Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Saturday, June 26
4:00 PM Russell Pizzoglio
Sunday, June 27
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
10:30 AM John Augustine Riley
Saturday, July 3
4:00 PM Anna Esposito
Sunday, July 4
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM Karel Holbik
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, July 3 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First Reading: Isaiah 66:10-14c
Second Reading: Galatians 6:14-18
Gospel Reading: Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
THE 12:05 FRIDAY MASS
Regrettably it’s getting harder and harder to sustain two Masses on a Friday morning. Once a month, on Friday, we have to celebrate a 10:30 Mass at the Waban Nursing Home. If a funeral is scheduled for Friday, that is difficult for the Pastor to have three Masses. The 9 o’clock Mass is better attended than the 12:05, so a choice had to be made to move in that direction. It’s always difficult to drop a Mass from the Mass schedule, and it would have been wonderful if we could have stayed with our original schedule where we had two Masses every Friday – but that is impossible. We do hope that those who were so faithful to the 12:05 Mass will be able to find their way to the 9 o’clock here at Sacred Heart or elsewhere in Newton. The last 12:05 Mass on Fridays was celebrated last Friday, on June 25.
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 @ 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. Drop the completed form off at the rectory anytime during the summer.
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of June 19/20 $4,301.50
For the Clergy Benefit Fund $2,913.00
JULIE’S FAMILY LEARNING PROGRAM
Julie’s Family Learning Program is in need of raising $25,000 by June 30, 2010, or else they will have to make some difficult decisions about their summer program. They need your help and support to continue their work with the families they serve by providing parenting classes, infant and toddler child development centers, health and wellness classes, family literacy programs and home management classes.
If you would like to make a donation to this very worthwhile program, please mail your check to:
Bob Monahan, Dir. of Operations
Julie’s Family Learning Program
133 Dorchester Street
Boston, Ma 02127
Or if you prefer to donate online, please go to: www.juliesfamily.org/WhyDonate.cfm.
What a wonderful way to end the holiday weekend!!
INTENTIONS OF THE HOLY FATHER FOR THE MONTH OF JULY
General Intention: That elections in every nation be carried out with justice, transparency, and honesty, respecting the free decisions of citizens.
Mission Intention: That Christians may strive to promote everywhere, but especially in our cities, education, justice, solidarity, and peace.
THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS DVD AVAILABLE
This documentary film explores several stories of forgiveness and shows how forgiveness can bring about both personal and spiritual transformation. Additional information available at www.thepowerofforgiveness.com. If you would like to borrow this film, please call Peg Miller at 617-969-2248.
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING AT MIRAMAR RETREAT CENTER
Some Enchanted Evening will be held on July 31, beginning at 5:00 PM at Miramar Retreat Center, 121 Parks St., Duxbury. Enjoy a social hour, gourmet dinner, silent and live auctions, and live entertainment. Bring your family and friends. Proceeds benefit the Miramar Capital Fund. Tickets are $100 per person. To make reservations, place an ad in the Program Book, make a donation, or donate an item for the auction, call Miramar 781-585-2460 before July 25.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LITURGY
The Second Vatican Council met from 1962 to 1965. Though that seems like ancient history, each year the Church keeps struggling to bring the riches of the Council to bear on our everyday lives. It might be good to reflect ourselves on what the council said about the goals of the Council. The opening two paragraphs of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy read as follows:
This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy.
For the liturgy, "through which the work of our redemption is accomplished," most of all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church. It is of the essence of the Church that she be both human and divine, visible and yet invisibly equipped, eager to act and yet intent on contemplation, present in this world and yet not at home in it; and she is all these things in such a way that in her the human is directed and subordinated to the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, which we seek. While the liturgy daily builds up those who are within into a holy temple of the Lord, into a dwelling place for God in the Spirit, to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ, at the same time it marvelously strengthens their power to preach Christ, and thus shows forth the Church to those who are outside as a sign lifted up among the nations under which the scattered children of God may be gathered together, until there is one sheepfold and one shepherd.
It’s not easy to grasp what is at the heart of the Liturgy. It is so important for the life of the Church that we wrestle with the notion of the Liturgy and its importance in the life of the Church. Paragraphs 5, 6 and 7 can offer us some good material for such wrestling.
God who "wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4), "who in many and various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets" (Heb. 1:1), when the fullness of time had come sent His Son, the Word made flesh, anointed by the Holy Spirit, to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to be a "bodily and spiritual medicine", the Mediator between God and man. For His humanity, united with the person of the Word, was the instrument of our salvation. Therefore in Christ "the perfect achievement of our reconciliation came forth, and the fullness of divine worship was given to us".
The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ the Lord in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He achieved His task principally by the paschal mystery of His blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and the glorious ascension, whereby "dying, he destroyed our death and, rising, he restored our life". For it was from the side of Christ as He slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth "the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church".
Just as Christ was sent by the Father, so also He sent the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit. This He did that, by preaching the gospel to every creature, they might proclaim that the Son of God, by His death and resurrection, had freed us from the power of Satan and from death, and brought us into the kingdom of His Father. His purpose also was that they might accomplish the work of salvation which they had proclaimed, by means of sacrifice and sacraments, around which the entire liturgical life revolves. Thus by baptism men are plunged into the paschal mystery of Christ: they die with Him, are buried with Him, and rise with Him; they receive the spirit of adoption as sons "in which we cry: Abba, Father" (Rom. 8 :15), and thus become true adorers whom the Father seeks. In like manner, as often as they eat the supper of the Lord they proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. For that reason, on the very day of Pentecost, when the Church appeared before the world, "those who received the word" of Peter "were baptized." And "they continued steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles and in the communion of the breaking of bread and in prayers . . . praising God and being in favor with all the people" (Acts 2:41-47). From that time onwards the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery: reading those things "which were in all the scriptures concerning him" (Luke 24:27), celebrating the Eucharist in which "the victory and triumph of his death are again made present", and at the same time giving thanks "to God for his unspeakable gift" (2 Cor. 9:15) in Christ Jesus, "in praise of his glory" (Eph. 1:12), through the power of the Holy Spirit.
To accomplish so great a work, Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, "the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross", but especially under the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks
when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20).
Christ indeed always associates the Church with Himself in this great work wherein God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified. The Church is His beloved Bride who calls to her Lord, and through Him offers worship to the Eternal Father.
Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members.
From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others. No other action of the Church can match its claim to efficacy, nor equal the degree of it.
Father Connelly
HIGH SCHOOL HARBOR CRUISE
The Office for the New Evangelization of Youth and Young Adults is sponsoring a High School Cruise on Monday, July 26 from 8-11 PM. The cost is $20 per person. Register today at www.oymboston.org.
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, July 6, we welcome Bob Lesnefsky aka Righteous B as our guest speaker. The evening runs from 7-9 PM at Fontbonne Academy, 930 Brook Road, Milton. Directions and a downloadable flyer, along with more information about LIFT, can be found at www.liftedhigher.com. Come join in worship with hundreds of Catholics from around the Boston area.
CALENDAR NOTES
COFFEE HOUR AFTER 10:30 ASL MASS:
Sunday, June 27 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
COFFEE HOUR:
Friday, July 2– Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, July 3 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
COFFEE HOUR AFTER 10:30 ASL MASS:
Sunday, July 4 – 11:30 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
SIGNINGS
Today the Word of God comes to us in the Gospel. The message is that we must be totally committed to God. We must be 100% focused on the will of God and the glory of His Kingdom. This is the greatest good; more good even than the great good of natural family.
The Church picked today's first reading to help us understand this message. The first reading was from the time after Moses showed God's power in Egypt by leading His people through the Red Sea and through the desert and before the time that Babylon conquered these same people – about 500 years before Christ was born for us.
It tells the story of Elijah the Prophet. Like Moses before him, he had the special spirit of service to God's people that he shared with others who worked with him. He shared that great important work of preparing people for God's kingdom by sharing the spirit he had been given with Elisha. Elisha showed how important the work and the sharing is by definitively leaving behind his former way of life, parting from his natural family, and even burning his farm machinery.
Jesus shared His spirit with His disciples too. Moses and Elijah prepared us to understand this in Jesus by doing it first so many years before with their own disciples.
In the beginning of Mass when the Priest says, "The Lord be with you." we respond, "And also with you." That really means, "And also with your spirit." We tell the priest that we hope that God is with the spirit that he shares with the Bishop in the work of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.
The good priest is a sign of the Word of God. He gives up his natural life and like Elijah and the disciples is given a share in the power needed to proclaim the Kingdom.
In Christ, Fr. St. Martin
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY – RETREAT COORDINATOR
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland seeks a Retreat Coordinator who will be responsible for developing and providing resources, formation and services in the areas related to lifelong faith formation as well as develop and execute strategies for a comprehensive retreat program throughout the Diocese. Bachelor’s Degree in related field required as well as a minimum of three years of parish retreat ministerial experience or one year of diocesan retreat experience. Candidates must be an active practicing Catholic in good standing with the Church and have solid praxis. Ability to travel throughout the Diocese a must. Please send a cover letter and resume to: Elizabeth Allen, Director of Human Resources, PO Box 11559, Portland, ME 04104 or email: Elizabeth.allen@portlanddiocese.org.