Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Monday, August 17
12:05 PM Tae Jin, Chung
Saturday, August 22
4:00 PM Nellie & Michael Ryder
Sunday, August 23
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
CELEBRANTS FOR NEXT WEEKEND’S MASSES
Saturday, August 22
4:00 PM Fr. Collins
Sunday, August 23
9:00 AM Fr. Connelly
10:30 AM Fr. St. Martin
11:45 AM Fr. Connelly
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, August 22 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN OPRDINARY TIME
First Reading: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b
Second Reading: Ephesians 5:21-32
Gospel Reading: John 6:60-69
CATHOLIC HOME MISSIONS COLLECTION
Next week’s special collection is for Catholic Missions within the US. This Appeal helps strengthen Catholic communities in mission dioceses by underwriting evangelization, religious education, education for future priests, and training for lay ministers. Some of these funds also go to the Archdiocese for the Military Services so that sacraments, counseling and comfort may be offered to Catholics who serve our country in the numerous bases throughout the world. Your generosity is greatly appreciated. For more information, visit www.usccb.org/hm.
AUSTRIAN DELIGHT – PASSION PLAY TRIP
A play of life and death, promised in a moment of mortal threat - so began the history of the Oberammergau Passion Play in 1633. In the year 2010, the Community of Oberammergau will perform for the 41st time the Passion Play they have preserved throughout the centuries with singular continuity. Corpus Christi-St. Bernard Parish of Newton will sponsor a trip to the Passion Play including visits to sites in Germany and Austria from August 24-September 1, 2010. Cost for the trip is $3,899 (per person/double occupancy). A slide show and information about the trip will be conducted on Monday, August 24, 2009 at 7:00 pm in Father Moore Hall (St. Bernard’s Church, 1529 Washington Street, West Newton). For additional details, call 617-244-0608.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
Pope Benedict said: “Because God has loved us first and continues to do so, we can respond with love.”
Are you looking for a way to respond to God’s great love for you in service to His people? Then teaching CCD could be the way! We are looking for new teachers for both our Tuesday and Sunday programs. Please contact the religious education office now, so that we can plan for this upcoming year. I look forward to hearing from you by phone or email: religious.education@sacredheart.ws !
We are also in need of TAT and KCS instructors for the upcoming year. These individuals are responsible for teaching the catechists how to implement the personal safety/abuse prevention education programs in the classrooms. If you are interested in learning more about this important and necessary part of our CCD program and would like to become a “trainer to train the trainers” please contact the religious education office by phone or email.
Fr. St. Martin would like to make a home visit with the families of 2nd year Confirmation students before the end of August 2009. He is available Sundays and Thursdays at 7 PM throughout the summer. Please call 617-997-8025 and leave several options for this visit. This meeting would need to take place before your son/daughter begins this new year of Confirmation preparation.
CCD registration forms have been mailed. Early registration helps us plan for how many CCD teachers we will be needing for the upcoming year. If you have not received a registration form and would like to, please look in the back of the church and side entrances in upper and lower church for forms and CCD calendars or call the Religious Ed. Office. Children who will be in grade 1 this fall must complete 1 year in order to be prepared to receive First Eucharist in grade 2. Two years of preparation are required to receive the Eucharist.
Don’t forget to pick up 1st Communion photos before you leave for vacation! They can be picked up during regular business hours, at the rectory.
Michelle Solomon, DRE
ARISE – TOGETHER IN CHRIST
SEASON 3 – In the Footsteps of Christ
October 4 – November 13
Registration: September 12 – 20
Save the dates and spread the word!!
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of August 8/9 $ 4,944
HUMANITY TRANSFIGURED
[Father Robert Imbelli is our guest columnist today. He writes on a subject very dear to the minds and hearts of Eastern Catholics and Eastern Christians. We in the West need to follow the example of our Eastern brothers and sisters. Father Imbelli prepared this challenging column originally for L’Obsservatore Romano. We reprint it here with the implicit permission of the Holy Father.]
It is regrettable that one of the theologically richest feasts of the liturgical year falls in early August and thus scarcely receives the attention and celebration it deserves. The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ reveals the true face of the Lord: the beloved Son of the Father. It also reveals the destiny to which the disciples, and, indeed, all men and women are called. Transfiguration unveils the Truth of Christ and of all humanity.
The account of the Transfiguration in the Gospel of Saint Mark (read this year at Mass) significantly begins: “After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves, and he was transfigured before them” (Mk 9:2).
Some fathers of the Church understood the words, “after six days,” to announce the completion of creation. God’s creation of Adam and Eve finds fulfillment in the revelation of the true man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, in whom the glory of God dwells bodily.
Moreover, God’s progressive education of humanity, through the patient pedagogy of Torah and prophets, culminates in God’s own Son, Jesus Christ. Hence, Moses and Elijah appear bathed in the Light whose source is Christ. Their witness was an anticipation of the glory that is fully revealed in Christ; their words an echo of the Word of the Father become human in Jesus.
In his new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI writes: “Only if we are aware of our calling as individuals and as a community to be part of God’s family as his sons and daughters, will we be able to generate a new vision and muster new energy in the service of a truly integral humanism” (78). This theme of integral humanism, so dear to Pope Paul VI, inspires the Church’s social teaching and impels the quest for integral human development. Drawing upon Paul’s teaching in Populorum Progressio, Benedict XVI writes: “The truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development” (18).
Integral humanism, therefore, extols the dignity of every human being from conception to natural death. It acknowledges both the material and the spiritual needs of the human family. It promotes social justice and gives pride of place to the common good of all. It knows that the service of the common good requires concrete and efficacious solidarity on the regional, national, and global levels. It confesses that the destiny of humankind is a corporate one and that its ultimate goal is the communion of saints living eternally with God. A truly integral humanism contemplates humanity and all creation ultimately transfigured in Christ.
In this light, therefore, one can celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration as the feast in which the Church proclaims its vision of “integral humanism.” The Eastern Church enhances its liturgical celebrations by the veneration of icons that aid the believer to behold the beauty of the Lord. Entering contemplatively into the beauty of the transfigured Christ liberates disciples to desire that all the world may be bathed in transfigured light and to act boldly upon that holy desire.
But, the Transfiguration also reveals, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “the cost of discipleship.” In Saint Luke’s account of the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah converse with Jesus about “the exodus which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Lk 9:31). The full scope of Christ’s truthful love, his caritas in veritate, is only made manifest in his paschal mystery. The new transfigured life is only attained through the death of the old Adam in us, so that we might rise to the newness of transfigured life.
Perhaps it is this realization of the cost of discipleship that causes the disciples, in the icon of the Transfiguration, to be shown thrown to the ground, blinded by the dazzling light of Truth. Nonetheless, ravished and buoyed by the beauty of the vision, they continue on the journey of faith, following Jesus on the way to Jerusalem.
To live faithfully the journey of faith, whether by the first disciples or the disciples of the twenty-first century, requires a renewed commitment to follow the transfigured Christ. The Christian vision of an integral humanism needs to be embodied in an integral spirituality in which prayer and action, truth and love, individual responsibility and social justice form a seamless whole.
A conviction of the need for spiritual discipline and for ongoing conversion, on the part of those called to promote authentic development, permeates Pope Benedict’s Encyclical. He writes: “Development requires attention to the spiritual life, a serious consideration of the experiences of trust in God, spiritual fellowship in Christ, reliance upon God’s providence and mercy, love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace. All this is essential if ‘hearts of stone’ are to be transformed into ‘hearts of flesh’ (Ezek 36:26), rendering life on earth ‘divine’ and thus more worthy of humanity” (79).
In the Eastern Christian tradition this “divinization,” this “theosis,” finds privileged representation in the icon of the Transfiguration. But, in the Christian West, Paul VI himself manifested this mystery in his own life. The image of the
transfigured Lord energized the heart of his spirituality and of his hope for the Church and humanity. It is wondrous grace of God’s Providence that he died on the very night of the Feast, August 6, 1978.
Among the last earthly words Paul VI would have heard are these from the Second Letter of St. Peter, proclaimed during Mass of the Feast. They serve as this great Pontiff’s testimony to us. “Jesus received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice came to him from the majestic Glory, ‘This is my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain. And we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:17-19).
SIGNINGS
Good People,
One time a man (who is himself deaf) told me a story. Way back when he was a small child he remembered that his Grandfather, whom he loved, became sick. Then one day everyone got dressed up and they all got together in a house. He went into the room and he saw his Grandfather there asleep so he tried to nudge him awake. The boy's father tried to explain that he was not asleep but the whole thing was too much and the boy's father picked up the boy kicking and crying.
The boy was young and had not yet been introduced to the concept of death. No one explained that Grandfather was going to die or had died and no one had explained what death is or what it looks like.
In today's Gospel Jesus teaches us about death. He teaches us that we do not need to fear it. He tells us that if we deeply take in His teachings we can even avoid it all together. If we follow Jesus so closely and listen to him so perfectly and do what he does completely we will never die. Jesus wants us to follow his words so closely he makes himself present in the bread and cup at Mass and actually comes into us in a real way.
The way we skip death looks like death on the outside. We will still end up having to go through the process of dying here on earth. Jesus did that too. We will follow His suffering and we will seem to die like He did. But really Jesus gives us the power to have that death be not death at all but the opposite. With Jesus death becomes better than any beginning. It is the beginning of eternal life.
That is our hope. To die with Christ so as to experience the life we desire that this world can never offer.
In Christ,
Fr. St. Martin
TIME TO REPLENISH SCHOOL SUPPLIES
Our parish-wide school supplies project for students and teachers at Mother Caroline Academy will run from August 22/23 through September 19/20. Each weekend baskets will be placed at the entrances for collection of “new” items. Since the school is totally privately funded, they depend on donations from individuals, churches, and organization. Due to the present economy, this year they need your help more than ever!! So, as you purchase back-to-school items or refill your own home and/or business office supplies, please consider buying and donating the following supplies: Items are needed for 64 students and 9 volunteer teachers.
hand-held calculators (only basic keys)
AAA batteries for graphing calculators (4 per calculator)
white board markers (black and other colors)
index cards tri-fold poster boards
Xerox paper zipper binders
3 ring notebook paper glue sticks
highlighters pencils
colored pencils black pens
blue pens markers
rulers graph paper
scissors
You can drop off donations in the collection baskets near church entrances any weekend through September 19/20. Any amount of supplies will be appreciated! Thanks in advance for your generosity!!!
Margaret LeBlanc Jane McGuire
FALL SEMESTER GERONTOLOGY CLASSES AT UMASS BOSTON
UMass Boston is accepting applications for its Manning Certificate Program in Gerontology. The program is designed to give students the skills and resources they need to plan for an aging society, work in the Aging network and advocate for elders. We continue to offer daytime, evening and online classes beginning September 7, 2009. Credits from this program can be applied toward earning a bachelor’s degree in Gerontology. The program is approved for financial aid. For an application/information, contact Mary St. Jean 617-287-7330 or email: mary.stjean@umb.edu.
CALENDAR NOTES
COFFEE HOUR AFTER THE ASL MASS:
Sunday, August 16 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
COFFEE HOUR:
Friday, August 21 – Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, Aug. 22 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
COFFEE HOUR AFTER THE ASL MASS:
Sunday, August 23 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center