Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Saturday, January 8
4:00 PM Donald Burke
Sunday, January 9
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM Luis and Elda Tonelli
Thursday, January 13
7:00 AM Mary E. Cogswell
Saturday, January 15
4:00 PM Mary and Pauline Scichilone
Sunday, January 16
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM Pasquale Nazarena Merolli
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, January 15 – 2 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First reading: Isaiah 49:3, 5-6
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:1-3
Gospel Reading: John 1:29-34
CHRISTMAS FLOWERS
The following is an updated list, as of January 3, of people in whose memory donations were made for our beautiful Christmas flowers. Please keep all of these people in your prayers.
Elinor Barron Fr. Charles McCoy
Arthur English Family Doris Sterry
ST. FRANCIS HOUSE
Thanks for your generosity during the Christmas season. Let's keep up the good work during January – canned vegetables are needed. Do your part to fill the cart! The people who signed up at the ministry fair to help deliver will start this month, so it would be nice if they had enough stuff to make the trip into Boston seem worthwhile.
SAVE THE DATE!
The next Social Justice Forum will take place on Sunday evening, January 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the lower church. The speaker will be Gordon Martin, who will talk about his new book – “Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians – Fighting for the Right to Vote”.
OFFERTORY INCOME
Christmas Offering $9,345
Sunday, December 26 $5,005
Sunday, January 2 $3,865
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
There will be no Religious Education on Sunday, January 9 and Tuesday, January 11. Classes will resume on Sunday, January 16 and Tuesday, January 18.
There will be a workshop for all CCD teachers on Sunday evening, January 9 from 5-7 PM in the Convent. We will have a special guest. All please attend and bring your catechist guides!
A blessed and Happy New Year!
Michelle Solomon, Dir. of RE
CONFIRMATION
We would like to invite the 9th grade parents to come to a Parent Information Night to be held on Sunday evening January 30th from 7:00 – 8:00pm to present the curriculum for the chastity program entitled “Created for Love”.
“Created for Love”, developed by the Archdiocese of Boston, is a four-hour program for middle and high school parish religious education settings designed to help students to come to know the great love that God has for them, and to inspire them to answer His call to love. It is intended to help them understand, appreciate, and live out their call to accept Christ’s teachings on life, love and relationships.
The four-hour program will be divided into two, 2 hour sessions and presented to the 9th grade on the evenings of Tuesday, February 1st and 8th.
We will be starting our 2nd Annual Speaker Series from 7 – 8:30pm in the lower church for Confirmation Students, Parents and Parishioners on Tuesday, January 18th. We would love you all to join our students in learning about our Catholic Faith. Hope to see you there!!!!
On Tuesday, January 18th, Dr. Anthony Keaty will speak on Christology; all are welcome.
A complete schedule of speakers will be available next week.
Roseann Furbush, Confirmation Coordinator
MONTROSE SCHOOL OPEN HOUSE
On Thursday, January 20, Montrose School will host an Open House from 7 – 9 PM at 289 North St., Medfield, MA 02052. Montrose School is an independent college preparatory day school with a Catholic tradition for girls in grades 6-12. For more information, call 508-359-2423.
JUSTICE, THE CHURCH, AND THE GREAT RECESSION: A FRANCISCAN PERSPECTIVE
A Forum Report
(Father David Couturier, OFM., Cap., has come to the Archdiocese on loan from the Capuchins to head up the planning process for the diocese. He also is interested in and well informed about the social teachings of the Church which he views in many ways from his Franciscan perspective. Father Couturier came to Sacred Heart Parish a month or so ago to speak at a meeting of the Justice and Peace Committee. Cass Turner, a parishioner and active member of the Justice and Peace Committee, has written up the following report on Father Couturier’s excellent address.)
The Justice and Peace Committee of Sacred Heart Parish sees its principle role as educational—informing ourselves, the parish and local community on significant social issues. To that end, the committee has sponsored, over the last several years, twenty-four Social Justice Forums addressing such issues.
The most recent forum presentation focused on the timely topic of the economic recession. Fr. David Couturier, the Director of Pastoral Planning for the Archdiocese of Boston, began by challenging the notion that the Catholic Church should limit itself to spiritual matters and has nothing to say about the Great Recession, which the country has recently experienced and will feel for many years. The crisis is more than an economic crisis; it represents a moral and spiritual crisis in much of human society.
Fr. Couturier gave a brief history of the establishment of the Franciscan order. He noted that, in fact, St. Francis Assisi formed the first community in reaction to the extreme economic and military competitiveness of his time. Deriving their vision from the gospels and their theology of a Good and Gracious God, he and his companions committed to a life of sharing, cooperation, and love. Franciscans have been thinking about and writing about economics since the 13th century, and the issues they have dealt with are relevant today: the social dysfunction of extreme competition; its impact on the poor; and the need to find alternatives to the competitive and aggressive world.
Among the major themes of the lecture was growing income disparities. Income inequality has steadily grown in the last few decades. Even as the average worker works longer hours for less money and is threatened with loss of employment, those at the top of the income scale have gained a much larger share of private wealth. Throughout the recession, jobs have been slashed and salaries reduced in order for corporations to maintain and increase profits. He quoted Benedict XVI: “The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone” (Caritas in Veritate, 2009).
Fr. Couturier made clear that the only consensus about the causes of the Great Recession is that there were many. Nonetheless, from a moral perspective, greed has been widely identified as a major contributor. Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, is paraphrased as saying that he sees greed as the underlying factor in all of the financial scandals we have witnessed in the recent past (e.g. Enron, Madoff, etc.). Jim Wallis, Founder of Sojourners, makes explicit the underlying spiritual crisis and is quoted: “So the Great Recession bears some ‘religious’ reflection…It is the Market that now seems to have all the godlike qualities—all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, even eternal—unable to be resisted or even questioned…The market can be a good thing and even necessary; but it now commands too much, claims ultimate significance, controls too much space in our lives, and has gone far beyond its proper limits.”
The discussion that followed gravitated toward possible solutions. It became clear that the archdiocese wants to contribute to the solutions of the current crisis, but it will never be able to meet all the current and long-term material needs that follow the problems in the economy. The Office of Pastoral Planning has no programmatic solutions at present, but Fr. Couturier has begun a process that will lead to a more archdiocese-wide focus on social justice. He hopes that broad and representative consultation will lead to both policy recommendations and specific programs toward a more Franciscan perspective: covenantal existence, divine abundance, and neighborly generosity.
AN IMPORTANT POSTSCRIPT
The liturgies of this week have reminded us that even we who are American citizens are called to holiness of life. January 4 was the Feast of Elizabeth Seton. January 5 was the Feast of John Neumann, and we should not forget Mother Katharine Drexel and Mother Cabrini, who became a United States citizen.
Opening Prayer for the Feast of St. Elizabeth Seton:
Lord God, you blessed Elizabeth Seton with gifts of grace as wife and mother, educator and foundress, so that she might spend her life in service to your people. Through her example and prayers may we learn to express our love for you in love for others. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, you Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
SIGNINGS
John was right. He knew he didn't need to baptize the Lord Jesus. He knew who Jesus was. He is God. He is one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.
He does not need to be baptized into himself. But he does it anyway. Jesus knew John was right but he tells John to go ahead. Jesus shows us what Baptism means. It means that we are totally caught up into God’s life of love; the life of the Most Holy Trinity. Jesus comes up out of the water and the Father showers love down on the Son. We see that in the image of the Dove and in the words of pleasure from the Father to the Son.
Jesus as our brother here on Earth born from the Virgin Mary really shared fully in our life in this world. He is fully immersed. He goes fully into this life of ours. He is not overcome by it. He comes out of the water and because He does, so can we. We can now do what He did not need to do for us and we could never do for ourselves. We can rise with Christ out of the overwhelming immersion experience of this world to new life of love with the Father and the Father's love pouring down on us in the Holy Spirit and in pleasure.
God the Father is pleased with you, because you are like His Only Son Jesus who was baptized too.
God is so good. We now cherish the fact that we have been freely given this gift of the Father's love.
John was right. We are not worthy of this gift. But the Lord Jesus insists and God does get His way. We hope that God will get His way with us and we too, with John, will permit the good God to do His thing and love us too.
In Christ,
Fr. St. Martin
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. LIFT is for all ages – from young adults to adults to teens to entire families. Be with us on Tuesday, January 11th as we welcome Fr. Norman Fischer as our guest speaker. The evening runs from 7 – 9 PM at Fontbonne, Academy, 930 Brook Road, Milton, MA. 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.
TIME TO REPLENISH SCHOOL SUPPLIES!!!
It’s that time of year – replenishing school and office supplies! Our parish-wide project to provide Mother Caroline Academy students and teachers with school supplies will run from January 22 through 30. For two weekends, baskets will be placed at church entrances for collection of “new” items. Since the school is totally privately funded, they depend on donations from individuals, churches, and organizations. So, as you purchase school items or refill your own home and/or business office supplies, please consider buying and donating the following supplies for 64 middle school students & 9 volunteer teachers:
AAA batteries for graphing calculators (4 per calculator)
white board markers (black and other colors) & erasers
index cards tri-fold poster boards
Xerox paper graph paper
3 ring notebook paper glue sticks
highlighters markers
colored pencils
You can drop off donations in the collection baskets near church entrances the weekends of January 22/23 and January 29/30.
Any contribution you could make to MCAEC would be profoundly appreciated. Your support makes it possible for much-needed educational opportunities to a disadvantaged community, ultimately helping many families to break free from the cycle of poverty.
Thanks in advance for your generosity!!!!
Margaret LeBlanc and Jane McGuire
CALENDAR NOTES
EXTENDED COFFEE HOUR:
Sunday, January 9 – 10 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
CCD TEACHERS WORKSHOP:
Sunday, January 9 – 5 to 7 PM – Convent
BOY SCOUTS:
Monday, January 10 – 7:30 PM – Parish Center
PRAYER GROUP:
Wednesday, January 12 – 7:30 PM – Convent (Chapel)
KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS:
Wednesday, January 12 – 7:30 PM – Convent (DR)
COFFEE HOUR:
Friday, January 14 – Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, January 15 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
EXTENDED COFFEE HOUR:
Sunday, January 16 – 10 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – GRADES 1-5:
Sunday, January 16 – 10:30 to 11:45 AM – Lower Church