December 12th, 2010
In the second reading James is encouraging the Christian community to be patient as they wait for the coming of the Lord. In the early years of the church many thought that Jesus would return to relieve the sufferings of his followers and vindicate their faith in him and all would be well. In time they came to see this was unrealistic and the how and when of Jesus’ coming is known to God alone.
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| Posted in Homily |
December 13th- December 18th 2010
MONDAY – ROSE MA Requested by Mary & Alec Chan TUESDAY – JANICE DE RUITER Requested by Mary & Alec Chan WEDNESDAY – SPECIAL INTENTION Requested by Alice Michael THURSDAY – AGNES & JAMES LEDDY Requested by Alicia Patenaude FRIDAY – BARRY BRADBURY Requested by Peggy & Family SATURDAY – GUS CALDERONE Requested by Marie Calderone
Dress Rehearsal: Sunday, December 19th 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
S.K. to Grade 5 children are invited to participate in the pageant. Please call Anne Murphy at 416-512-0340.
Wednesday, December 15th at 7:30 PM St. Gabriel’s Church
Will Christmas be difficult to celebrate this year because of the loss of a loved one? St. Gabriel’s, the other Christian Churches in our area and the North York Hospital Chaplaincy are offering a Christmas Service for Those Who Mourn on Wednesday, December 15th at 7:30 PM here at St. Gabriel’s Church. All are welcome to attend.
Sunday, December 19th @ 7:00 PM
The Youth Group, together with Fr. Brando, will hold a concert on Sunday, December 19th @ 7:00 PM here at St. Gabriel’s Church in order to continue to raise funds for a water system for the indigenous people in the Philippines. Free will donations will be accepted.
Rehearsal: Sunday, December 19th 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Each year, young people, Grade 3 and up, form a special choir for the Family Mass on Christmas Eve. Children must be at the Church by 6:00 PM for this Mass. One rehearsal, which is mandatory, will be held on Sunday, December 19th from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Please call Marilyn Calderone at 416-618-2041 for more information.
“Moments of Grace from Dark Days” Sunday, December 21 at 7:30 PM
The annual Advent/Winter Solstice Evening of Reflection will be held on Sunday, December 21 at 7:30 PM in the Gabriel room. Because the feast of Christmas was deliberately timed to coincide with the darkness of the winter’s solstice, there is a link between theological meaning and cosmological setting. Join us for a guided exploration of the relevance of these theological and cosmological connections to today’s ecological challenges. Please contact Dennis O’Hara at dennis.ohara@utoronto.ca or 416-926-1300, ext. 3408 to register or for more information.
Your offertory envelopes are now available in the Gathering Space. Please pick yours up as soon as possible. If the address on your box is incorrect, please inform the Parish Office so that we can update our records. If you do not receive offertory envelopes and would like to do so, please call the office at 416-221-8866 and we will prepare a box for you. The “Pre-Authorized Giving” plan allows parishioners to make their regular offertory donations by automatic monthly bank withdrawal. Forms, (in a sealed envelope please), may be placed in the collection basket or dropped off at the Parish Office.
Our operating expenses average $14,000 per week. Last week’s collection: Loose Change – $ 1, 342 Envelopes (454) – $10,138 Weekly Portion of Pre-Authorized Giving 134 – $2,738 Total – $14,218
Your support is urgently needed! December 12th to 17th
The Society for St. Vincent de Paul is in urgent need of food to help the growing number of families requiring assistance this year. All food collected until December 17th will be donated to the St. Vincent de Paul Society for distribution. Donations may be left in the designated containers at the doors of the Church until December 17th. Thank you for your support.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul tries to bring help to our neighbours who are in urgent need of assistance. Anyone looking for help should call 416-740-6006 and leave their name and phone number. They will then be contacted in order to determine their needs and arrange a meeting.
We are having a Christmas Toy Drive for the Catholic Children’s Aid Society. Can you help by dropping off an unwrapped new toy for a child 0 to 12 years old? Containers will be set up at the doors of the Church until Sunday, December 19h.
Concert – Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 7:30 PM
The Refugee Sponsorship Committee is having a Fundraising concert on Thursday January 13th, 2011 for the Iraqi family being sponsored by the Parish. The concert will be held at 7:30pm at St. Gabriel’s and will feature musicians and singers from the Parish, as well as special guest DALA. DALA has toured Canada and the US many times, opening for artists such as Jann Arden, Tom Cochrane, Matthew Good, Stuart McLean of the CBC’s Vinyl Café and Chantal Kreviazuk. Tickets will go on sale in the Gathering Space after all Masses December 18th and 19th. Adult tickets: $20, and $10 for children under 12. Tickets can also be purchased from Marilyn Calderone (416-221-8866 ext 225) and Chris Carabine (416-512-9666).
December 18th to January 4th
Your help is urgently needed. The situation is critical! Please help feed the hungry and homeless this Christmas. Make a difference in the lives of those most in need within our community by participating in the Good Shepherd Centre’s annual Christmas Food Drive
Urgently Needed Items:
Donations may be left in the designated containers at the doors of the Church. We thank you for your generous support.
Fair trade organic coffees will be on sale after all the Masses next weekend.
The Catholic Children’s Aid Society is inviting families to assist them in providing some little extras, such as new clothing, new toys, food vouchers and /or gift certificates to bring the joy of the season to one of their families. If you are willing to provide a donation or adopt-a-family, please call 416-395-1634 or email info@hopeforthechildren.ca.
You are invited after all the Masses this weekend to sign an Amnesty International petition and/or send a greeting card to a prisoner of conscience or human rights defender who is under threat.
“Engagement with the world, as demanded by God’s word, makes us look with new eyes at the entire created cosmos, which contains traces of that Word through whom all things were made. (cf. Jn 1:2). As men and women who believe in and proclaim the Gospel, we have a responsibility towards creation.”
Verbum Domini, Benedict XVI, Nov., 2010
| Posted in Bulletin |
December 5th, 2010
Just a few words on our first reading from Isaiah. What we heard was a part of a long prophetic poem that paints a picture of a Messiah. This Messiah will come from the long lineage of David, one of the greatest kings of Israel. This Messiah will be blessed with a deep sense of what is right and just. This prophetic poem tells of a time when all things were at rights with one another. It is a reflection on the age of the Garden of Eden, a time of the ‘uninjured ‘creation.’
In our conflicted world it is hard to imagine this imagery as real; the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, the cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.
This certainly speaks of an idyllic time when all was well and harmony ruled creation. It conjures up images of the Garden of Eden, images which are themselves flights of fancy. In that realm of uninjured creation all God’s creation lived without fear of each other. What we call “natural enemies” were “natural friends”. Animals and humans lived with “integrity”. Integrity comes from a Latin word that means whole or uninjured. Isaiah’s poem ends with a surprising prediction. It tells of a person who will reverse the consequences of the original ‘injury’ that shattered that realm of harmony. We know that the Biblical story of creation is just that, a story. It is an important theological story, a story that gave us our view of the world for centuries. It tells us that God is over and above all of creation and all that is comes from the creating power of God. In this story we humans are told we have a special relation with God, we are made in the image and likeness of God in that we were given the ability to love. Breaking the story up into seven segments was a teaching device for a people who lived in the times of oral traditions; stories were passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. Over the past number of years through the different disciplines of science we have come to a more realistic understanding of the beginnings of the universe. We have come to know that some 15 billion years ago there was an original flaming forth of energy called the Big Bang. Everything that is was contained in that explosion of energy. Everything that exists is interconnected, related to all others from the largest star to a sub atomic particle. We have to face the unhappy fact that we humans have shattered creation’s harmony. By the exploitation of the un-renewable resources of the planet, by polluting the oceans, lakes and rivers of the planet, by poisoning the very air we breathe, by cutting down the rainforests of the world we have managed to upset the natural life systems of Earth. We tend to pretend we don’t hear or understand the many warnings we’ve been given regarding the climate changes that taking place. We are addicted to exploiting the resources of the planet to maintain our style of living. Among the community of nations the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is a fact in our own country. Tragically countries like China, India, Brazil and the nations of Africa see the North American and European life styles as the norm which they strive to imitate. The truth of the matter is Earth cannot sustain a second, much less a third, North America. Our mindset, our understanding as to how we see ourselves in the community of life and non-life has to change. We used to sing a hymn the words of which said ‘You made us Lords of all creation, everything is ours to use.’ Not so. We are not lords, we are kin to all creation, we are members of the family of life on Earth and everything is not ours to use and abuse. There is that truth we’ve forgotten, ‘we did not weave the web of life, we are a strand in the web and what we do to the web, we do to ourselves.’ There was life on this planet long before the human family began and there will be life on the planet long after we’re gone. Remember the saying ‘the earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth and what we do to the earth we do to ourselves. The modern plague of cancer may well be the result of the ways we have altered and polluted the life systems of the planet. Isaiah sees the coming Messiah as one who will heal our injured creation and bring back that time of peace and harmony. We are preparing for the birth of the Prince of Peace, the one who came to bring peace among the nations, a peace we have yet to realize. This Prince seeks to heal our injured creation and as his followers we are called to heal the wounds we’ve inflicted on the Earth. As President Kennedy said years ago, ‘God’s work must truly be our own.’ During the next weeks we will be engulfed in the buying frenzy we call Christmas shopping. We will be encouraged to buy, buy and buy some more. We will be told we must have this and must have that. Consumerism is the name of the game and it is so far removed from that time when the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the seas. We can use this Advent season as a time to look into our lifestyles, our consumerism, and our addiction to more and more gadgets. We can use this Advent season discover ways by which we can live more lightly on the Earth. We can use this season of Advent to pray for a deeper appreciation of the wounded world and make our own simple efforts towards it healing. Thomas Berry speaks of the efforts we humans must make to bring about a mutually enhancing earth human relationship. Anything we can do in our own lifestyles to bring about such a life giving earth human relationship can bring about our own healing and a healing of an injured creation.
In this week’s bulletin, the Youth Group hold a fundraiser for a water system for indigenous people in the Philippines, the Christmas service for those who mourn, and the Good Shepherd Centre food drive.
| Posted in Uncategorized |
November 28th, 2010
I don’t know if you remember the song Anticipation. One rendition was by Carly Simon. Advent is a season of anticipation, weeks of expectancy, eagerness and hope. At the time of Jesus the Jewish people were in a state of anticipation and expectancy. A hopeful people asked Jesus, ‘are you he who is to come or should be look for another?’ If you have small children this is the beginning of a time of anticipation in the family as your young children look forward to Santa’s coming to town. In anticipation we make plans for Christmas shopping, Christmas decorations, Christmas travel and Christmas family gatherings.
Founded by St. Paul of the Cross, every Passionist takes a special vow to spend his or her energies in promoting remembrance of the sufferings of Jesus, the memory of the Cross, and reflection of the meaning of the Cross for the world.
Learn about Passionists and our insignia »
Companion for the Walk of the Stations of the Cosmic Earth
St. Gabriel’s Garden – Guided Sensory Reflective Walk
