Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Saturday, August 7
4:00 PM Daly Family
Sunday, August 8
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM Edmund Capodilupo
Monday, August 9
12:05 PM E. Riley Greene
Tuesday, August 10
7:00 AM Dominic D’Innocenzo
Wednesday, August 11
7:00 AM Ursula Patricia Lyons
Friday, August 13
9:00 AM Edward Slavin
Saturday, August 14
4:00 PM Peter and Raymond Scichilone
Sunday, August 15
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, August 14 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTIONOF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
First Reading: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:20-27
Gospel Reading: Luke 1:39-56
COLLECTION FOR THE HOME MISSIONS
This year, the Catholic Home Missions Appeal turns its focus to youth ministry, an essential component of the life and vibrancy of the Church. In youth ministry programs, young Catholics grow in faith and gain valuable leadership skills. Without this Appeal, poorer dioceses in the United States cannot sustain vital youth programs. Next week we will take up the collection for this Appeal. Please be generous and help strengthen the Church at home.
ANOTHER PARISHIONER IS LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO LIVE
A parishioner is looking for a place to live in or around Newton or Brookline near the T. Please call Gloria at 617-796-7779.
SPEAKER AT BC
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking will be speaking at Boston College’s Robsham Theater on Friday, September 17 at 7 PM. Entry is by ticket only. To reserve free tickets, contact church21@bc.edu or 617-552-0470.
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of July 31/August 1 $3,971
100 YEARS OF BOY SCOUTING
The big event this summer for the Boy Scouts of America is the annual national Scout Jamboree which is taking place in Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia. This year’s annual event is indeed significant for the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America is being celebrated. Recently the Wall Street Journal had this to say – “Scouting isn’t fashionable in our politically correct age, since the organization bars openly-gay Scout Masters, atheists or girls under the age of thirteen. Naturally, this has led to lawsuits, most of which the Boy Scouts have won. Some 2.8 million boys across the country belong to Scout Troops learning the traditional Scout values of trustworthiness, loyalty to friends and country and volunteering in communities.”
We’re very proud here at Sacred Heart Parish to salute our Boy Scout Troop and wish them well for their next 100 years. I find it interesting to note that the Boy Scouts represent one organization that is very concerned to keep the natural law which God our Creator has inscribed into every human heart and which tells us that we are to seek what is true and not what is false, and to do what is good and not what is evil. Along comes the Ten Commandments which God gave to his ancient people Israel and still gives to us of an expanded expression of the natural law, binding on human conscience. We don’t steal; we don’t lie; we don’t commit adultery; we don’t covet our neighbor’s goods. The Boy Scouts in their own way express the natural law in the well-known Scouts Oath. The Wall Street Journal ends its words of praise with the following observation: “It’s too bad President Obama couldn’t find time to address this year’s 100th anniversary Jamboree. The boys would have cheered him, and he might have noted what Alexis de Tocqueville called the particular American genius for voluntary organizations that sustain civil society without government power. America would be a poorer place without the Boy Scouts, so congratulations on a century of merit.”
Father Connelly
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
If you would like to teach or be a classroom aide in the Religious Education program in the fall, please call the Religious Education Office at 617-969-4031 or email: religious.education@sacredheart.ws.
Please pick up a registration form at the back of the church if you would like to register your child for CCD. PLEASE RETURN THE COMPLETED FORM(S) TO THE RECTORY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
Michelle Solomon, Dir. of R.E.
THE LORD – MY SHEPHERD
On the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Father brought to an end the “Year for Priests” with these words: “The Year for Priests which we have celebrated on the 150th Anniversary of the death of the holy Curé of Ars, the model of priestly ministry in the world, is now coming to an end.” The Holy Father goes on to speak about the priest as not being a mere officeholder, like those which every society needs in order to carry out certain functions. Instead, he does something which no human being can do of his own power: In Christ’s name he speaks the words which absolve us of our sins and he speaks words that effect the making of Christ himself present, the body and blood of the risen Lord as sacrifice and sacrament in the Church.
Pope Benedict thanks the Lord for the Year for Priests. A good opportunity for the Church reflect on priestly ministry. He then says, “It was to be expected that this new radiance of the priesthood would not be pleasing to the ‘enemy’; he would have rather preferred to see it disappear, so that God would ultimately be driven out of the world. And so it happened that, in this very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light – particularly the abuse of the little ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to manifest God’s concern for our good, turns into its very opposite. We too insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again; and that in admitting men to priestly ministry and in their formation we will do everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their vocation and make every effort to accompany priests along their journey, so that the Lord will protect them and watch over them in troubled situations and amid life’s dangers. Had the Year for Priests been a glorification of our individual human performance, it would have been ruined by these events. But for us what happened was precisely the opposite: we grew in gratitude for God’s gift, a gift concealed in ‘earthen vessels’ which ever anew, even amid human weakness, makes his love concretely present in this world. So let us look upon all that happened as a summons to purification, as a task which we bring to the future and which makes us acknowledge and love all the more the great gift we have received from God. In this way, his gift becomes a commitment to respond to God’s courage and humility by our own courage and our own humility. The word of God, which we have sung in the Entrance Antiphon of the liturgy, can speak to us, at this hour, of what it means to become and to be priests: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart’.”
A good part of the Holy Father’s talk focused on the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd – in which Israel at prayer received God’s self-revelation as shepherd, and made this the guide of its own life. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’: this first verse expresses joy and gratitude for the fact that God is present to and concerned for us. The reading from the Book of Ezekiel begins with the same theme: ‘I myself will look after and tend my sheep’. God personally looks after me, after us, after all mankind. I am not abandoned, adrift in the universe and in a society which leaves me ever more lost and bewildered. God looks after me. He is not a distant God, for whom my life is worthless. The world’s religions, as far as we can see, have always known that in the end there is only one God. But this God was distant. Evidently he had abandoned the world to other powers and forces, to other divinities. It was with these that one had to deal. The one God was good, yet aloof. He was not dangerous, nor was he very helpful. Consequently one didn’t need to worry about him. He did not lord it over us. Oddly, this kind of thinking re-emerged during the Enlightenment. There was still a recognition that the world presupposes a Creator. Yet this God, after making the world, had evidently withdrawn from it. The world itself had a certain set of laws by which it ran, and God did not, could not, intervene in them. God was only a remote cause. Many perhaps did not even want God to look after them. They did not want God to get in the way. But wherever God’s loving concern is perceived as getting in the way, human beings go awry. It is fine and consoling to know that there is someone who loves me and looks after me. But it is far more important that there is a God who knows me, loves me and is concerned about me. ‘I know my own and my own know me’ the Church says before the Gospel with the Lord’s words. God knows me, he is concerned about me. This thought should make us truly joyful. Let us allow it to penetrate the depths of our being. Then let us also realize what it means: God wants us, as priests, in one tiny moment of history, to share his concern about people. As priests, we want to be persons who share his concern for men and women, who take care of them and provide them with a concrete experience of God’s concern. Whatever the field of activity entrusted to him, the priest, with the Lord, ought to be able to say: ‘I know my sheep and mine know me’. ‘To know’, in the idiom of sacred Scripture, never refers to merely exterior knowledge, like the knowledge of someone’s telephone number. ‘Knowing’ means being inwardly close to another person. It means loving him or her. We should strive to ‘know’ men and women as God does and for God’s sake; we should strive to walk with them along the path of God's friendship.
Let us return to our Psalm. There we read: ‘He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me’. The shepherd points out the right path to those entrusted to him. He goes before them and leads them. Let us put it differently: the Lord shows us the right way to be human. He teaches us the art of being a person. What must I do in order not to fall, not to squander my life in meaninglessness? This is precisely the question which every man and woman must ask and one
which remains valid at every moment of one’s life. How much darkness surrounds this question in our own day! We are constantly reminded of the words of Jesus, who felt compassion for the crowds because they were like a flock without a shepherd. Lord, have mercy on us too! Show us the way! From the Gospel we know this much: he is himself the way. Living with Christ, following him – this means finding the right way, so that our lives can be meaningful and so that one day we might say: ‘Yes, it was good to have lived’. The people of Israel continue to be grateful to God because in the Commandments he pointed out the way of life. The great Psalm 119(118) is a unique expression of joy for this fact: we are not fumbling in the dark. God has shown us the way and how to walk aright. The message of the Commandments was synthesized in the life of Jesus and became a living model. Thus we understand that these rules from God are not chains, but the way which he is pointing out to us. We can be glad for them and rejoice that in Christ they stand before us as a lived reality. He himself has made us glad. By walking with Christ, we experience the joy of Revelation, and as priests we need to communicate to others our own joy at the fact that we have been shown the right way of life.
LIFT – CATHOLIC WORSHIP FOR A
NEW GENERATION
Join us for Lift – an exciting monthly worship event which includes vibrant praise and worship music, dynamic, challenging speakers and Eucharistic Adoration. On Tuesday, August 10, we welcome Jackie Francois as guest speaker. The evening runs from 7-9 PM at Fontbonne Academy, 930 Brook Road, Milton. Directions and a downloadable are flyer available at www.liftedhigher.com.
HOLY LAND PILGRIMAGE – LENT 2011
Fr. Frank Silva, Pastor of Newton’s Corpus Christi-St. Bernard Parish, will serve as spiritual director for a Holy Land Pilgrimage scheduled for March 27-April 5, 2011. Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee are just a few of the many places that will be part of this “trip-of-a-lifetime”. Cost $2,299 plus air taxes and fees. For a brochure about the trip, please call 617-244-0608 or email: fsilva@ccsbparish.org.
CALENDAR NOTES
COFFEE HOUR AFTER 10:30 ASL MASS:
Sunday, August 8 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
COFFEE HOUR:
Friday, August 13 – Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, August 14 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
COFFEE HOUR AFTER 10:30 ASL MASS:
Sunday, August 15 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
SIGNINGS
Good People,
Jesus' Parables are the "stories" or the "imagine this" stories. Jesus sets up a picture in our minds with stories to teach us about Heaven. The Parables of Jesus are not history. That is why it is always important to remember to look for the word "imagine" or "if" at the beginning of a story that Christ or sometimes the prophets are conveying. That will help us to know what is from historical experience and what is a story imagined for the purpose of education only. It can be confusing.
I love Jesus' Parables. It is fascinating to read them. It is like they are alive. They seem to always have something new in them every time you return to them.
Today's Gospel from Luke tells us one of the parables of Jesus. In it he compares the fact that the time of the full arrival of the Kingdom is unknown we therefore need to be ready like a servant awaiting the masters return from a wedding. Jesus goes on and emphasizes the point of the unknown character of the time of the Kingdom's arrival by comparing it to the time a thief would use to break into a house. That is the time you least expect. So we do know the time in a funny way. It is the time we least expect; a time which immediately becomes the most expected time therefore and no longer a candidate moving the second most expected time to move into and out of first place the moment it moves and so forth until the most expected time becomes the most unexpected but then not and on for ever. Such a concept dazzles the mind.
At any rate, Jesus compares God's full presence to that of a thief. This image is fantastic. There are so many people who love the idea of Jesus being gentle and His meekness being such that He is stuck outside in the night knocking on the door of our hearts which only opens from within. No! This is not an image from the Gospel. Jesus and His kingdom can break into our hearts, our world, our homes. Jesus does this all the time and He will do it at the end of time. He does not need our permission to come in glory. He doesn't need our permission to get us ready. He does that with the "megaphone of pain" as our beloved Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen put it toward the end of his life. Through the torn muscle, through to isolation, through requirement of death itself, Jesus breaks into our lives like a thief.
May Jesus steal our hearts now so that we can be found ready on the last day. Jesus is breaking through the barriers of our Hearts and the world's futile blocks all the time. The more we block and fight, the more His mercy triumphs. I like the idea of being dazzlingly ready all the time and of knowing that he is stronger then our suborn resistance to not be ready.
In Christ,
Fr. St. Martin