Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Wednesday, July 1
7:00 AM Cynthia Martin
Friday, July 3
12:05 PM Anna Esposito
Saturday, July 4
4:00 PM John F. Walsh
Sunday, July 5
9:00 AM Norman P. LeBlanc
11:45 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
CELEBRANTS FOR NEXT WEEKEND’S MASSES
Saturday, July 4
4:00 PM Fr. Connelly
Sunday, July 5
9:00 AM Fr. Imbelli
10:30 AM Fr. St. Martin
11:45 AM Fr. Connelly
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, July 4 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First Reading: Ezekiel 2:2-5
Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Gospel Reading: Mark 6:1-6
HOLIDAY – INDEPENDENCE DAY
This holiday is being celebrated on Friday, July 3. The usual Mass schedule for Friday – 9 AM and 12:05 PM – will be followed. Saturday, July 4, Masses will be celebrated at the usual times.
THE GUILD OF SAINT FRANCIS
The Guild of Saint Francis has just completed another very successful year. The following women will serve as officers for the term of 2009-2010:
Gloria Rausa-Thompson President
Lisa Nahabedian Vice President
Jane Murphy Recording Secretary
Mary J. English Corresponding Secretary
Sally Daly Treasurer
Mary R. Salustro Membership
Joan Troy and Carol Groden Welcoming Committee
Jane McGuire Publicity Chairwoman
Reverend John J. Connelly, Spiritual Director
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of June 20/21 $3,673
For the Clergy Benefit Fund $2,500
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
We have many committed catechists and many wonderful ideas for religious education programs for our children and families. So we need parents and parishioners to get involved and share your talents and gifts to build up our faith and parish family life! In God’s house “there are many mansions” and therefore many roles you can play in our Religious Education program. Right now, we are looking for new teachers for both our Tuesday and Sunday program. Will you share your gifts of faith, hope and love with our children? 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.
CCD registration forms have been sent out this week to families. Please return them before you forget about them for the summer! Early registration helps 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 receive one, please call the Religious Education office. Also there are registration forms and calendars for the new 2009-2010 CCD year in the back of the upper and lower church and at all side entrances. Please pick one up and return it soon!
Our 1st Communion pictures have arrived and they are beautiful! Don’t forget to pick them up before you leave for vacation! They can be picked up during regular business hours, at the rectory.
Michelle Solomon, Director of R.E.
ST. FRANCIS HOUSE
Thank you for your June donations. Items needed for July are condiments – salad dressings, mayo, ketchup, mustard, etc. Leave donations in the cart or at the church entrances.
CALENDAR NOTES
COFFEE HOUR AFTER THE ASL MASS:
Sunday, June 28 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
PANCAKE BREAKFAST:
Friday, July 3 – Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, July 4 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
COFFEE HOUR AFTER THE ASL MASS:
Sunday, July 5 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
PRIESTHOOD
The Catholic priesthood does not derive from human invention. Though it must be exercised in human ways by human beings, its origin is from God, from God’s free and gracious love. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews tells us – “Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin... One does not take this honor on his own initiative but only when called by God as Aaron was. Even Christ did not glorify himself with the office of high priest. He received it from the One who said to him – ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’.” Priesthood, then, is gift. What is meant by priesthood? Priesthood does not refer to some thing but to some one. Priesthood means the Lord Jesus himself. Priesthood means the Lord Jesus, not in terms of his divinity but because of his humanity, his coming among us as our unique mediator with the Father. We must not, as Cardinal Suhard taught us years ago, think of Jesus as being a priest among priests, greater than others and holier. Jesus is uniquely priest. He exhausts in himself all priesthood. Now that the Lord, our great high priest is risen and has sent us his Holy Spirit, his priesthood, his being priest continues in the Church. It continues in two ways: priesthood now means ourselves, all of us, united to Christ through faith and through the sacraments of faith, God’s priestly people at prayer and at work in the world. This happens by virtue of the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. In a particular way, priesthood means the bishops and the presbyters in the Church’s ministerial priesthood. These are the ones Christ chooses with a brother’s love to share in his sacred ministry by the laying on of hands. These are the ones commissioned to lead God’s priestly people in love, to nourish them with the word of Scripture and to strengthen them through the sacraments. These are the ones mandated to give their lives in Christ’s service for the salvation and good estate of his people. This is what our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has in mind in launching “The Year of the Priest”.
An ordination to the ministerial priesthood is an event of paramount significance in the life of the Church. It secures for God’s people an ambassador of the divine Redeemer. It enables the risen Lord to continue in a sacramental manner his saving work in our day. With reference to “The Year of the Priest”, the London Tablet had this to say:
“The pendulum eventually had to swing the other way. Since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church has wrestled with the true significance of the common priesthood of the People of God based on Baptism. It rebalanced in many fundamental ways the relationship between priests and people. But in the process, the ordained priesthood has undergone a silent upheaval. Some reassertion of priestly identity was overdue, a reminder that the ordained priesthood is essential to the encounter with Christ through word and sacrament that the Church exists to foster.
Clearly Pope Benedict's inauguration of the Year for Priests, which starts next week, was not designed to undermine the place of the laity. It is a recognition, nevertheless, that especially in the developed countries of the West, the ordained priesthood is surrounded with problems. Numbers coming forward are falling; many who are ordained do not stay the course; those who remain can easily be dispirited and demoralised. The clerical sex-abuse scandal had many victims but it is rarely recognised that priests were among them. Many good priests felt ashamed and betrayed in their vocation by the despicable actions of a few. It even affected their body language, their ability to walk the streets with confidence and look the world in the eye.”
It seems good, then, that we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Order. As we do so, we realize quite painfully that things seem to be very much out of order in our contemporary experience. While we acknowledge the invaluable benefits of modern medicine and technology, we are still living in a world overshadowed by the awful possibility of nuclear destruction. Throughout the world some live in plenty and seem ruled by consumerism and pleasure while so many lack the basics in food, shelter and medicine. Catholic social teaching stresses such inequalities as it points out that a fundamental defect at the root of contemporary economic structures does not allow human families to break free from such injustice. When serious men and women today begin to ask questions of their own humanity, what is it that they seek? Several words come to mind – forgiveness, reconciliation, justice, genuine fraternal love. Many may not recognize the fact, but the truth is – men and women of good will are seeking Christ. They are seeking to experience the reconciling power of Christ the priest. They want to hear, to understand and come to believe the good news that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This is what our Catholic faith is all about. This is why Christ gave himself in service until death to effect our reconciliation with God and with one another in human community. This is why a young man gives himself to the work of the priesthood, serving Christ, teacher, priest and pastor, in a ministry through which God is at work in Christ making the body of Christ, which is the Church, grow into the people of God. But what can the priest do through Holy Order apart from men and women strong in faith, hope and love? In other words, the priesthood of all the faithful, thanks to Baptism and Confirmation, and the priesthood peculiar to the Sacrament of Holy Order are the two sides of the one coin. God needs two hands if the Gospel is to permeate the cultures of the world.
What “The Year of the Priest” does not envision, certainly here at Sacred Heart, is anything like testimonial dinners and the like. My view of things is summarized nicely in St. Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 17, 7-10, which reads as follows:
“Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”
Father Connelly
GUILD OF SAINT FRANCIS
CALENDAR OF EVENTS – 2009 - 2010
Annual Guild Tea at the Rectory
Sunday, September 20 – 3:00 to 4:30 PM
Day of Recollection and Mass for Deceased Members
Sunday, October 4 – 11:45 AM to 3:00 PM
Holly Harvest Fair (Parish Center)
Saturday, November 21 – 9 AM to 4 PM
Sunday, November 22 – 9 AM to 1 PM
Bake and Book Sale (Parish Center)
Sunday, February 7 – 10 AM to 12:30 PM
Family Night (Parish Center)
Saturday, March 13 – 5 to 8 PM
Bake and Book Sale (Parish Center)
Sunday, March 28 – 10 AM to 12:30 PM
Communion Breakfast and General Meeting of the Guild (Parish Center)
Sunday, June 6 – Following 9 AM Mass
If you are interested in joining the Guild, please send your name, address, telephone number, and a check for $15 to Mary Salustro, 60 Parker Rd., Needham, 02494…and a reminder to those who are already members, if you haven’t sent in your dues, we would appreciate receiving them.
SIGNINGS
Good People,
We want a full life. God made us to want this. The woman in the crowd who is chronically sick simply wants life. She reaches out to Jesus and her blood flow is healed. But the body is only one part of the woman. She has a soul and that needs healing too. She tells Jesus everything and that heals her soul. She stops hiding, her soul shows itself to Jesus with trust in Him and is healed. First her body is healed and then her soul.
The first reading tells us that body and spirit problems entered the world in the opposite order. Spiritual then physical. Death (and sickness is a form of partial death) entered our human family because first a spiritual sickness entered: envy. Spiritual sickness came before physical in history. St. Paul names the spiritual sickness "envy."
Envy means wanting to be something that we are not. We might envy our neighbor's car or house. That is to want to become the owner of those things, but we are not. We might want to have the attractive body shape of another, but we might not have that and we cannot have it. We might want to have the wonderful personality of another but can't. We might want a healthy family another person seems to have but we have our own and can't change it.
The devil’s way is a dead end. From the evil spiritual disorder of envy the physical world has been corrupted now. Death and illness now infect us without warning.
Jesus heals all this. The bleeding woman knows this. She reaches out to Jesus. Her hand makes contact with the edge of His garment. Her body's blood flow problem is healed and then the spiritual problem behind that universal physical suffering is healed. The second healing happens because she unpacks all the truth about who she is. She wants to be God's child like Jesus. She simply wants to be herself.
The Child of the Temple Official is also healed. Her physical suffering is the result of the universal problem of envy as well. We all suffer from this disorder. We are all sick and on our way to the grave. Jesus can save us from the bad effects of suffering and death. He has power to overcome sickness and death. Why? Jesus helps us to quit envy. Jesus is God. Maybe we want perfect beauty and super power and glory like God. But now we have a way out of being hooked on envy.
Jesus is God and yet He gives up the use of His glory. He shows us simply being God's children is greater than we know. He heals the Child and what happens? She is 12 years old and she simply walks. The people wonder at this. Jesus shows us then that the ordinary human things we can do are really great. We don't need to want to be something we are not. God has made us just right and while we struggle now with all kinds of problems and we will die, all that can be transformed by Jesus into a way to heal our envy. Sickness can make us appreciate the things we can do. When we learn how great it is to be God's children our jaws drop, we are saved.
In Christ,
Father St. Martin
INTENTIONS OF THE HOLY FATHER FOR THE MONTH OF JULY
General Intention: That Christians in the Middle East may live their faith in complete freedom and become instruments of reconciliation and peace.
Mission Intention: Through the witness of the faithful, may the Church be the seed and soil of a humanity reconciled to be God’s one true family on earth.