monday, July 18 at 8:15pm.

* A Biblical Walk Through the Mass, summer bible study begins June 23 at 9:45am in the Courtyard Meeting Room and will continue for the following five Thursdays, Registration is required and there is a $ 10 fee to cover the cost of materials.

* Father Day Novena begins June 19. Cards and envelopes are available in the vestibule of the Church.

* Click here for Mass, Confession and Devotions Schedules

From Our Pastor ~ June 5, 2016

From Our Pastor ~ June 5, 2016

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

We’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of years working on the idea of gifts. The Called and Gifted Workshop, now a part of our parish experience, will be offered again this August 26-27. In my experience, the Workshop fulfills two principal tasks.

First, it challenges you to make an inventory of gifts, despite the fact you are probably convinced you don’t have any. Most people don’t think about it, or would never claim special gifts. You can’t be baptized without gifts. Baptism comes with gifts; you have them. The second task comes with work in small groups—you learn to experience self through others and their feedback. We are the worst judge of ourselves: we can underestimate or overestimate our gifts so easily. If you overestimate, you can come up short, frustrated. If you underestimate, you can go to waste.

Four Workshops later, I personally have realized that when God gives, he doesn’t give partially. There is no such thing as only getting part of a gift. As if I could think  that I only got a part of the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation. Maybe just a little bit of this, a little of that. God gives gifts according to his knowledge of us, according to what we are capable of doing: what we need in order to accomplish his will. God gives us the entire gift.

At our two Confirmation Masses last week, I was standing right there as the confirmandi came forward with their sponsors. I was looking into teir faces—8th graders don’t want you to think they are paying attention—and I saw a deep connection taking place. The Holy Spirit was filling them with what the Holy Spirit knew they needed to go forward from that day as active participants in faith and the Church. In today’s world, that is a lot.

I didn’t get to give a reflection at those Masses, but what I wanted to say was, “Don’t underestimate what just happened! Please— don’t underestimate the gift you just  received! You don’t have to make a lot of mistakes—you don’t have to doubt a lot of things, because God’s love is perfect—and he has just filled you with perfect love! No need to doubt it, that that gift is absolute. Even if it may seem just like a little, it is more than enough to go around.

Think of the Gospel from last week. Five loaves, two fish, 5000 men (double that many, probably, adding women and children). Jesus’ first instruction to his disciples: “Give them something to eat yourselves.” They responded with doubt: what do we have to give? All the time they had spent with Jesus, so many gifts. They underestimated the reality.

Jesus gives himself entirely in the Eucharist, not just a little piece of himself. ALL the Son of God, Jesus Christ, not just a memory or a thought or a finger of the Body, but completely himself. We can doubt as we walk out of church today whether or not we have the full presence of Jesus within us. Like I wanted to say to the newly confirmed: Don’t doubt that. Don’t underestimate the gift you have received today. It is the full power, beauty, truth, God himself. Spend some time reflecting what this gift must mean. If I have received the author of all creation, and all life, the perfect lover, how must my life be different now?

It took me nearly twenty years as a priest to finally realize: Once you recognize the gifts you have received, you are changed. You don’t look at life the same way anymore. You recognize what God is doing for you.

The Eucharist was the culmination of everything that Jesus did, everything that the Father does with creation, the whole story of difficulty, struggle, covenant, infidelity, suffering, pain, death—and then the Son of God empties himself to put himself in our place so that he is certain that what he communicates to us makes sense. He has heard it with his own human ears. He knows what we need, he knows what feeds us, he becomes the perfect expression of what sustains, what grows, what saves lives. Food and drink, what we need to not starve and live. And we are capable of appreciating what we receive, as he knew in his humanity of his own Father’s goodness to himself.

This is how we know that we can be his presence to the world: We are called, and have received the fullness of his gifts, and love.

God bless you.

Fr. Don

Meditation May 29, 2016 readings

Meditation May 29, 2016 readings

Direct Link to Audio File: Meditation on May 29, 2016 readings

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Reading 1 Gn 14:18-20

In those days, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine,
and being a priest of God Most High,
he blessed Abram with these words:
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
the creator of heaven and earth;
and blessed be God Most High,
who delivered your foes into your hand.”
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 110:1, 2, 3, 4

R. (4b) You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand
till I make your enemies your footstool.”
R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
The scepter of your power the LORD will stretch forth from Zion:
“Rule in the midst of your enemies.”
R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
“Yours is princely power in the day of your birth, in holy splendor;
before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you.”
R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
The LORD has sworn, and he will not repent:
“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.

Reading 2 1 Cor 11:23-26

Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Sequence – Lauda Sion

Laud, O Zion, your salvation,
Laud with hymns of exultation,
Christ, your king and shepherd true:

Bring him all the praise you know,
He is more than you bestow.
Never can you reach his due.

Special theme for glad thanksgiving
Is the quick’ning and the living
Bread today before you set:

From his hands of old partaken,
As we know, by faith unshaken,
Where the Twelve at supper met.

Full and clear ring out your chanting,
Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting,
From your heart let praises burst:

For today the feast is holden,
When the institution olden
Of that supper was rehearsed.

Here the new law’s new oblation,
By the new king’s revelation,
Ends the form of ancient rite:

Now the new the old effaces,
Truth away the shadow chases,
Light dispels the gloom of night.

What he did at supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated,
His memorial ne’er to cease:

And his rule for guidance taking,
Bread and wine we hallow, making
Thus our sacrifice of peace.

This the truth each Christian learns,
Bread into his flesh he turns,
To his precious blood the wine:

Sight has fail’d, nor thought conceives,
But a dauntless faith believes,
Resting on a pow’r divine.

Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things are all we see:

Blood is poured and flesh is broken,
Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.

Whoso of this food partakes,
Does not rend the Lord nor breaks;
Christ is whole to all that taste:

Thousands are, as one, receivers,
One, as thousands of believers,
Eats of him who cannot waste.

Bad and good the feast are sharing,
Of what divers dooms preparing,
Endless death, or endless life.

Life to these, to those damnation,
See how like participation
Is with unlike issues rife.

When the sacrament is broken,
Doubt not, but believe ‘tis spoken,
That each sever’d outward token
doth the very whole contain.

Nought the precious gift divides,
Breaking but the sign betides
Jesus still the same abides,
still unbroken does remain.

The shorter form of the sequence begins here.

Lo! the angel’s food is given
To the pilgrim who has striven;
see the children’s bread from heaven,
which on dogs may not be spent.

Truth the ancient types fulfilling,
Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling,
manna to the fathers sent.

Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.

You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.

Alleluia Jn 6:51

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the living bread come down from heaven, says the Lord;
whoever eats this bread will live forever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel Lk 9:11b-17

Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God,
and he healed those who needed to be cured.
As the day was drawing to a close,
the Twelve approached him and said,
“Dismiss the crowd
so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms
and find lodging and provisions;
for we are in a deserted place here.”
He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.”
They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have,
unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.”
Now the men there numbered about five thousand.
Then he said to his disciples,
“Have them sit down in groups of about fifty.”
They did so and made them all sit down.
Then taking the five loaves and the two fish,
and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing over them, broke them,
and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
They all ate and were satisfied.
And when the leftover fragments were picked up,
they filled twelve wicker baskets.
From Our Pastor ~ May 29, 2016

From Our Pastor ~ May 29, 2016

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I recently went to the website of a company whose services we use frequently, who have always given us great service, and saw below on the screen posts from people who had nothing but nasty, sometimes cruel, things to say about how they weren’t satisfied. I guess this sort of thing is very common. It is one of the reasons I use the internet only when necessary.

So I left a kind, grateful statement about how we had always received what we ordered in a timely manner and the quality of the work was always good. I went back there a couple of days later and found that several people had attacked my statement. I had posted my name as Fr. Don Rooney, and one person even attacked the Church on my behalf.

There is probably stuff being said about all of us in the cyberspace of non-reality that we are not even aware of. Maybe it is better that we not know: commit with me to live in reality and speak with people face to face. Give people the dignity that is due to them!

Life has to be lived face to face, or it isn’t life, and it isn’t human.

Love only exists in relationship, it isn’t some kind of an idea, or ideal. When Jesus says you must love one another, he presumes you are face to face. What counsel he would give us about blogs and comments if he were to appear today?

How do you fulfill Jesus’ command to love your neighbor when your neighbor is optional? Have we grown into a society that doesn’t deal directly with human beings anymore? More and more people today are uncomfortable with direct interaction with other people. I know one person, in his mid-twenties, who told me his best friend is someone he met on line. I asked him if he ever actually met him in real time. “No.”

You can live your “life” on-line, say what you want, be somebody else, speak with no filter. People say things they never would never say to someone face to face, things about other people, terrible things. You can ruin people and never be accountable. It becomes a habit of self-centeredness (because it’s only you and the screen) and then, slowly, it creeps into real life, this loveless approach to other people as concepts. People talk over each other as if the other person isn’t even there—just watch the evening news. Being desensitized to humanity on the screen leads to inhuman treatment of real human persons: consider the loss of respect for life, once unthinkable violence, even pornography. These become just “things” without regard to the reality that it is a person who weighs in the balance of our selfishness.

Once relationship is gone, we have destroyed the image of God, who is Relationship in the unity of three Persons. No longer we, I have something to say; I have the right to say it and it doesn’t matter to me to whom, or about whom, or at the expense of whom I say it – others have become faceless and not present, and I am no longer accountable.

We must reclaim this precious image of God in us – community, relationship of life, love. Otherwise we have become something other than Trinity. We have become something other than Human.

But, if you take the time to look into the eyes of another, really look while you talk, how can you not see them, and see yourself in the process? Remember Jesus’ stream of consciousness prayers when he prays to the Father? “I in you, and you in me…” He takes all that is his, all that the Father has given to him, and he gives it to us. This simple encounter, this connection, is the first step to restoring this likeness to God which is our identity from before the foundation of the world.

The world’s greatest need is to receive the Good News of Jesus Christ: life, love. How we are gathered into his Body, how God is indwelling in us. This evangelization  (“new evangelization”) is the missing link to a humanity that has become dehumanized, is drifting, is seeking fulfillment in real relationship, not in the prison of isolation. How sad it must be to be one of these people who live most of their life in virtual reality.

This evangelization of the life and love of God, Father, Son, Spirit only happens through real, open encounter. Real, honest dialogue. Real, loving relationship. As we  journey together to that Day when we will all be in God and one another in the perfect existence of heaven.

God bless you.

Fr. Don