Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Monday, August 24
12:05 PM Pat & Theresa Manion
Saturday, August 29
4:00 PM Janice Lyons Myette & Richard Myette
Sunday, August 30
9:00 AM Joseph Chung
11:45 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, August 29 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8
Second Reading: James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27
Gospel Reading: Mark: 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
PROJECT RACHEL
Do you know someone who is carrying grief and sorrow over past abortions? Project Rachel is the post-abortion ministry of the Catholic Church to help those dealing with the pain of abortion. Project Rachel will offer a “Come to the Waters” post-abortion healing retreat on Saturday, September 19, 2009 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information and registration, contact Project Rachel at 508-651-3100 or email: help@projectrachelboston.com. All calls are confidential.
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.
CALENDAR NOTES
COFFEE HOUR AFTER THE ASL MASS:
Sunday, August 23 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, Aug. 29 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
COFFEE HOUR AFTER THE ASL MASS:
Sunday, August 30 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
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.
The deadline for registration for Religious Education is Friday, September 4th. CCD classes begin on Sunday, September 20th and Tuesday, September 29th. 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 is required to receive the Eucharist.
Fr. St. Martin would like to make a home visit with 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.
Michelle Solomon, Director of R.E.
ADVERTISE IN OUR BULLETIN
Liturgical Publications, Inc., our publisher, will have a sales representative available within the next few weeks for those interested in placing a new ad. This is your opportunity to secure a space for the new publication year. To place your ad, please contact the sales person listed on the ad page of our bulletin, or the parish office. We would like to thank our present advertisers for renewing their ad. Keep in mind; our advertising sponsors make this publication possible.
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of August 15/16 $3,970
Catholic Relief Services $1,134
SAVE A FAMILY!
[We’ve had some interesting and most helpful guest columnists lately for our weekly bulletin. Perhaps not a few are asking – “Is the Pastor doing any work?” Our column today is written by a parishioner, Kevin Elrod who, with his wife Katie and son T.J. (Timothy John), are active participants in our 9 o’clock Sunday Liturgy.]
Some time ago, I came across a fragment of a speech given by our last Holy Father at the United Nations in 1979. Invoking the parable of Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) with respect to the wealth disparity between the developed and Third World, he said: “We cannot stand idly by enjoying our own riches and freedom if in any place the Lazarus of the 20th century stands at our doors." The analogy lodged itself in my consciousness and, after some prayerful reflection, I resolved to find a way to give directly to a family in need in the Third World. This odyssey ended in our family’s financial sponsorship of two Indian families through a Canadian organization called “Save A Family Plan” (SAFP).
At the final Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress in 1964 in Mumbai, India, Pope Paul VI appealed to the world to find non-violent ways to combat poverty and hunger in places like India. A priest from the diocese of Ernakalum, South India by the name of Augustine Kandathil (“Fr. Gus” 1920 - 2001) heard the appeal and a year later started SAFP. It is a registered international non-governmental organization committed to working with the poor of India regardless of caste, creed, gender or political affiliation and helps over 19,000 Indian families annually. 100% of all donations reach the poor. SAFP achieves this goal by keeping administrative costs low, using investment income to cover operational expenses, and the participation of a large volunteer base. It is housed for a nominal fee at St. Peter’s Seminary in London, Ontario.
Our family participates in SAFP’s Family-To-Family Development Program. It works like this. Your family agrees to financially sponsor a family in India for $20 a month for a period of six years at the end of which most families achieve self-sufficiency. News is sent to India that your family has been selected and a bank account is set up in their name. Each month, your $20 donation is deposited directly into it. In the short term, the money goes toward providing for basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, or medicine. Over the long term, the family is encouraged to save a little money each month to start a livelihood enterprise. Through its affiliation with SAFP, the family is able to obtain loans and all the necessary training to start one.
SAFP partners in India with Diocesan Social Service Societies and more than 10,000 sanghams (grassroots people’s organizations) to which each participating family belongs and whose members are active in selecting the neediest families and those most likely to benefit from the program. SAFP’s coordinators and local facilitators meet with sangham members and families to work out a plan of action. The sangham’s support of the family’s development of a livelihood enterprise helps to ensure its success.
When your family is selected, you receive information describing their situation and a photo of them. You are provided an address at which you may contact them and are encouraged to write as often as you like (partly in order to foster a spirit of self-sufficiency, parcels and gifts outside of the $20 monthly donation are discouraged). Your family writes twice a year via an interpreter to let you know how they are doing.
The description of one our families began: “The family of <name omitted> is in a pathetic condition.” It explained that the father is unable to work due to mental illness and the family cannot afford his treatment. The mother is currently unable to work due to a fall that has left her partially paralyzed. The family’s dire poverty has forced its eldest son into an orphanage. The eldest daughter has a mental illness that causes her to run and hide in a dark room if someone approaches the house. She cries constantly. They live in a coconut thatched roof house provided by the generosity of the mother’s brother. The local priest who recommended the family for SAFP describes it is as “not livable.” They have no monthly income and no savings. To return to the parable of Lazarus, doesn’t $20 a month for many of us in the West amount to “crumbs from the rich man’s table”? Yet to a family like this, it is the difference between adequate food, medicine, and shelter today and freedom from a crushing burden of poverty tomorrow.
SAFP’s promotion of direct personal contact, as well as direct receipt of funds by the sponsored family, fosters a sense of relationship and spiritual connection. This has proved a source of unexpected blessing from our participation in SAFP. Soon after we started giving, we received a letter from one of our sponsored families that brought us great joy. Part of it reads: “Thank you very much for your love and concern to my family. We love you and pray for you every day, especially during our family prayers.” Indeed, we do love the families we sponsor, keep them in our daily prayers, and ask the Lord to remember them as we bear His Cross in our daily lives. The uniting of the hearts of two families on opposite ends of the globe in a bond of charity and prayer, to my mind, is a sure sign of the creative genius of the Holy Spirit at work in SAFP. It also marks a stunning fulfillment of the engraving on Fr. Gus’s tomb in his home parish in Vaikom, Kerala, India: “The poor deserve the best.”
To learn more about SAFP, visit their website at www.safp.org. There is also a limited amount of literature at the back of the upper Church.
SIGNINGS
Good People,
Paul tells us of the wonderful relationship married women are to have with their husbands. Paul tells us that women now need to see their husbands in a new way. Husbands are to be seen by their wives as so loving and so willing to serve that they are willing to become slaves for their wives. Women are to see in their husbands men who are so full of love that the whole point of their existence is to pour out their time and energy, their service, and everything they have to bring out the best in the wife. Wives are to see their husbands as Christ himself.
Wow! Husbands have a lot to do. They need to become like Christ for their wives! That means they need to become like servants for their wives. Paul tells us that wives should expect that in their husbands!
Many men are afraid of Christ because the responsibility that Christ asks men to accept is great. Jesus wants men to become servants like himself, ready to be so loving that they will serve others at the cost of everything, even their very selves.
Jesus is gentle about it all. He calls men to become humble servants like himself. He calls men to become like women in the sense that without Christ men tend to want to force women to be servants for them. Jesus makes this into the opposite.
Jesus tells the people that in some way the women have it right. The great thing in this world is service to others. The men need to follow Christ's example of loving service and women need to help men by expecting that kind of love in them by looking at them as they do Christ, seeing in men a call to deep and dramatic self-giving love.
This message, like the message of Jesus in the gospel about the radical union with himself in the Eucharist, is rejected by many. It was in Christ's day and it is today. Many people will not accept Christ's love and his call.
That is O.K. Christ never forces. He will not force me and he will not force you. We who are men must love like Christ. Women must too, but women have a special way to help men learn service by expecting and encouraging men in roles of service.
Women can help men be better priests by cherishing that service when they see it in the priest. The encouragement women give priests is unique. The priest helps husbands to see that they need to love their wives and families in a way that is not selfish but gives with reckless abandon born of mad love.
In Christ,
Fr. St. Martin
ANNUAL LAWN PARTY TO BENEFIT SEMINARIANS
Blessed John XXIII National Seminary is hosting its 28th Annual Lawn Party on Wednesday, September 23rd, at 6:00 P.M, on the grounds of the seminary. This premiere fundraising event is hosted by His Eminence, Sean Cardinal O’Malley, OFM Cap. The evening will include a reception and dinner with music. Located on Route 30 in Weston, the seminary prepares second career candidates, men over the age of 30, for priesthood. The proceeds from the Lawn Party help to keep tuition costs affordable. For ticket information, please call the Blessed John XXIII Development Office at 781-899-5500, or visit www.blessedjohnxxiii.edu. You can make a difference and encourage the vocations of these men through your support of the Lawn Party.
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. 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
RETROUVAILLE....a Lifeline
Rediscover a loving marriage with a Retrouvaille weekend. If your marriage is tearing the two of you apart, if there is little or no meaningful communication, if you are considering separation or divorce, we believe Retrouvaille can help you. Call us at 1-800-470-2230 or look us up on the web at www.HelpOurMarriage.com. The next New England renewal weekends are: Sept. 11-13, 2009, January 15-17, 2010 and April 16-18, 2010.