April 15th, 2007
Let’s situate today’s gospel. John tells us it was the evening of the day Jesus rose from the dead. The disciples gathered together fearful and bewildered. They locked the doors for fear of the authorities. They did away with Jesus, would they be next in line. But they faced their fears together, supporting one another, praying with one another, knowing they were not alone. And it was into this community of fear Jesus came with his greeting of peace, breathing His gift of the Holy Spirit on them and propelling them out into the word to preach the good news of God’s love for all of us.
Thomas was not with them. He made the decision to deal with his grief, his shame alone. He didn’t want to be with the others, he isolated himself from the very people who needed him and who could have helped him deal with his grief and his shame.
Thomas had been so shaken by what happened to Jesus on Friday – he couldn’t fathom how things had come crashing down around Jesus and his followers. He was there for the wonderful reception the people gave Jesus as He came to Jerusalem for the Passover. Like the others he could just sense the energy of it all. Now it is over. Thomas, to his shame, took off when they came to arrest Jesus – from a safe distance he saw Jesus dragged through the streets to the place where they executed common criminals. From a safe distance he saw Jesus die – and with that Thomas’s hope that Jesus was the one who would redeem Israel died.
With all this so fresh in his mind Thomas was not about to trust the stories told him by his friends, that they had seen the Lord. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Thomas was afraid to believe such an awesome story. Because he decided to deal with his deep grief isolated from Peter and the other, Thomas missed Jesus; he missed Jesus’ gift of peace and His gift of the Holy Spirit. In the gospel, we hear Jesus offering His wounded hands and side to Thomas inviting him into faith and we have Thomas’s words of love and faith – ‘my Lord and my God.’
This gospel of John puts before us a very basic truth.
God relates to us in community and as community. There’s the saying, ‘there are two things in life you cannot do alone, get married and be a Christian.’ The Mass we celebrate, the sacraments we receive are all celebrations of a faith community. We are all in this together.
One time my father was complaining about all the changes in the church, especially at Mass. He said,’ they’re standing and their singing, they’re sitting and they’re singing you’d think we were Baptists. I can’t go to Mass and say my rosary in peace.’ He wouldn’t buy it when I tried to explain, you don’t go to Mass to say your rosary in peace, you go to Mass to celebrate the Mass with those around you, to participate.
Like Thomas we may try to cope with our grief, confusions and disappointment privately. The truth of the matter is when our faith is tried and tested we need the community of faith to see us through. It helps us to know that we live and pray in a community with other struggling, hurting and searching men and women. We need them and they need us, that’s why we pray for those whose pains are known to themselves alone because we want them to know they are not alone, they are family.
As we continue to celebrate this Eucharist as a people of faith, a faith that may not be all that strong at times, we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we be blessed with a sense of belonging in this parish community and know that we are in the prayers of all here present as each of us faces those times in our lives when we face whatever it is that makes us wonder, ‘where is God.’
| Posted in Homily |
to one and all who made our Holy Week and Easter such a beautiful and uplifting time: those in the Music Ministry, our Lectors and Altar servers, our Eucharistic Ministers, our Ministers of Hospitality, those responsible for decorating the Church, and the members of the Pastoral Team. To you the good people of the parish, your attendance and participation in the ceremonies helped to make this a truly Holy Week and Easter. Fr. Paul
Total: $20,665
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Our Place is a social centre for people with mental health issues. The agency provides a peaceful, supportive and welcoming community to enable people to involve themselves with others, and to find meaning and personal growth in all areas of their lives. A gift to ShareLife is a sign of our Stewardship, giving back to God in thanksgiving for all that we’ve received!
Vivian Ng has been the Program Coordinator of our Children’s Faith Program for the past 7 years. She has done an outstanding job and on behalf of the students and parents of our Children’s Faith Program, I want to thank her. Since Vivian is retiring at the end of this school year, we are in need of a replacement. Our Children’s Faith Program consists of about 20 classes that are held at St. Gabriel’s School during the school year. The classes run from 10:00AM – 11:00AM every other Sunday morning. We are hoping that some of the parents whose children benefit from this program will come forward to coordinate the program. If you are interested in helping, please call the parish office and we will send you a job description of what is involved. Please give this appeal serious consideration, especially if your child is in the Children’s Faith Program, because the future of this program depends upon this position being filled. Fr. Paul
Sunday, April 29th 8:30AM All families are invited. Children from the different grades will be preparing readings and will do the ushering.
Wednesday, April 18th 7:30 – 9:00PM Gabriel Room
Tuesday, April 24th 7:30 PM St. Gabriel’s Church
April 18th 10:30AM – 12 NOON Library TOPIC: Vatican II
APRIL 19th 7:30pm Gabriel Room TOPIC: WATER
hosted a symposium in November regarding Catholic Education – Navigating through Turbulent Waters. On Tuesday April 17th from 7:00 – 9:00PM there will be a discussion on the value and future of Catholic education at the Catholic Education Centre – 2nd Floor 80 Sheppard Ave. East, North York. Archbishop Thomas Collins will join us for this session.
Wednesday April 25th in the Parish Hall. There will be a Mass at 1:00PM followed by the General Meeting. The guest speaker, Mary Currie, R.N., will talk about Elder Care. All ladies are cordially invited.
Download a PDF of the 2006 Statement of Receipts and Payments
| Posted in Bulletin |
April 8th, 2007
Every Easter I have to say the same thing – this is the most important day of the year – it’s spared most of the commercialism of Christmas – but without this day our Christian faith would have no meaning. As St. Paul teaches, ‘if Christ be not raised then we are still in our sins and we of all people are the most to be pitied.’ If Christ be not raised Good Friday, the life of Jesus, the suffering he suffered, the death he died was a waste. St. Paul writing about how Jesus emptied Himself of His divinity and was obedient even to dying on the cross – was also exalted and given a name above every name that can be named so that at the name of Jesus every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord – to the glory of God the Father. Today we celebrate a basic truth of our Christian faith – The Father raised Jesus from the dead and we too have been raised in Him to live a new life for God.
Jesus rose above the hatred and rejection, the degradation and humiliation he endured on Good Friday – He would not be let these things embitter Him or destroy Him. He would rise above them. His first words to the men who denied, betrayed and deserted Him were ‘peace be with you’.
Through the grace and power of His resurrection we can experience our own resurrections when we rise above any resentment, anger, when we rise above any bitterness over past hurts and misunderstandings and get on with trying to live a positive life. We have our own Easters, our own resurrections when by God’s grace we rise above our unwillingness to forgive someone who disappointed, ignored or rejected us and offer such a person Easter peace and forgiveness.
We have our own Easter when we rise above our unwillingness to let people into our lives because of our racism or bigotry – when we rise above stereotyping people and allow ourselves to see the goodness in people of other faiths, cultures or life styles.
We have our own Easter when we rise above our quickness to judge other people and how they live their lives without appreciating their personal struggles and weaknesses.
We have our own Easter when we rise above our own sense of entitlement and come to appreciate how blessed are our lives and develop within ourselves an attitude of gratitude for all that is ours through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.
We have our own Easter when rise above our lack of faith in the great mystery we celebrated this past week, that God so loved us God sent His Son into the world and the Son so loved us He gave His life for us. We have our own Easter when we rise above our lack of trust in the truth that God is always with us especially in all our troubled times.
As we continue this Easter Mass, we can pray for ourselves and for each other that the Risen Christ gift all of us with the grace to rise above all those things in our lives that hold us back from opening our lives to the life that is ours through Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection for we celebrate this truth – The Father has raised Jesus from the dead and we too have been raised in Him to live a new life for God.
Total: $13,263
This Easter Sunday we celebrate the joy of the risen Christ. ShareLife agencies continue to bring joy to our community through the Society of Sharing which offers friendly visits to lonely, isolated, frail, elderly or disabled people. The agency provides ongoing support to enhance quality of life and to extend independent living by recruiting and screening volunteers, matching them withclients, and providing training and education.
2006 TOTAL: $163,159.52 2007 TO DATE: $70,187.95
Wednesday, April 11th 7:30 – 9:00 PM This meeting is for the parents of children receiving Communion for the first time. (Gabriel Room)
Wednesday, April 11th 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM St. Gabriel’s School Gym All candidates please attend.
Wednesday, April 18th 7:30 – 9:00 PM This meeting is for the parents of children receiving Confirmation. (Gabriel Room)
Vivian Ng has been the Program Coordinator of our Children’s Faith Program for the past 7 years. She has done an outstanding job and on behalf of the students and parents of our Children’s Faith Program, I want to thank her. Vivian is retiring at the end of this school year. We are in need of a replacement. Our Children’s Faith Program consists of about 20 classes, held at St. Gabriel’s School during the school year. The classes run from 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM every other Sunday morning. We are hoping that some of the parents whose children benefit from this program will come forward to co-ordinate the program. If you are interested in helping, please call the parish office and we will send you a job description of what is involved. Please give this appeal serious consideration, especially if your child is in the Children’s Faith Program. Fr. Paul
Fair trade organic coffees will be on sale after all the Masses next weekend. Regular ground coffee: $5 Decaffeinated: $6 Whole Beans: $5 Chocolate Bars: $4 incl. taxes Hot Chocolate and Cocoa: $4.50 Teas: $3.25 to $4 by variety
April 10th 7:30 – 9:00PM Library TOPIC: “OTHER SEPARATIONS FROM THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH”
April 18th 10:30AM – 12 NOON Library TOPIC: VATICAN II – THEN AND NOW
April 19th 7:30PM Gabriel Room TOPIC: WATER
organized by MOSAIC INTERFAITH takes place on EARTH DAY, April 22nd from 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM. This is for youth aged 13 – 16 years old. Registration is limited. To register call Nora at 416-218-0680.
will hold a Reunion and Pub Night on April 21st at the school on Steeles Avenue to honour all five-year classes: ’67, ’72, ’77, ’82, ’87, ’92, ’97, and ’02. Alumni from other classes and former staff are welcome too. Fr. R. Brennan SJ will celebrate Mass at 6:00PM. Pub Night from 7:00PM to 12AM. Cost: $20 Contact Michael Da Costa at 416-393-5508 ext 80017
April 6th, 2007
In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul tells us that Jesus did not consider being equal to God as something to be clung to, He emptied Himself, taking to Himself the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
God, in Jesus accepted the limitations of human life, including suffering and death, but in doing this, he had not ceased being God. God the creator chose to live as a creature; The Creator had come under the power of his creation. Thus the suffering servant, repulsive in appearance – despised and rejected, diminished, a person of suffering, struck down and afflicted – a person of no account, ridiculed, wounded, crushed, punished, bruised, oppressed, cut off from the land of the living, silently slaughtered and buried with the wicked – Jesus becomes the companion of all who suffer.
Because of this day we call Good Friday and all that happened on this day we know ours is the God of our Calvary’s – ours is the God of the emergency room, ours is the God of the AIDS hospice, the homeless shelter, our is the God of the food bank, ours is the God of the broken family and the abused child. Because of this Friday we call ‘good’ ours is the God of failed relationships, the God of fragile bodies and faltering steps and shattered hearts. Because of this Friday we call Good, God has been and always is in our darkest place, God is in even those places we are sure God is not.
Last year I had a number of young people from Temple Sinai visit St. Gabriel’s. They wanted to learn more about our Catholic faith. One of the students asked the question “why do you call it Good Friday?” All I could answer was, “It was rough on Jesus but good for us.” His was the punishment that made us whole and by His wounds we are healed.
Jesus spent three years teaching love and living love. This Friday we call ‘good’ is the final witness of God’s love for all creation. Greater love than this no one has than that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends – but what proves God’s love for us is that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
The crucified Christ is not a symbol of a failed life – the crucified Christ is the end term of a life of unlimited love.
At the last meal with His friends Jesus taught them, ‘as I have loved you, so you love one another.’ These simple words call us to relieve suffering in all its forms whether we meet that suffering in broken hearts or broken homes, among our own or among strangers.
As followers of the crucified we cannot be insensitive to the suffering of others. We can be concerned about the sufferings in such places as Darbur or Iraq but the strange thing is, we can be oblivious to the sufferings under our own roofs, in our own lives. Christ suffers in our own homes in those wounded by abusive language or psychological abuse. Christ is rejected today in those alienated by family feuds, those we exclude from our lives because of racism or sexism. Christ suffers today in those good people, who because of our indifference, our lack of sympathy and our insensitivity, are shut out of our lives. Because we are inundated every day of the week by scenes of human sufferings around the globe, Christ suffers today in our brothers and sisters, at home and abroad when we allow ourselves to be desensitized to their suffering. Christ, the first born of all creation, suffers today in the ruination of planet Earth, the pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the very soil that sustains us. Christ suffers today in the diminishment of our very home, planet Earth.
On this Friday we call good, with the suffering of Christ before us, as we come to reverence His cross at the end of our service – as we touch the cross we can ask Jesus Crucified to give us the grace to see Him in the men, women and children we see to be suffering – and ask Him to give us the generosity to come to their aid and relieve their pain in any way we can and may the passion of Christ be always in our minds and hearts.
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