June 21st, 2009
Last Friday was the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was also the 50th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I was ordained with 13 others by Bishop Cuthbert O’Gara a Passionist Bishop who had been jailed and finally exiled from China. Of the 14 ordained 5 of us are still in active ministry. Seven left and married, three are dead.
The other day someone asked me if I had to do all over again would I do it. My answer was yes. I would do some things, maybe many things differently but thank God these past 50 years have been good to me. I like using that quote from the book A Complicated Kindness in which a young woman describes her life as “an embarrassment of blessings.” Certainly my life has been an embarrassment of blessing.
I have to tell you that what has been the greatest support to me these past 50 years of priesthood is seeing you good people live out your own priesthood. Our Baptism has made us all priests. We don’t hear too much about the priesthood of the faithful but through baptism we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart. A priest offers the sacrifice of the Mass. But I have been inspired by the many sacrifices you good parents make in raising your children and staying together as a family. A priest baptizes infants into the life of the church but it has been wonderful to see so many of you live out your priesthood as you pass on the faith to these children by the example of your own lives. A priest celebrates reconciliation with people but you good people do the same as you heal old wounds and let go of past hurts and bring about family peace and harmony. The priest anoints the sick but how many of you sustain the sick by your presence to them in their hours of isolation and loneliness and as you care for aging parents or spouses? A priest preaches the good news and so do you. You preach your faith and trust in God as you face and overcome life’s crises and disappointments and as you celebrate the joys and wonders of your lives.
In living out our priesthoods there are many times when we experience the distance of God, the absence of God in our lives. Like the disciples in today’s gospel caught up in that violent, life threatening storm how often have we asked the seemingly sleeping Christ, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing’? Do you not care we are being swamped by so many worries and frights? Think of the number of times we were convince God was asleep, God was not interested in our anxieties and confusions. Our faith was tested and maybe found wanting when we wondered, ‘is it worth all this trouble?” But in those times of testing Jesus was using tough love to invite our faith to go deeper. In time the winds did cease and there was a great calm and we came to know that God was with us all along and we carried on.
It’s true this is an important milestone in my life – I never thought I’d last this long. I believe the best way to celebrate this anniversary is to celebrate and give thanks for the priesthood we all share in our baptism, praying for each other that as we live our priesthood in the ordinary living of our ordinary lives the love of Christ will urge us on, so that we may live no longer for ourselves but for Him and for each other and together remain in His love.
| Posted in Homily |
Total: $9957
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Number of Envelopes Used: 481
Our parish has decided to participate in the “Pre-Authorized Giving” plan that allows parishioners to make their regular offertory donations by automatic monthly bank withdrawal. This system is widely used in the Archdiocese of Toronto and is a safe and convenient method of giving for those interested. Please read the brochure included with today’s bulletin and complete the authorization form if you would like to participate. Forms, in a sealed envelope, may be placed in the collection basket or dropped off at the Parish Office.
Thank you for your very generous support of this year’s ShareLife Campaign. Our goal for this year is $175,000. To date we have collected $165,206.51. So we are almost there!
With your help we can reach our goal.
On June 19th, 2009, Father Paul will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of his ordination. We are so fortunate in having Father Paul with us for most of those years. His love and service have touched so many of our lives.
On Sunday, June 21st from 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM in the Gathering Space the parish will come together in thanksgiving and celebration of this important occasion. So mark your calendars and join us on that day!
Congratulations to those children from St. Gabriel’s School who received their First Communion as a group on Sunday, June 14th.
It was a beautiful celebration. We promise to support them with our prayers as they continue on their journey of faith.
Our journey of life and journey of faith are meant to converge at an early age. For many of us, however, we tend to grow physically, mentally, psychologically etc., but remain at a childish level of understanding our faith. The following information is for those who wish to keep growing, to be able to enjoy the Good news of God’s love for us as members of God’s Church.
Monday Nights are R.C.I.A. Nights
R.C.I.A. (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) meetings begin on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 8:00 PM. These evenings are for persons interested in learning about the Catholic Faith. Because the Parish Community itself is considered the official teacher and guide for potential new members, it is important that some parishioners participate by being present and by sharing their Faith in various ways. It is also an opportunity for “Born Catholics” to deepen their understanding of the faith. Adult Catholics who wish to celebrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist and/or Confirmation are welcome. For more information, please call Mary Landry at 416 – 221 – 8866.
Have you moved into the Parish recently? Have you changed your mailing address?
Please contact the Parish office at 416-221-8866 so that we may update our records. Thank you.
Registration forms for the Children’s Faith Program for next year are now available in the Parish Office. Please note that all registrations must be returned by June 30th. Volunteers from the Parish to teach or to assist the teachers are always welcome. Please contact Lynette Fernandes at lynettefern@yahoo.com if interested.
For many years, volunteers from St. Gabriel’s have served one of the daily meals provided to the homeless and disadvantaged that the Little Brothers of the Good Shepherd offer as one of the services at the Good Shepherd Centre on Queen Street East in Toronto.
The kitchen and serving areas of the centre were recently renovated and when the meal service restarted, the serving times were changed. This change means that St. Gabriel’s will need more volunteers to continue to provide our contribution to this continuing and growing service.
St. Gabriel’s will now serve on the second Monday of the month from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. If you are interested in being a part of this volunteer service, please contact Lily D’Gama at 416-733-3949 for more details.
The Centre also urgently needs groups of 4 to 20 individuals to make beds, weekdays only between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM until June 20th.
The Centre is in need of the following items:
For more information, please contact Rebecca Ferguson at 416-869- 3699, Ext. 262.
Liturgical Publications will be setting up advertisements for our church bulletin beginning July 3rd, 2009. The advertisements make our bulletin possible. Please support the bulletin and advertise your product or service. Call Liturgical Publications at 905-624-4422.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are widely considered among the greatest archaeological finds of the past century. They include the earliest written sources for the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) as well as other less well known writings.
The ROM would like to invite you and your family to visit the ROM and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at special discount rates. Purchase your tickets online and save up to 30 % off regular rates. Visit www.rom.on.ca/scrolls and order tickets using the promo code CATHOLIC.
The synagogues of the Bayview Corridor, together with “Between Friends” are collecting some badly needed items for fourteen Aboriginal communities in Northern Ontario.
Most requested items are:
(not text books, damaged or written in)
Donations can be dropped off at “Kids Come First” Daycare, 40 Westminster Drive, Thornhill (Steeles between Bathurst and Dufferin) between 7:30 AM and 2:00 PM, Monday to Friday.
If you have any questions, please contact Fatima Lee at 416-221-8866.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is looking for a boy’s bicycle (for age 10 to 12). If anyone has one in good condition which they no longer need, we have a refugee family that would be really grateful. Please call 416-222- 6110.
The Society of St Vincent de Paul continues to be extremely grateful for the generosity of St. Gabriel’s parishioners in helping those in need, especially as that need is growing in the current economic climate. We have noticed that, from time to time, we receive quite substantial cash gifts from unidentified donors and would like to remind donors that the Society issues tax deductible receipts for amounts of $20 or more per annum. However, to do so, we need to know the donor’s name and address and therefore recommend either using and completing the details on one of the St. Vincent de Paul envelopes to be found on the tables near the entrance to the church or writing out a cheque, which invariably has the necessary information on it.
Blessed Trinity C.W.L. is organizing an afternoon and evening bridge. If you wish to join and make new friends, please call Maureen Cullen at 416- 222-8755 before July 31st, 2009. Thank you.
| Posted in Bulletin |
June 14th, 2009
Today we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. The first recording of what we call the ‘last supper’ in found in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, written long before the gospels. Paul claims he received his knowledge of this event from Christ Himself, “I received from the Lord what I handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night on which he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks, he broke and said, ‘this is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he took the cup after supper saying, this is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me'” Then Paul goes on to say,” for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
We lose the full meaning of this feast is we focus just on the consecrated host as the Body of Christ. It truly is of course. But Paul also told the Corinthians, ‘you are the body of Christ, individually and as a community.’ Paul saw Christ as the head of the body and we are the members of the body, interconnected and interdependent. No member of the body can say to another, “I have no need of you”.
So today we celebrate the full dimensions of this feast, Christ present in the Eucharist and Christ present in each of us, as individuals and as a parish community. Christ is present in the tabernacle, Christ is present on the altar and Christ is present in you good people gathered for this celebration, in different modes of presence. What would you think if, when I arrived to celebrate this Mass, instead of genuflecting to the tabernacle I genuflected to you? Instead of reverencing Christ present in the tabernacle I reverenced Christ present in you? Both gestures would be perfectly valid and true.
We were all taught to reverence and respect the sacred host. In the old days if the priest dropped the host on the floor there was a strict procedure to be followed; a white cloth was put on the spot so no one who step on it and after the Mass the priest was to wash the spot clean. But do we show the same respect and reverence for each other? Do we show reverence and respect for the Body of Christ we meet in this church or at the plaza or on the subway? Do we show reverence and respect for the Body of Christ living under our own roof?
Individually, do we show reverence and respect for ourselves as the Body of Christ? Do we recognize that we are blessed people meant to be Christ to each other and to the world? Do we have the same patience and compassion for ourselves as we are mean to have to others who are the Body of Christ?
We do not receive communion because we are good and holy, we receive communion because of a hunger we have to be more what we are, the body of Christ. We receive communion because we want to make real in our own lives what St Paul saw as the reality of his life, “for to live is Christ, I live now, not I but Christ lives in me.” We receive communion because we are aware of our own weaknesses and failing and the need we have for Christ’s grace and presence in our lives.
St. Augustine’s formula for giving communion was; receive what you are, become what you receive, the Body of Christ. When we say Amen at communion we not only acknowledge that we are receiving Christ, we are acknowledging too that we must be the Body of Christ if our Amen is to be true.
As we continue to celebrate this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ may each of us be blessed with a deeper faith in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the presence of Christ in ourselves, the presence of Christ in every person we meet. May each of us say Amen to each of these realities.
Total: $9545
Number of Envelopes Used: 488
Father Thomas Berry was the inspiration for the concept of St. Gabriel’s Parish. He was an internationally recognized historian of cultures. His writing and lectures on the relationship of humans with the cosmos and the earth had a great impact on the modern development of creation spirituality. Father Thomas held a symposium on different aspects of this spirituality at Holy Cross Centre for Creation and Spirituality in Port Burwell, Ontario. It was his teachings on the importance of connecting worship with creation that inspired many of the aspects of our present church. Father Thomas died June 1st. A funeral Mass was celebrated June 6th at our monastery in Jamaica, New York. Father Steve Dunn preached the homily.
“May he rest after his works for his good deeds go with him.”
Congratulations to those children from the Children’s Faith Program, and those from Private and Public Schools who received their First Communion as a group on Sunday, June 7th.
2008 ShareLife Total: $174,507.20 2009 ShareLife To Date: $163,746.51
Registration forms for the Children’s Faith Program for next year are now available in the Parish Office. Please note that all registrations must be returned by June 30th.
Volunteers from the Parish to teach or to assist the teachers are always welcome. Please contact Lynette Fernandes at lynettefern@yahoo.com if interested.
Fair trade organic coffees will be on sale after all the Masses next weekend. This will be the last sale until September.
The Way of the Universe: Wisdom for the Ecozoic Era O.I.S.E. Auditorium June 26, 27, 2009 252 Bloor St. W. Toronto
Brian Swimme will be in Toronto Friday evening and Saturday, June 26th and 27th at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (O.I.S.E.). Brian co-authored the Universe Story with Father Thomas Berry and collaborated with him and the Passionists over the years.
For more information on this event, please see the flyers available in the Parish Office.
June 7th, 2009
On this feast of the Holy Trinity we celebrate a mystery of faith that separates us from Jewish and Moslem believers in the one God. We believe that Jesus made known to the world what might be called the family secret of God. That secret, that mystery is that the inner life of God is a life of community – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As I mentioned before a mystery is not something of which we can know nothing, a mystery is something of which we cannot know everything. When we stop to think about it we are a mystery to ourselves. Do any of us know ourselves completely, understand ourselves completely. How often do we find ourselves saying to ourselves, “why did I say that, why did I do that, why am I so impatient, so unforgiving?”
Through the gift of baptism we have been invited into the intimacy of that divine relationship. Through the gift of baptism we received the spirit of adoption. The Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirits that we are the children of God. The Holy Spirit gives us the boldness to call God – Father.
We are told that we are made in the image and likeness of God. What this means is that we have the ability to enter into and live in relationship with others. It is not good to be alone. At every Mass we pray that we “may all of us who share in the Body and Blood of Christ be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit.
The honesty, the integrity, the sincerity of our lives as Christian men and women is proven by our efforts to live out the great commandment of Jesus, “Love one another as I have loved you.” As we all know this is not an easy thing to do. There are days, maybe months, maybe years when we find it almost impossible to forgive spouses, children, friends, collogues who have hurt us, disappointed us, maybe even betrayed us. It can take years to outlive prejudices or a narrow-mindedness that we picked up by osmosis growing up. We all have a tendency to stereo-type other people. But for all our difficulties we still make break throughs, we still find within ourselves the courage to take the first step toward reconciliation, the first step toward accepting and respecting others, the first step toward being there for others in need. In living this great commandment, a commandment by which our lives will be judged, there are days we win and there are days we loose, but we always keep trying.
There is one relationship we especially need to examine and that is our relationship with God’s good creation.
Father Thomas Berry, a Passionist priest who died this past week was a great thinker and writer. When speaking of the environmental and ecological crisis facing all of us, a crisis caused by the alienation between ourselves and the earth community, he speaks of the dire need for the human family to work toward a ‘mutually enhancing earth human relationship.” It is good to remember the earth was around billions of years before our arrival. As you’ve heard before, the earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth, what we do to the earth we do to ourselves. Our present relationship with earth and the life communities on the earth can best be described as exploitive, manipulative and destructive. If we were in a human relationship that fit this description, hopefully we would get out of it for the sake of our own survival.
Fr. Thomas makes this statement: “In the 20th century the glory of the human has become the desolation of the earth and the desolation of the earth is becoming the destiny of the human.” Again, what we do to the earth we do to ourselves.
On this feast of the Holy Trinity maybe we can take the time to examine the health of our personal relationship with God’s good creation. Relationships are determined by attitudes. Are we still caught in the mind-set that God make us lords of all creation and everything is ours to use and abuse or do we have an attitude of gratitude toward earth and see in it a manifestation of God’s beauty and graciousness? Do we have the insight which helps us see ourselves in relationship with the entire earth community? Again you’ve heard the saying,’ we did not weave the web we are a strand in the web and what we do to the web we do to ourselves.
As we continue to celebrate the feast of all relationships we can pray for ourselves and for each other that in all our relationship, with God, the church, our families our society and earth we will try to make sure these are all mutually enhancing – that they be all they could be and should be healthy, holy and healing, mutually enhancing.
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