Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Saturday, February 27
4:00 PM Mary and Joseph McAlister
Sunday, February 28
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM Dongsuk Lee
Monday, March 1
12:05 PM Dolores and Ken Young
Wednesday, March 3
7:00 AM Nancy Copell Myette
Friday, March 5
9:00 AM Margaret Libernini and Charles Gucciardi
12:05 PM Maureen O’Donoghue
Sunday, March 7
9:00 AM Intentions of Isabel Mazzarella
11:45 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
CELEBRANTS FOR NEXT WEEKEND’S MASSES
Saturday, March 6
4:00 PM Fr. Connelly
Sunday, March 7
9:00 AM Fr. Imbelli
10:30 AM Fr. Carey
11:45 AM Fr. Connelly
CONFESSIONS
Wednesday, March 3 – 6:30 to 8:00 PM – Fr. Imbelli
Saturday, March 6 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
First Reading: Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15
Second Reading: I Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Gospel Reading: Luke 13:1-9
2010 CATHOLIC APPEAL
As a Catholic community, we are called during this season of Lent to love and share our blessings with our brothers and sisters in Christ. The Catholic Appeal is an opportunity to answer His call by sharing our treasure to help our neighbors, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, throughout the 144 cities and towns of our Archdiocese. Please plan to participate in the Catholic Appeal next weekend, March 6-7. Those of you that gave to the Appeal last year should receive a letter from Cardinal Seán this week. We invite all others to take home an information packet from Mass this weekend. Thank you!
ST. FRANCIS HOUSE
Thank you for your continued generosity to St. Francis House. The items needed for March are fruit juices. You can place your donations in the shopping cart or in any of the boxes located at the Church entrances.
PLEASE COME TO THE SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION THIS LENT
The Church encourages all Catholics to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation each Lent. In addition to our normal Saturday afternoon confession, Sacred Heart and all the Catholic parishes and chapels of the Archdiocese will be open on Lenten Wednesdays from 6:30-8:00 pm. Please take advantage of this opportunity to make a good Lenten confession. Please also reach out to the Catholics you know that have been away from the regular practice of our faith and invite them to seize this chance to begin again.
The Archdiocese’s website for this initiative, www.TheLightIsOnForYou.org, has great material to help everyone prepare to make a good confession.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
As Lent continues this week, we will be asking our students to see this time as a journey they will be walking with Jesus all the way through his death and ending with His triumphant rise to life on Easter morning! Perhaps if we can give up some small comforts like food, activities or habits, we will be able to say no when we are tempted to be selfish or to demand our own way. After all, Christ said no to His own way during the Agony in the Garden so we could rise again to new life in Heaven!
We encourage all our CCD families to attend Mass, pray together, recite the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary and pray at the Stations of the Cross. All our students have been given a Lenten Rice Bowl to fill with their own allowance as their gift to the poor. Also, there will be baskets in the hallway to receive clothing for St. Francis House. All Rice bowls and underwear donations will be brought down with other gifts on Holy Thursday evening.
Our 2nd graders have been preparing for their 1st Reconciliation which they will receive on Saturday, March 6th at 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM in the lower church. Please join us with your prayers, that our students and families will experience the joy of God’s mercy and love in this beautiful sacrament!
Michelle Solomon, RE Coordinator
“MANY THANKS”
To the Members of Sacred Heart Parish,
My niece, Julia, and her friends from “Jump Start” would like to express their deep appreciation for the generous gift of books for their young students. They would have been happy with fifteen. Instead your generosity contributed ten times as many.
As the undergrads are known to say: the response was “awesome!” Many thanks.
Father Imbelli
FIRST, TEMPTATION; THEN, TRANSFIGURATION
The expression – Shantung Compound – has a two-fold meaning. It refers to a World War II prisoners of war camp in Japan – a military compound in the province of Shantung – where enemy civilians – resident in Japan at the outbreak of the war – were interned. The expression – Shantung Compound refers also to the name of a book written by a distinguished theologian who had been a young prisoner in the camp – his parents were Baptist missionaries – and who wrote the book many decades after his prisoner of war experience as an adult Christian reflection on a most difficult and powerful situation. Fifteen hundred civilians – mostly British and American missionaries and business persons – were the citizens of the compound. As prisoners, they had not been beaten or tortured. Privacy, however, was non-existent. There never was enough food. Prison life was dominated by the tensions wrought by boredom and fear. To his surprise, the author discovered that even the most devout missionaries were not immune from selfishness. They too squabbled with fellow-prisoners and stole food from communal supplies. All in all – in the author’s judgment – life at the camp led to a series of moral breakdowns so serious that they threatened the very existence of the prison community. As the poet Bertolt Brecht has expressed things, “For even saintly folk will act as sinners unless they have their customary dinners.” The hero of the camp was a Trappist monk who had been interned. With great skill he could “raid” the food supplies and the cigarette supplies, not for himself but for his fellow-prisoners. When he was caught by the officials, he was put into solitary confinement. He always loved that because it reminded him of his Trappist Monastery.
It strikes me that our world is rapidly becoming a vast Shantung Compound. Hunger is a way of life for countless millions. The gap in so many countries between “the haves” and “the haves not” is widening. The experts are talking ominously about depletion-point for widely-needed, non-renewable natural resources. This, in great measure, is what causes the fighting, the violence, the terrorism so rampant all over the globe. You and I today are observing the discipline of Lent in this Shantung Compound which is our world – and we say to God in prayer – “This great season of grace is your gift to your family to renew us in spirit. You give us strength to purify our hearts, to control our desires, and so to serve you in freedom. You teach us how to live in this passing world with our hearts set on the world that will never end.” The lesson seems clear. Our goal is freedom in Christ – the crucified and risen One who teaches us by word and example the gospel lessons about the cross leading to transfiguration. The condition for the possibility of such freedom is the discipline of Lent.
Last week – on the First Sunday of Lent – the liturgy invited us to reflect on the temptations of Jesus – whose victory in his trials strengthens us in our trials. Today our liturgy invites us to reflect on the mystery of the Transfiguration – so excellently described by Luke in our gospel reading – when, on the holy mountain, the Lord Jesus revealed himself in glory in the presence of his disciples. Our preface prayer today offers this explanation: “The Lord had already prepared his disciples for his approaching death. He wanted to teach them, through the Law – that is – Moses, and through the prophets represented by Elijah, that the promised Christ had first to suffer and then come to the glory of his resurrection.” When St. Paul first preached Christ crucified to his fellow-Jews, many thought his preaching a scandal. When St. Paul first preached Christ crucified to the Greek-speaking unbelievers, as at Athens, many considered his preaching mere foolishness. However, there were those among his hearers who believed – Jews and Gentiles – and they discovered in the teaching of the cross leading to resurrection the very power of God and the wisdom of God. This is the teaching the liturgy offers us on the Second Sunday of Lent. This teaching challenges our routine ways – just as the earthly promise which God made to Abraham in our first reading challenged his routine ways. Our task is to seek to grasp the transfiguring words of St. Paul – “Our citizenship is in heaven. It is from there that we eagerly await the coming of our Savior – the Lord Jesus Christ. He will give a new form to this lowly body of ours and remake it to the pattern of his glorified body.”
St. Luke presents the narrative of the Transfiguration in Ch. 9 of his Gospel. It follows the account of Peter’s profession of faith, Jesus’ first prediction of his passion and several important sayings about the cost and demands of discipleship. What is the point of the Transfiguration? The Lord Jesus revealed his glory to his disciples – his first disciples and now ourselves – to strengthen them and us for the scandal of the cross. His glory shone from a body like our own to show that the Church which is the body of Christ would one day share his glory. The narrative of the Transfiguration reveals Christ’s divinity. The sufferings of his life and cross reveal his humanity. Once again, the lesson seems clear: our lives – from womb to the tomb – constitute a journey involving pain and transfiguration. The Church gives us the Lenten season each year to teach us to make this journey in Christ’s likeness. It means living out the two-fold characteristic of our baptism – the very sacrament of the Lord’s dying and rising – our dying more and more to sin – our living more and more for God and neighbor.
Father Connelly
INTENTIONS OF THE HOLY FATHER FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH
General Intention: That the world economy may be managed according to the principles of justice and equality, taking into account the real needs of peoples, especially the poorest.
Mission Intention: That the churches throughout Africa may be signs and instruments of reconciliation and justice.
SIGNINGS
God teaches us about his plan. He teaches us about how He is working in our lives. He teaches in three ways: The past, the present, and the future of His plan for our salvation.
The future of the plan is spoken of in all three readings. The future of God's plan was given to Abram many thousands of years ago; maybe as many as 4000 years ago. Long before Jesus was born of Mary, before King David, before Moses led us out of Slavery in Egypt, God told our Father in Faith, Abraham, the future of the plan. It was a plan for universal salvation. Not for some but for many. His plan from the beginning was that one day great numbers from all nations would be saved. So many would be affected that it would be impossible to count them when the plan is finally complete. The second reading tells us about the future of the plan. It is a plan that will involve even our bodies being saved. In the end it will be a complete salvation. The Gospel tells us of the aspect of the glory of that salvation by giving us a picture of it. Jesus showed Peter the glory that comes when the plan is complete. It is one of light, and life, and friendship.
The past part of the plan is one of preparation. There is sacrifice involved in the beginning of the plan. Abraham offered the fruit of his flock to God. There is darkness and terror that he experiences. It was from out of that darkness and fear that the promise emerges. The past part of the plan is also represented in the friends that Jesus speaks with when He shows his glory on the Mountain in the Gospel today. He talks to the representative of the past experience of the plan as it unfolded partially for them. These two friends are Moses and Elijah. They talk of the plan with Jesus and share how they understand that the plan includes a process of suffering first.
The present quality of the plan for us is one of hope in the midst of the process of suffering. It is a combination of the past part and the future part. We are now aware of the glory that is to be given. So we are happy and hopeful. We have hope for Heaven which is friendship with God and each other; we have hope for a new and glorified body. We have hope because we know the sure path from studying the past. The past teaches us about the process. It is, in this life, a road of sacrificial love. That has worked and will work. We are not disappointed by pain and suffering in this world when we encounter it in innocence. It is good news for us. It increases our hope.
Now we are on the road of Lent. It is a hopeful road that leads to Easter! We are people free to love and sacrifice joyfully. We are not distracted by the false hope of glory in this life. We know that this life is the life of joyful sacrificial love that is God's plan leading to glory and even a new and glorified body. The pain, even physical, that we endure here is part of God's plan and a sign of His gift of glory to come.
In Christ, Fr. St. Martin
20th SOCIAL JUSTICE FORUM
On Sunday, February 28, 7:30 PM in the lower church, Tiziana Dearing, President of Catholic Charities, will speak on “Solidarity in the ‘New Normal’: What we are called to Today”. This event is open to the public; admission is free and refreshments follow the presentation.
GUILD OF ST. FRANCIS “FAMILY NIGHT”
March 13, 2010
The next Guild of St. Francis’ event is Family Night, which will be a catered buffet dinner, followed by a “Sing-a-long”, on Saturday, March 13th from 5-8 PM in the Parish Center. Price is $15.00 for adults and $7.50 for children up to age 12 years. To make your reservation, please call Sally Daly at 617-527-4468 or Mary English at 617-332-8656. Checks should be made payable to the Guild of Saint Francis and mailed to: Sally Daly, 138 Lincoln Street, Newton Highlands, MA 02461. Reservations must be made by March 8! If anyone knows how to play the piano and would be willing to volunteer for the “Sing-a-long”, please call Mary English at 617-332-8656.
HOME CARE WORKER AVAILABLE
A parishioner of Sacred Heart Parish, who is experienced in working with children or the elderly in their home, is available for work. If you are looking for such a person, please call Lynette at 617-306-6072.
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of February 20/21 $4,921
CALENDAR NOTES
EXTENDED COFFEE HOUR:
Sunday, February 28 – 10 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
WOMEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP:
Sunday, February 28 – 10:30 AM – Convent (DR)
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – Grades 1-5:
Sunday, February 28 – 10:30 to 11:45 AM – Lower Church
SOCIAL JUSTICE FORUM:
Sunday, February 28 – 7:30 PM – Lower Church
BOY SCOUTS:
Monday, March 1 – 7:30 PM – Parish Center
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: Tuesday, March 2
Grades 1-5 – 4:00 to 5:15 PM – Lower Church
Grades 6-10: - 7:00 to 8:30 PM – Lower Church
GUILD OF ST. FRANCIS BOARD MEETING:
Tuesday, March 1 – 7:00 PM – Guild Room (School)
CONFESSIONS:
Wednesday, March 3 – 6:30 to 8:00 PM – Lower Church
PANCAKE BREAKFAST:
Friday, March 5 – Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, March 6 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Upper Church