Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Saturday, October 17
4:00 PM “Pete” Daly
Sunday, October 18
9:00 AM Mary Elizabeth Shields
11:45 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
Monday, October 19
12:05 PM Luigi Tonelli
Wednesday, October 21
7:00 AM Edgar and Agnes Capell
Friday, October 23
9:00 AM Soto Family Intentions
Saturday, October 24
4:00 PM James Patrick Walsh
Sunday, October 25
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM Martin and Timothy Groden
CELEBRANTS FOR NEXT WEEKEND’S MASSES
Saturday, October 24
4:00 PM Fr. Connelly
Sunday, October 25
9:00 AM Fr. Imbelli
10:30 AM Fr. St. Martin
11:45 AM Fr. Connelly
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, October 24 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-9
Second Reading: Hebrews 5:1-6
Gospel Reading: Mark 10:46-52
ATTENTION: VIETNAMESE FAMILIES
Are you interested in having bilingual English/Vietnamese Masses and/or Vietnamese Masses in the Boston west suburbs? Are you interested in making the Vietnamese Catholic community more integrated with the Catholic parishes in the Boston west suburbs? If so, please call or email the Office of Cultural Diversity by November 13th to give us your contact information (name, phone number, and email): Archdiocese of Boston, Office of Outreach and Cultural Diversity, Attn: Ms. Linda Russo, phone: 617-746-5794, email: Lrusso@rcab.org.
WOMEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP
The Women’s Discussion group will meet next Sunday, October 25 at 10:30 AM in the Convent. Newcomers are welcome. We are reading Two Centuries of Faith: The Influence of Catholicism on Boston: 1808-2008 by Thomas H. O’Connor, Editor.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
A number of weeks ago, the Religious Education office offered a Parent’s meeting to preview the personal safety/abuse prevention education programs that will be taught within the classrooms (grades 1-8) in the next few months. A letter was sent home a few weeks ago to remind CCD parents of the beginning of this important program. An “opt out” form was attached. If you wish your child to opt out of this program, please return the bottom portion of this letter as soon as possible. If we do not receive this form, we assume that your child will take part in the safety/abuse program that will be given in the first 15 minutes of class for approximately 9 weeks.
This week we will continue to teach our students about praying the rosary. We pray a decade (10) of Hail Mary’s, leading with the prayer Jesus gave us: the Our Father. The repetition of prayers serves to calm us and allow us to focus on the events of Jesus and Mary’s life that we call “mysteries”. We call them mysteries because no matter how long we think about them, there is always more to think about! Please pray with us for peace in our hearts and for the whole world.
In Christ,
Michelle Solomon, Director of Religious Ed.
LIFT – CATHOLIC WORSHIP
Join us for LIFT – an exciting monthly worship event which includes vibrant praise and worship music and Eucharistic Adoration. LIFT is for all ages. Be with us on Tuesday, October 20th as we welcome well known Catholic recording artist Matt Maher. The evening runs from 7 – 9 PM at Fontbonne Academy, 930 Brook Road, Milton, MA. Directions can be found at www.liftedhigher.com.
OCTOBER IS RESPECT LIFE MONTH
Since 1972, the Church in the United States has recognized October as Respect Life Month. Here are some of the ways you can be involved:
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Pray: Each Saturday morning a group of parishioners pray the Rosary for Life following the 9:00 AM Mass. Come join us!
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Donate: Sacred Heart will once again be collecting items to aid Pregnancy Help. Donations of new baby items may be dropped off at the entrances to the Church throughout the month of October. Thank you for your support of this important ministry.
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Stay informed: Throughout the month we will have a Respect Life display at the main entrance of the Church with literature available on: euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion, and stem cell research. Please take a moment to stop by the table and pick up some literature when you come to Mass.
THE CHALLENGE OF “ROMANS”
St. Paul, fearless preacher of the Gospel, world traveler for the sake of the Gospel, is not the founder of the Christian community in the city of Rome. St. Peter, faithful leader of the Church in his day, who moved from Palestine to Antioch it would seem, and then to Rome, was not the one who founded the Church in Rome. The origins of the Church in Rome, studied by such good scholars as Raymond Brown and John Meier, are not overly clear but early on Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians comprised the small Roman Christian community. Both Peter and Paul must have greatly desired to get to Rome so that the Gospel could be preached and lived at the heart of the Roman Empire.
Paul, probably from Ephesus, writes his Letter to the Romans to express his desire to get to Rome. He writes in Chapter 1 – “I beg always in my prayers that somehow, by God’s will, I may at length succeed in coming to you. I yearn to see you in order to pass on to you some spiritual gift that you may be strengthened – or rather that we be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith – both yours and mine.” As Paul writes from Ephesus, he realized that he ought to introduce himself to the Romans who really do not know him. He offers them a three-fold description of himself. He calls himself, after the pattern of the great figures of the old law, as a slave of God, a slave of Christ Jesus. He also refers to himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ with the same apostolic credentials we think of with regard to Peter, James and John and the others. He also tells the Romans that he has been set apart as the apostle to the Gentiles as Peter was the apostle to the Jews.
Romans does not make easy reading. It’s important for us as we try to read Romans to try to understand a few characteristics of Paul’s language – the better to understand his thinking. He sees the world in terms of a two-fold division – Jews and Greeks, Jews and Gentiles. But the Gospel is always the same; the Gospel of God concerns his Son, the Lord Jesus, who came into this world as savior for all – the Jews first and then the Gentiles. There are three divisions we can note in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The need to present the one Gospel to Jews and Gentiles for all have sinned and are in need of the glory of God, for Jesus is the savior of the world, the universal savior who was universally needed, for all have sinned and are in need of God’s grace. Paul envisioned that every human being on the face of the globe at any given time in history is in one of two states or conditions. Every person, Christian or otherwise, is living either “in the flesh” or “in the spirit”. In the flesh means to be in sin, separated seriously from God. To be in the spirit, to be in Christ Jesus, means to enjoy God’s grace through faith in Christ Jesus and thus be a friend of God.
The great Christian text on sin and grace is St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Its overall theme is God’s grace, God’s impartial faithfulness and mercy for Jews and for Greeks – a formula to include everyone in Paul’s day. Paul announces his theme in Chapter One when he writes – “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: for Jew first, and then Greek. For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous by faith will live.’” Sin is the bad news from which no one escapes on one’s own. Grace is the amazing good news for everyone to attain what no one can attain on one’s own – eternal life with Christ and his saints. As Paul writes in Chapter Three of his Letter – “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, though testified to by the law and by the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus.”
What then is sin which the Scriptures speak of in terms of foolishness, rebellion, lawlessness, injustice, contempt of God as Creator, even the willing of the death of God? In a certain sense we can call sin absurd. Tho omnipresent and not even hinting at going out of business, sin makes no sense to the ears of faith. God made us to know what is true. God is truth. God made us to seek for what is good. God is goodness itself. Who of us has not heard of St. Augustine’s famous remark – “God has made us for himself, and we will not rest until we rest in God”. Yet as St. Paul tells us – “All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God”. The Scriptures speak of sin as the mystery of iniquity because only God knows what sin is really like. The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard is quoted as saying – “To have a weak understanding of sin is part and parcel of being a sinner”. No doubt we can appreciate the nature of sin when it comes to transgressions against the rights of others. God alone understands what is involved in violations against God’s divine rights.
We must ask a two-fold question. What does God have to say about sin in the pages of Sacred Scripture; and how does theology help us gain some insight into this mystery of iniquity? The data here, of course, is immense. By way of strangling brevity, I would suggest a reading of Chapter Three of the Book of Genesis, or the reading of Psalm 51, popularly called “The Miserere”. All the ingredients of sin are present – serious matter, sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. (By way of a pastoral note, sufficient reflection does not mean some exhaustive F.B.I. study. Sufficient awareness of what is involved in sin is what is meant.) The Lenten Liturgies, Sundays and weekdays, are chock-full of the great prophets’ denunciation of sin – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and all the rest. Running through the prophetic literature are three Hebrew words which all the prophets used to express the reality and malice of sin: sin means missing the mark; sin means rejection of God’s known will which is but for our happiness; sin means
rebellion against God and rejection of God’s offer of love. All these themes are found once again in the pages of the New Testament but are deepened in meaning when we think of such well-known texts as in John’s Gospel – “God so loved the world that he sent us his own Son”; or when we read the magnificent 15th Chapter of Luke’s Gospel about the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son. When we think of St. Paul, we note a tendency to speak often of sin in the singular as lawlessness, unrighteousness, the power of the devil entering into human beings when they willingly submit to it and do not sufficiently resist it.
Father Connelly
OPEN HOUSES
Mount Saint Joseph Academy, a College Preparatory High School for Girls, sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston, will host an Open House on Sunday, October 18 from 12-2:30 PM and on Thursday, November 5 from 5:30-7:30 PM at 617 Cambridge St., Boston, MA 02134. The Admissions office phone is 617-787-7999.
Trinity Catholic High School, 575 Washington Street, Newton invites you to an Open House on Wednesday, October 21st from 6-8 p.m. and Sunday, November 8 from 2-4 p.m. Trinity is a co-educational, college preparatory school. Visit www.trinitycatholic.com or call 617-244-1841 for further information.
Ursuline Academy, a Catholic, independent, college-preparatory school for 385 women in grades 7 through 12, will hold an Open House on Sunday, October 25th from 1 to 4 pm. Transportation is available from many communities. For further information, please call 781-326-6161 ext. 107 or visit www.ursulineacademy.net.
Xaverian Brothers High School, 800 Clapboardtree St., Westwood, MA 02090, will hold an Open House on Sunday, October 25 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. For further information, please call the Admissions Office at 781-326-6392 or visit www.XBHS.com.
17th SOCIAL JUSTICE FORUM
“SCENES FROM A PARISH”
(Filmed at St. Patrick’s Parish, Lawrence)
When: Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 7:00 PM
Where: Sacred Heart Parish – Lower Church
1321 Centre Street, Newton Centre, MA
Discussion Margaret LeBlanc
Leader: Sacred Heart Parishioner
Free Admission – Open to the Public
Refreshments to follow in the Lower Church
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of October 10/11 $5,400
SIGNINGS
Good People,
We all owe God. God is so good. He gives us life and He saves us again and again. We owe Him our constant thanks and praise. If we were to skip an hour of praise and instead grow stubborn and forget God and goodness and then sin, it would mean that we owe Him an hour of praise, if you will.
But how can we pay Him back if we already should be dedicating everything all the time to Him? We have no way to make up for the times we did not live as we should. We already owe God everything all the time even before we ever sinned.
Jesus is like our rich friend who can and does have a way to bail us out of our impossible debt. He offers Himself out of love for us so that we can be justified. Jesus does have extra. He is God so He has infinity. He is also without sin. And He has become our brother so that He can pay the price to get us out of debt and save that which is so good in us.
We, who have been saved and continue to experience that salvation, can become like Christ for each other. We can and do help each other in generous ways to make up for the problems that each of us have so that the good in each other can come out and be enjoyed. When we try to make up for another person’s weakness out of love for what is good in that person, we are becoming like Christ. If we know a person who has a displeasing personality (for example) but we find a way to work around and with that problem, we sometimes come to discover great gifts of love and skill buried not too far below the surface. We need to know like Christ, how to mine for these great treasures. We do so at great personal expense that in the end becomes an infinite reward.
In Christ, Father St. Martin
CALENDAR NOTES
EXTENDED COFFEE HOUR:
Sunday, October 18 – 10 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – GRADES 1-5:
Sunday, October 18 – 10:30 to 11:45 AM – Lower Church
SOCIAL JUSTICE FORUM:
Sunday, October 18 – 7:00 PM – Lower Church
BOY SCOUTS:
Monday, October 19 – 7:30 PM – Parish Center
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – Tuesday, October 20
GRADES 1-5: – 4:00 to 5:15 PM – Lower Church
GRADES 6-10: – 7:00 to 8:30 PM – Lower Church
HOLLY HARVEST WORKSHOP:
Tuesday, October 20 – 7:00 PM – Guild Room
LITURGY COMMITTEE MEETING:
Tuesday, October 20 – 7:30 PM – Convent (DR)
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, October 24 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church