Have you marked your calendar for the Gala Celebration on May 4th, 2019? Now you can obtain can make your reservations for the dinner on our website. Don’t be left out! Our celebration is to recognize and celebrate our past, our present and our future as a Catholic Community of Sacred Heart. Where we are now has been made possible through all our work together in ministry and the generosity of all who assisted us in our Capital Campaign.
In this even numbered year it’s my time to travel outside the U.S.A. and so my bags will be packed to depart for Russia on Sunday July 8th. Many of you are interested in where I will be going, so I thought I would share the highlights of my itinerary. I’ll be traveling with Msgr. Steve Pedone, my classmate. We were ordained together by Bishop Flanagan on 3 June 1978. We are both looking forward to our journey.
Thank you, thank you, thank you a million times over. What a wonderful celebration on the occasion of my 40th Anniversary to Priesthood. I feel loved, affirmed, appreciated and celebrated in this milestone on my journey of faith. Nineteen of these years have been spent in Diocesan Ministry, the Office for Youth Ministry for 12 years, and 7 years in Haiti. These past 17 years it has been a pleasure being on the journey with you here in the Catholic Community of Sacred Heart.
Thank you for your generosity to the Catholic Community of Sacred Heart over the course of the past five years. It is difficult for me to believe but it is over six years ago that we began our capital campaign “Our Family…Our Faith…Our Future". Because of the generosity of so many of you we have lots of reasons to celebrate. Next weekend we are starting to invite all of our Catholic Community to come to celebrate on Saturday May 4th 2019 when Bishop Mc Manus will be with us at the 4:00 Mass to consecrate our altar and church. We will be holding our Gala Celebration of Community-Past, Present and Future to recognize the commitment of generations of parishioners and our accomplishments.
We have celebrated three major feast days in our liturgical calendar; Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus Christi. Now we enter into a time that is mistranslated from the Latin to English that we call “Ordinary Time.” In English “ordinary” is something that has no special quality or interest; commonplace, unexceptional. This is an improper translation by someone who doesn’t understand our English language. We should be correctly calling this “Ordinal Time.” This comes from the Latin “ordo” meaning order, and those who are math students will remember ordinal numbers are counting sequentially; first, second third…so this is really the Tenth Sunday of Ordinal Time.
This weekend is a time to celebrate the studies and achievements of those who have completed their high school education. Their families are proud and as they attend the Baccalaureate Celebration held Wednesday of Senior Week, they take the opportunity to affirm and celebrate each other. Their parents and friends have an opportunity to re-member—to put together the happenings of the past years that brought each of them to this point in their lives. I always look forward to listening to the stories of significant events in the lives of our young people as the move forward to a future filled with hopes and dreams, and of sometimes apprehension of the unknown.
Several of you have asked how my retreat was, and I thought it was really a great time of prayer and insight into two very important signs of the current time: climate change, and diminishment of the church. Part of the diminishment of the church is aging clergy. Our retreat director, who is 86 years old shared a wonderful prayer that is filled with both wisdom and humor. It is “A Seventeenth Century Nuns Prayer” and sounds like it could have been written today! I have now started to pray it daily.
It’s that time of year! Don’t you just love it? Spring is in the air. It seems like the leaves have popped out overnight and gone is the winter that would never end. During spring and early summer, it is like someone put their foot on the accelerator and there is so much to do, but so little time to do it! It is hard to believe that our summer Mass schedule begins next weekend. Masses are on Saturday at 4PM and Sunday at 9:30AM only!
We hold our annual parish retreat in January, and in the evaluations after each retreat we invite anyone in attendance to join our Retreat Planning Team for the following year. Ten parishioners have met several times to begin planning our 2019 retreat. I am encouraging everyone to put the dates in your calendar now so you are able to attend. We will gather for supper at 6:00 P.M. on Friday January 25th and our first session - get a good night’s rest at home and then re-gather on Saturday morning at 8:30 A.M. until 3:00 P.M. for the remainder of our retreat. The theme for the retreat is “Lighting our Spiritual Fire.” I am sharing this with you now, so that you will set the time aside for your spiritual growth and development. Take the time to grow your faith! You are worth it.
I have many things to update you on so here goes: The case of the stolen doors is now official closed as far as the courts are concerned. This came to an end Monday 30 April 2018. The two people who took the doors are on probation for two years and are not allowed on our property. Two of the bronze doors are gone to China, and four are with the Hopedale police. We will see what condition they are in and move from there. Originally through Architectural Salvage the doors were worth about $3,000.00 each, or a total of about $18,000.00. However, what we will get for the four remaining doors will depend upon their condition. This is very disappointing. We do have an insurance claim, but it doesn’t look promising. I will keep you posted.
Many are silently struggling with life issues, and don’t know where to turn. We also know many who are experiencing difficulties and we don’t know how to assist and help make things better. As a Catholic Community we are on our life journeys together and need to recognize that there are people available so no one goes through these challenges alone.
What a wonderful turnout and response to the benefit concert for our neighbors, the Hukanovic Family featuring Bob O’Connell and the Narragansett Bay Chorus. There were people from throughout the area in attendance. How powerful is it when so many people from in and outside the parish gather. The Hopedale Unitarian Church provided the raffles, wine, cheese and soft drinks and our parish Hospitality Team did a wonderful job presenting everything in a truly classic style in the Fr. Reilley Center. It was wonderful that so many who attended the concert also attended the reception to meet and greet the members of the Hukanovic family and the members of the Chorus. Even extended family members of the Hukanovic clan prepared food for the event!
This Easter Season we are looking at the Christian community forming in the early church through the Acts of the Apostles. Last week I shared with you the many hands that are involved in preparing for Holy Week. There are many hands and voices involved in the “Five Pillars” of community life. All five areas are crucial to the functioning of our Catholic Community here at Sacred Heart. All five areas are equally important so I will present them in alphabetical order.
Holy Week doesn’t just happen; lots of preparation is involved as well as many hands who share in ministry weeks before we gather. It was sixteen years ago when Pam Chaplin followed me through Holy Week and wrote down everything that needed to be done and made exhaustive check lists for each of our worship experiences and ministers. She also created a list of how many ministers are needed and wrote explicit instruction guides for the altar servers for each of these services. With the help of Tina Buckley pulling the schedule together, our faithful altar servers, ministers of Holy Communion, readers of the Word, musicians, cantors, videographers, ushers, greeters, and A/V ministers come together to serve the community. People are very faithful sharing their time and talents throughout Holy Week and I must say, our worship is well executed, with reverence and grace.
Throughout his ministry Jesus found refuge in the town of Bethany at the home of three siblings, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. This was the place where he could put his feet us and relax; a place of security and peace, a place where he could simply relax and have a good home-cooked meal. This was a place where he felt safe and secure.
We are in the last stretch of Lent and head toward Holy Week and Easter. Often times I see the “finish line” of Easter Sunday and forget to reflect on what I learned about God, my spirituality and myself during this Lenten Season. I have talked to a few others, and I guess I am not alone. This year I don’t want to miss the opportunity to miss the gifts I received during this Lenten Season, because the “prize” of Easter Joy overshadowed the blessings received during these 40 days.
Life-changing experiences are often few and far between. Sometimes they occur and we don’t even notice them until we stop long enough to let the events sink in and realize that God has brought us to a new point in life. Our understanding of God’s presence is enhanced. Patience as clay in the potter’s hands as we are molded and shaped more and more into the image of Jesus the Son is the life-changing experience awakened during this Lenten season.
Again, I wish to thank Tim Messenger, the Director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry of our Diocese for his reflection on ministry and encouraging us all to participate in our Annual Partners in Charity Appeal. As we gather this Fourth Week of Lent, we will conduct our in-pew solicitation; pooling our gifts with those of the other parishes throughout the Diocese to continue the wonderful works of ministry, charity and education in Worcester County.
As we continue our Lenten journey, allowing God as potter to shape us and mold us more and more into the image of Jesus the son; and as we rise to the occasion joining in the Annual Partners in Charity Appeal, our Pastoral Planning Team seeks to continue to grow our vibrant faith community.
The Lenten journey is similar to a tripod. It rests on three legs: prayer, fasting, and acts of charity. These three are, as we heard on Ash Wednesday part of a communal event. We are called as a universal Church to make this forty-day journey together as a community of faith.