January 27th, 2008
In today’s gospel Matthew tells of how Jesus began His public life. From the very beginning it was troubled. Herod had beheaded John. Nazareth was not a safe place so Jesus went beyond the Jordan to Capernaum and made his home there. As usual Matthew sees in this decision a fulfillment of the words of Isaiah about people who walked in darkness seeing the great light.
Matthew’s description of how Jesus called Peter and Andrew, John and James seems a bit unreal. Can’t you just hear Peter’s wife saying, “What do you mean you’re going to join a wandering rabbi? You get back in that fishing boat; you have a family to feed.” I can imagine Zebedee saying the same things to John and Andrew, ‘there’s no way you’re taking off and leaving me alone, get back to mending these nets.’ These were all practical people living with practical people. These men weren’t with Jesus 24/7.
But it was from Capernaum Jesus began his long journey to Jerusalem. He travelled from town to town, city to city teaching in synagogues, proclaiming the good news of God’s love for all people, calling people back to God, giving them the encouraging news God’s kingdom was near, even in their midst.
We’ve heard many times before about the expectations of the people about a liberating Messiah who would expel the occupying Romans and establish a new kingdom. They would be ruled by their own. We’ve heard of how disappointed many people were when they realized this was not what Jesus was about. As Jesus told Pilate, “my kingdom is not of this world”. I’m not about power and force and domination. In the end the Roman soldiers made a joke of this kingdom by crowning Jesus with thorns, dressing him in mock purple and offering Him an empty reed as His scepter.
What is this kingdom of God? We pray every day ‘thy kingdom come’ but what are we praying for? I think the kingdom Christ came to establish is best described in the preface of the Mass of Christ the King. It is to be an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.
Looking at the world around us, beginning with our own city and country we can see how far removed we are from such a kingdom. We see the ravages of useless wars, we hear of millions upon millions of uprooted peoples. We know that poverty, injustice and exploitation are part and parcel of people’s lives.
Remember the song, ‘let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me’? We can apply that same thought to our prayer, ‘thy kingdom come’. When we pray the Our Father and pray those words, could we mean to say – thy kingdom come to that part of me which has yet to be redeemed – thy kingdom come to that part of my life, my relationships, my family life, my work situation, my social involvement – which is lacking in justice, love and peace. Could we mean, Thy kingdom come to that part of my relationship with God, which hesitates or fears the holiness and grace to which God calls me. Could we mean thy kingdom come to anything in my life which holds me back following Christ with the same willingness and generosity of Andrew and Peter, James and John?
As we continue to celebrate this Mass we pray for ourselves and for each other that every time we pray the Our Father we will have the willingness to mean what we say when we pray, ‘thy kingdom come”. May the truth and life, the holiness and grace, the justice love and peace of thy kingdom come – and let it begin with me.
| Posted in Homily |
Special Masses will be celebrated at 9:00 AM and 7:30PM with the distribution of ashes. During Lent we encourage your attendance at our weekday Masses on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings at 9:00 AM.
DAYS OF FAST AND ABSTINENCE DURING LENT ARE ASH WEDNESDAY AND GOOD FRIDAY.
Friday evenings beginning Friday, February 8 at 7:30 PM
Total: $9,489
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ALYCE LORRAINE DONOGHUE CARA LINH CHAN VALERIE PUIYIN WONG CHRISTIAN JOSEPH SORENSON TYRUS KHALEEL TYGHTER
Tuesday evening, February 5tth at 7:30 PM Wednesday morning, January 30th at 10:30 AM Topic: Reconciliation by Father Michael Himes
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 from 7:30 – 9:00 PM Parents of children receiving First Communion are invited to attend a Parents’ Only meeting in the Gabriel Room. In case of bad weather the meeting will be held on January 31st.
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 from 7:30 – 9:00PM Parents of children receiving Reconciliation for the first time are invited to attend a Parents’ Only meeting in the Gabriel Room.
Friday, February 1st at 9:30 AM – 12 Noon Please see the time schedule on the table inside the Church.
Tax receipts for donations made in 2007 will be available by the end of February.
Saturday February 2nd at 3:15 PM in the Library We welcome all who wish to share this time with us. For information contact Linda Law at 416 918-8029.
Sunday, February 3rd at 3:30 PM in the Gabriel Room. For information contact Linda Law at 416 918- 8029.
Sunday, February 3rd at 11:30 in the Gabriel Room. On the first Sunday of each month, the Passionist Centre for Ecology and Spirituality facilitates a 30 minute reflection and discussion prompted by the readings for that Sunday’s liturgy. The guided reflection brings an ecological perspective to the readings. All are welcome.
There will be a Family Mass on February 3rd at 12:30 PM.
You are cordially invited to come and celebrate the Chinese New Year, which will take place on February 17th after the 12:30 Mass in the Gathering Space. This is an event organized for the whole parish community. Please mark your calendars! (Volunteers and donations are welcome. Please contact Linda Law at 416- 918-8029
Just a reminder to the altar servers/ parents that the altar serving schedule for March1 to June 29. 2008 and Holy Week is now available. Please pick it up in the Sacristy.
When your children were born, you started on a path of faith development and life-long learning. Let Toronto’s Catholic schools continue this educational and spiritual journey with you and your family.
Registration begins in February 2008 for Kindergarten and French Immersion at all Catholic elementary schools throughout the City of Toronto. For your convenience, extended registration hours will take place on February 7th from 6:00 to 8:30 PM.
For more information, please contact the Catholic school nearest you or 416-222-8282, extension 5314 or visit the Board’s website at www.tcdsb.org.
This year we are hosting this ecumenical service, written by the Women of Guyana on Friday, March 7 at 2:00 PM.
Development and Peace promotes sustainable human development through participatory management, democratic control and the equitable distribution of resources. Development and Peace is asking you to sign an action card today after Mass at tables set up in the Gathering Space. To give a voice to the voiceless, a mining ombudsperson would hear the concerns of those in the Global South affected by Canadian mining companies. Information brochures and action cards are available at the entrance to the Church. Signed action cards can be left here if you missed us this weekend.
Thinking about the priesthood? Wondering what it might be like? Then “Come and See” is for you! February 1st to 3rd, 2008, there will be an opportunity for young men age 18 years or older to visit our Archdiocesan Seminary in Scarborough. This weekend will provide time for prayer, reflection and information on the process of becoming a Catholic priest. If God is calling you, say yes… and come and see. Those interested are asked to contact the Office of Vocations for further information at 416-968-0997.
| Posted in Bulletin |
January 20th, 2008
John’s gospel begins and ends with the image of a lamb. Why a lamb? A lamb is a soft and cuddling image. For Jewish people a lamb was a symbol of sacrifice. Lambs were sacrificed in the temple as expiation for sins. John the Baptist points to Jesus as ‘the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” At every Passover thousands of lambs were slaughtered in the temple to expiate, atone for the sins of the people. Near the end of John’s gospel he tells of the real Lamb of God being sacrificed on the altar of the cross even while lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. All the lambs sacrificed in the temple had no effect while the lamb sacrificed on Calvary was the saving sacrifice that took away the sins of the world – on Him was laid the chastisement of us all and by his wounds we are healed. Just as the Jews, while slaves in Egypt, were saved by the blood of the lamb splashed on their doorposts, so we are saved by the blood of the human lamb of God, Jesus the Christ.
There was a book out a number of years ago titled, “Whatever Happened to Sin?” The seniors among us can remember the days when everything was sin – miss Mass on a Sunday, we were hell bound. Eat meat on Friday, we were hell bound. Any violation of the church’s teaching on sexual matters, we were hell bound.
I remember years ago a father was after his teenage son about missing Mass on a Sunday. To the teenager it was not big deal; to the father it was a mortal sin. The son asked the father, ‘what’s a mortal sin’? People around my age knew what a mortal sin was; everything seemed to be a mortal sin.
St. Paul tells us that where sin abounded grace did more abound. Hopefully today we are more aware of and open to the grace of God that surrounds us – we have a more positive attitude toward God and our relationship with God.
That doesn’t mean we can close our eyes to the reality of sin in our lives and in the society that shapes our lives. In the United Church they have a prayer that would be something like our act of contrition. It prays, ‘for the sins we know, for the sins we do not know and for the sins that do not bother us.’ These are the ones to watch out for, the sins that do not bother us. Our ways of living, ways of speaking to others, ways of relating to family members and others that have become so much a part of us that we loose the sense of how far they are removed from the way Christ would have us live and love.
Every one of us has some form of bigotry or prejudice in us, though we don’t want to admit it. We feel resentment, we are annoyed by ‘these people’ from other lands, other cultures, other faiths that come to Canada and won’t fit in, won’t be assimilated into Canadian ways. We find ourselves thinking, if not saying, ‘if they don’t like the way things are here, let them go back to where they came from.’ We fail to see that this is a sin that does not bother us.
As citizens of Toronto we are caught in a sin that does not bother us when we are not bothered by the men, women and children who live in poverty in this city, when we are not bothered by the homeless of this city, when we are not bothered by the working poor in this city. We are caught in a sin that does not bother us when we find ourselves blaming the victims of poverty and homelessness. If they weren’t so lazy they’d find jobs.
We may find ourselves caught in a sin that does not bother us when we come face to face with our latent racism; our inability or our unwillingness to accept and respect men and women of other races. We fail to see them as our brothers and sisters in Christ.
I was at a talk with some other priests this past Thursday given by a woman from Catholic Family Services. She talked about family violence, violence toward wives and mothers, violence toward children, violence toward seniors. The statistics were shocking. In too many families verbal, physical and psychological abuse is a sin that does not bother the abuser while it destroys the abused. Another form of family violence in which we are all involved is the abuse we heap on Mother Earth by our consumerism, wastefulness and our exploitation of the limited resources of Earth. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves.
This is all heavy stuff. I must sound like the old time missionary bounding the pulpit and telling you, you are all going to hell.
But sin is a fact in all our lives. St. John says, ‘if anyone says they have no sin, they are a liar and the truth is not in them.’ We all have to face the sins we know, the sins we do not know and face the sins that do not bother us. Then we open our lives to the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. We trust the truth, by his wounds we are healed, his is the chastisement that makes us whole. We trust the truth, that for all our sins and failings, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.
As we continue to celebrate this Mass, and prepare to receive the Lamb of God Who we trust He will take away our sins, the sins we know, and the sins we do not know. We pray too He will help us discover and face the sins that do not bother us.
Total: $9,917
Tax receipts for donations made in 2007 will be available by the end of February, although every effort will be made to have them in your hands as quickly as possible.
Tuesday evening, January 22th at 7:30 PM The Passionists and their new project – a conversation with Father Steve
Wednesday morning, January 30th at 10:30 AM Reconciliation by Father Michael Himes
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 from 7:30 – 9:00 PM Parents of children receiving First Communion are invited to attend a Parents’ Only meeting in the Gabriel Room. In case of bad weather the meeting will be held on January 31st.
Registration begins in February, 2008 for Kindergarten and French Immersion at all Catholic elementary schools throughout the City of Toronto. For your convenience, extended registration hours will take place on February 7th from 6:00 to 8:30 PM.
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
This year we are hosting this ecumenical service, written by the Women of Guyana on Friday, March 7 at 2:00 PM. Do we have any parishioners from Guyana? If so, please contact Mary Landry at 221-8866, ext. 224 as soon as possible.
Development and Peace is asking you to sign a card next weekend requesting the Canadian government to establish an ombudsperson’s office. Canadian government consultations in 2006resulted in a report based on a consensus by the mining industry and civil society organizations entitled “The National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industry in Developing Countries.” One of the main recommendations of the report is to establish an independent ombudsperson. This would give poor communities in the Global South a voice when their human rights and their environment are threatened by the activities of Canadian mining companies. More information is available in a brochure at the entrance to the church and is also available at www.devp.org under Education Campaign.
Parishioners of St. Gabriel’s Parish are invited to attend the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Celebration hosted by Archbishop Thomas Collins. The Archbishop has invited the major religious leaders throughout the metropolitan city of Toronto to join with him in prayer for Church unity. The service will be held on Sunday, January 20th at 4:00 PM at St. Paul’s Basilica, 83 Power Street (at Queen St.) Refreshments will follow. This year’s celebration marks 100 years of formal prayer for Christian Unity, first celebrated as the Church Unity Octave by the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement at Graymoor, Garrison, New York.
January 27th, 2008 Our lady of Sorrows Parish Hall 3055 Bloor St. W (west of Royal York Road) from 2 – 5 PM Irish Music, Ceili Dance, Irish kitchen and Prizes…. Adults $10, Children a Twoonie. All are welcome. Ticket and/or Table for Family and Friends, please call Monica at 416-498-0227 or Christine at 416-484-6274 or email info@irishheritagehouse.com
Celtic Family Sunday events are in support of the O’Connor Irish Heritage House project – www.irishheritagehouse.com
January 13th, 2008
Pope John 23rd died on November 23rd, 1961. At his funeral a few days later, Cardinal Suenens of Belgium preached the homily. He told the hundreds of thousands who watched that funeral, “the most important day of this man’s life was not the day he was elected pope, nor was it the day he was named a cardinal, nor was it the day he was ordained a bishop, nor was it the day he was ordained a priest. The most important day of this good man’s life was the day he was baptized.”
Baptism is the foundation of our lives as Christians. It empowers us to receive all the other sacraments. Our baptism is our birthing in our life with God. When talking about baptism some people will say, ‘we’ve got to get the kid done.’ Something like, ‘stamped for the dance’. Our baptism was not a one shot deal, it was the beginning of our life long process of growing in grace before God and others. Our baptism was the beginning of our life time process of growing to full maturity in Christ. We live our baptism every day of our lives.
As St. Paul tells us, at our baptism the Spirit of God was poured into our hearts and in that Spirit we have the boldness to call God, Father/Mother. In that Spirit we have the boldness to approach the throne of grace with confidence, trusting that our Father/Mother loves us more than we love ourselves, knows us better than we know ourselves and will be with us through all the joys and sorrows of our lives.
In the gospel we see Jesus waiting in line to be baptized by John. John is shocked when he sees Jesus and tries to prevent the ritual. “I need to be baptized by you and you come to me.” But Jesus didn’t want special treatment; He was one of many waiting His turn. Matthew tells of what happened when Jesus came up out of the water, “the heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And this voice from heaven saying, “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
This voice was for Jesus only. It was His epiphany, His coming to a consciousness He never had before, a deep consciousness of His relationship with the Father. He is the beloved son with whom the Father is well pleased. In a way these same words were said over us at our baptisms – this is my beloved daughter, my beloved son with whom I am well please.
If we are in any way conscious of how deeply we are loved by God, then God’s love evokes our mutual love for God. Jesus heard this voice of love ‘this is my beloved son’ and then left for the desert to prepare Himself to give His whole life to God in gratitude. If we could truly appreciate God’s love for each of us, a love proven beyond doubt in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus – we would do our best to live our lives in thankfulness to the God Who loves us.
Just a word about our second reading and the words of Peter,’ I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.’ There are three forms of baptism; baptism by water, baptism by blood, and baptism of desire. We were all baptized by water. In the early years of the church people who were under instruction for baptism but who died for their faith were considered to have been baptized in their own blood. Anyone who fears God, not fear as we usually think of it, but fear as a reverence and an awe of God as he/she knows God, and does what is right, receives the baptism of desire. The fact is the most common form of baptism is that of desire given to good people of all faiths as they do their best to love and serve God as they know God.
As we continue to celebrate this feast of the baptism of Jesus we are brought back to our own baptisms – which most of us don’t even remember. St. Paul tells us that before the world began God chose us in Christ to be His adopted sons and daughters, to be God’s own. As Jesus had His own epiphany at His baptism when He became deeply conscious of His relationship with Father, may each of us be blest to have our own epiphany of knowing that we are loved by God, we are God’s own. May each of us live our lives in such a way that the Father may say of us; this is my beloved daughter, my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.
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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