March 27th, 2008
All those newly baptized or newly received into the Church, taken with Father Paul. From left to right: Sylvia Rhee, Chad Smith, Pricilla Ning, Kewen Zhu, Father Paul, Anastasia Nicolor, Estelle Bene, Winnie Lee, Ronald Monk. Confirmation candidate Mark Anthony is not in the picture.
| Posted in Events |
March 23rd, 2008
This evening Estelle Bene, Winnie Lee, Ronald Monk, Priscilla Ning, Kewen Zhu and Anastasia Nicolov will be baptized and Sylvia Rhee, Chad Smith and Mark Anthony will be received into the Catholic community. Since last September these good people have working with Mary Landry, Fatima Lee and Bonnie O’Brien, learning more and more about our Catholic/Christian faith. They’ve decided, through their study and prayer that they wanted to join the church.
In the early church this was the night new Christians were baptized. St. Paul uses the powerful imagery of Christ’s burial and resurrection to describe this sacrament of baptism. As Christ was buried in the tomb and then rose gloriously from the tomb to new life, so the newly baptized immersed in water, as in a tomb came from that tomb to new life in Christ. Paul explains his symbolism saying, “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too have been raised in him to live a new life for God.” By water and by word we who are baptized are freed from sin and we enter into a whole new relationship the Father, the Father Who chose us in Christ before the world began to be His adopted daughters and sons.
At every Easter Mass we are asked to renounce Satan and the works of Satan – to profess our faith in Jesus Christ and commit ourselves again to do our best at living Christ like lives, living out our adoption, our being chosen by God before the world began.
This is the feast of life over death, love over hatred, holiness over sin. This feast is the foundation stone of our Christian life and faith. As St. Paul puts it so bluntly “if Christ be not raised then we are still in our sins” – the pain and shame and death on Good Friday was for nothing. But we believe the good news brought to Peter and the apostles on first Easter morning by Mary Magdalene and passed on to Christian people through the centuries – Christ lives.
Jesus was raised, not as a reward for a good life well spent, but to untomb us from our tombs of our sins, our anger, prejudice, self centeredness. Christ rose from the dead to empower us, His sisters and brothers to overcome all those death dealing situations in our lives, be they found in lifestyles, attitudes or in relationships that can dominate and control our lives and are really unworthy of our dignity as daughters and sons of God and deprive us of the life and love that are ours through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.
Easter, in a special way, is a day and celebration that calls us to live our lives for God and this we do by living our lives for others following the example of Christ Who came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.
As we continue to celebrate our Easter Mass we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we live our lives in such a way that they manifest the good news, the life giving news Mary Magdalene brought to the Apostles – Christ is risen and lives in us, in the lives we live, the work we do, the service give and the prayers we pray – outside these walls.
| Posted in Homily |
This Easter Sunday we celebrate the joy of the risen Christ. ShareLife continues to help those in our community through agencies like Silent Voice, one of 34 agencies receiving funding from ShareLife. Silent Voice provides service to deaf children, adults and families. The agency works to create better communication between deaf and hearing members in families and in our community. Silent Voice also has a Sign Language Summer Program, a day camp in American Sign Language (ASL) for deaf children and hearing children who have deaf parents, sisters or brothers. In this program, children improve their ASL, meet other children who sign and have fun! The program is structured for children age 6 to 14 with all signing abilities.
March 24, the Office Closed
On Wednesday, March 25 and Wednesday April 2 at 7:30 PM., Rabbi David Seed from the congregation Adath Israel and Father Paul will be moderators for a presentation on Jewish/Christian relations. These discussions deal with mending relationships and mending the world.
March 25, 7:30 PM at Adath Israel, 37 Southborne Avenue, one block north of Wilson Avenue off Bathurst Street April 2, 7:30 PM at St Gabriel’s, 670 Sheppard Avenue East
This program is sponsored by the National Council of Synagogues and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Please make every effort to attend these very interesting evenings.
Total: $11,018.44
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Tuesday evening, March 25 at 7:30 PM Topic: Catholics in Nazi Germany
Wednesday morning, March 26 at 10:30 AM Topic: St. Paul – Pastor and Theologian
Good Shepherd Centre, a multi-service charitable agency providing services to homeless and disadvantaged individuals, needs your help!
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Good Shepherd Centre is in need of the following items:
Volunteer Opportunity
Thursday morning (6:30 – 7:30 AM) Kitchen volunteer to help set up and serve breakfast For more information, please contact Kanwaljeet Biln at 416 – 869 – 3619, Ext. 262. Good Shepherd Centre is located at 412 Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario. M5A 1T3 Phone: 416 – 869-3619 Fax: 416 – 869-0510
Your prepared chicken rice casseroles (frozen please) will be collected at the Masses next weekend for delivery to the Good Shepherd Centre. More volunteers are encouraged to get a copy of the casserole recipe and a pan and give it a try. For more information, please contact Irene Albrecht at 416 221 – 2791.
Earth Hour is a world movement intending to reinforce a powerful message about the need for action on global warming. Those participating will turn off their lights from 8:00 to 9:00 PM on Saturday, March 29, 2008 as a symbol of their support for action.
As parishioners of Canada’s first green Church, we urge your participation in this event. During that time, we will also be celebrating Earth Hour together here in our Church. We will gather at 7:45PM. There will be storytelling, music, reflection, prayer and conversations. Light refreshments will also be served. Please join us if you can!
Married couples: You deserve a weekend to celebrate being together; to rediscover each other and focus on ways to make your relationship even better. A Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend offers this opportunity. Consider giving each other or another couple that you know the gift of a weekend away from daily pressures; time to be with each other and with God on a Marriage Encounter Weekend.
Upcoming Weekend date: April 4 – 6, 2008 For further information, please contact David & Lucy Adams at 905 – 470 – 9590 or email adams@rogers.com
The 2008 Ching Ming Remembrance Mass will be held in the Holy Family Mausoleum at Holy Cross Cemetery in Thornhill on April 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM. The Mass, which is held in Chinese, is organized by Catholic Cemeteries – Archdiocese of Toronto with the support of the four Chinese parishes. For further details, please see the poster in the foyer.
| Posted in Bulletin |
March 21st, 2008
The Good Friday service is so simple and yet so solemn. We begin in silence – then we listen to Isaiah’s account of Israel’s suffering servant, a man despised and rejected, a man acquainted with suffering and infirmity, a man wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, by whose bruises we are healed.
After the somber words of Isaiah we have the uplifting words of Paul – “for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weakness, but we have one who in every aspect has been tempted as we all are, let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
We’ve just heard John’s telling of the passion of Jesus, a story filled with the best and the worst of human nature – the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the desertion of friends, the abuse of power by religious and political rulers – all this set against the integrity and strength of Jesus, Who would bear witness to the truth even though it would mean His death. He showed He would not allow Himself to be diminished by all the hatred that surrounded Him; He would love and forgive til His dying breath.
As Mary and John and Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene and other friends lowered the broken body of Jesus from the cross and prepared Him for a quick burial, their situation must have seemed hopeless. Everything had coming crashing down around them, their hopes were shattered. Only darkness lay ahead – for them there was no light at the end of the tunnel, only tomb darkness.
There can be times in many of our lives when we know the darkness and the hopelessness of that late Friday afternoon on Calvary. It could be a crisis that’s suddenly shattered our lives, the death of one we loved so much, it could be a long standing, chronic illness, or the frightful news, “you have cancer”. It could be a treasured relationship that’s gone sour or the loss of a sense of purpose. Situations in our lives can be so dark we find ourselves on the brink of despair; we lose any sense of hope. Some people would tell us that hope is the denial of reality. They would have us believe hope is wishful thinking of a better tomorrow that will never come. They are wrong. Hope springs from our memories.
Hope springs from our ability to remember with new understanding other times in our lives when we were just as desperate, just as distressed and bewildered as we may be now. We remember situations that we were sure would crush us to the grave, we even wondered if we could face the next day. We remember too that we were not crushed, we did survive, we did prevail, we did go on to live another day. With such memories in mind we know that whatever difficulties we are wrestling with right now we will surmount, we will overcome.
When tragedy strikes, when troubles come, when life disappoints us, as it often does, we find ourselves, torn and hurting, standing at the cross roads between hope and despair. We rise above despair when we remember we have overcome past desperate times and we, with God’s grace, do it again.
So many of the Hebrew psalms are songs composed in times of crisis, but they are songs that remembered God past mercies. Fortified with these memories they sing too of future victory. Jesus’ cry from the cross,”My God, my God why have You forsaken me?” are words from the beginning of the 22nd psalm, a psalm in which past mercies are remembered, a psalm that ends with the words of hope, “dominion belongs to the Lord and He rules over the nations”.
There is an old Latin hymn that sings, Ave Crux, spes unica. Behold the cross, our only hope. This hymn calls us to remember that on the cross Jesus loved us even unto death, death on the cross. On the cross Jesus gave His life for each of us. No matter what we may think of ourselves, Jesus thought enough of us to die for us. By His wounds we are healed. This memory, this reality is our only hope. Fortified by this memory we approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
The motto of our Passionist community is, “may the Passion of Christ be always in our hearts.” If we keep in mind, if we remember the love of Christ crucified for each of us, if we keep in mind the things He suffered for each of us, then these very memories are the sources we need to face our future in hope – we remember Christ was with us in the past pain, we know Christ will be with us in present struggles and see us through them. May the passion of Christ be always in our hearts and minds as we behold and reverence the cross, our only hope.
March 20th, 2008
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was written long before any of the gospels. His is the first recounting of what this ‘last supper’ was all about. “I receive from the Lord what I also handed on to you..” then Paul describes what Jesus did and said, He took bread, He gave thanks, broke it and handed to his friends saying “this is my body that is for you. Do this is remembrance of me” – and then Jesus takes the cup saying, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Paul explains the meaning of every Eucharist, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes.”
It’s a bit of a wonder the church doesn’t use the gospel of Matthew and his description of the last supper to round out Paul’s words. Instead we have this surprising action of Jesus and his insistence that He wash the feet of his friends.
The custom of the time was that the host would have his servants make his guests more comfortable by cleansing their feet before they reclined at table for the meal. Hosting this Passover meal, Jesus takes the role of a servant and begins to wash his disciples feet. They are uncomfortable with this – Peter will have none of it, “You will never wash my feet”. Jesus insists, “unless I wash you, you will have no share with me.”
Jesus means this action to be a teaching moment no only for those at table but for all generations to come. “I have set an example for you, that you also should do as I have done for you”. As the host of this Passover meal Jesus, by His example, teaches His disciples and us that we are to be servants one to the other. It was only after this act of humble service that Jesus continued the meal at which He will do us another service, hand Himself over to us as our food and drink, as our nourishment.
Jesus told us, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” When you stop to think of it, we serve in so many ways. The parish family is kept alive by the service of so many people in the different ministries of the parish. Our outreach to Good Shepherd Centre and Development and Peace and the St. Vincent de Paul and NYGH would not be possible but for the willingness of good people to be of service to others. When you come right down to it our lives will be judged on how willing we were to serve others. I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you came to me, you were there for me.
As is our custom, instead of washing the feet of a few we will wash the hands of all – as a way to celebrate the service done by the good people of the parish and as a way to challenge us all to imitate as best we can Jesus the Christ, Who came not to be served but to serve and give his life for all of us. Let that be our prayer for each other as we continue this celebration.
When you hands are washed – take the towel and dry the hands of the person following you.
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.
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Companion for the Walk of the Stations of the Cosmic Earth
St. Gabriel’s Garden – Guided Sensory Reflective Walk