keep hope and be hope
19 AprKeep hope within yourself.
Be hope for someone else.
+ +
+ +
Be hope for someone else.
Keep hope within yourself.
with “Jesus” and @JamesMartinSJ – in Milford
8 Apr
We are with “Jesus” at a “Jesuit retreat house near Cincinnati, Ohio” (page 226 of “Jesus: A Pilgrimage” by Father James Martin, S.J.) – our Milford.
hope gone / unexpected dawn
6 AprAt our “Community Fare” luncheon today, I will interview in talk show fashion four women who have met and become friends through grief: each has buried her husband.
On this Fifth Sunday of Lent we will use the Raising of Lazarus, with hearty reference to his sisters Martha and Mary, as our conversation prompt. I have prepared eight questions, which I will ask one by one of our panel of believers to help them tell their faith story.
1. How long have you been without your husband – and – how long was his dying process?
2. When her brother Lazarus was dying, Martha called for Jesus, and when Lazarus had died, Martha ran to Jesus, all the time knowing that Jesus could change the situation. How did your “running to Jesus” make your situation change?
3. One could guess that, once Lazarus was brought back to this life, Lazarus and his sisters lived life differently after that moment – and that each of them, Lazarus, Martha and Mary, would approach their own death differently. Since your experience of accompanying your husband in his passing, how do you live life differently now and how might you approach your own dying differently when it comes?
4. Jesus instructed those near Lazarus to untie him and let him go free. How did you untie your husband and let him go free? How has your family and your parish helped to untie you and let you go free?
5. Lazarus was brought back to this life. Would you want to bring your husband back?
6. When Lazarus was resuscitated, Martha and Mary were reanimated. What are you doing now, since your husband’s death, that you never did when he was alive or that you would never have thought that you would have done or could have done?
7. In our closing hymn at Mass today, “Jerusalem Our Destiny,” we sang in the fifth verse, “To the tombs I went to mourn the hope I thought was gone / Here among you I awoke to unexpected dawn.” Can you relate to that in any way?
8. Martha put her faith into words. How do you finish the sentence that she began “I have come to believe that …?”
motto and logo for Pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land
27 Mar
Motto and logo for Pope’s pilgrimage
The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land (AOCTS) decided on the motto and logo for the Pope’s upcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the meeting of the Assembly on March 11 and 12, 2014 in Tiberias.
So that they may be one
The motto for the pilgrimage is “So that they may be one”. The Holy Father has insisted that at the center of his pilgrimage will be the meeting with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and the heads of the Churches in Jerusalem. This is to commemorate and renew the commitment to unity expressed by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople 50 years ago in Jerusalem.
This gives expression to the desire of the Lord at the Last Supper: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23).
The logo also expresses this desire for unity, representing the embrace of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew, the first two disciples called by Jesus in Galilee. Saint Peter is the patron of the Church in Rome and Saint Andrew is the patron of the Church in Constantinople. In Jerusalem, in the Mother Church, they embrace. The two apostles are in a boat that represents the Church, whose mast is the Cross of the Lord. The sails of the boat are full of wind, the Holy Spirit, which directs the boat as it sails across the waters of this world.
The unity of Christians is a message of unity for all humanity, called to overcome the divisions of the past and march forward together towards a future of justice, peace, reconciliation, pardon and fraternal love.
This article, information about the Holy Land, and everything about the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land, 24-26 May 2014 can be found on the official web site: Pope Francis in the Holy Land 2014.
and the angels held their breath
25 Mar
The Catholic parish in Beit Jala (Bethlehem) is the Church of the Annunciation. Today, March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation, is the parish’s patronal feast day. Adding to the celebration is the fact that it is the birthday of their pastor, Father Ibrahim. A big day it was this year. The school children had a day off from classes. The teachers had a retreat day with Bishop Shomali. There was a special Mass. There was a parish dinner. And there was tembola – bingo! 
It is said that, when Gabriel appeared to Mary in Nazareth and asked Mary if she were willing to be the virgin mother of God’s own Son, there was a moment of suspense between the question and the answer – and the angels in heaven held their breath!
At tembola (bingo) after dinner today in Beit Jala at the Church of the Annunciation another angel of God, Jouelle, held her breath. She was waiting for number “19” to be called. She would have had a “full house” (a cover all). But someone else called “khallas” (stop) before her last number was called.
Jouelle, you did not win the prize at tembola. But I hope that seeing your picture on my blog helps you to feel better.
Now, get ready, Jouelle, to shout, because here comes …
it’s like I’m married to them
23 MarThe well was the biblical meeting place, where one often met a future spouse. Many a couple still meet at a watering hole, but, of course, where the drink of preference is not water. A well was the Old Testament version of eharmony.com.
Jacob met his wife Rachel when she came to the well at noon. He did not win her immediately. It took some doing.
Jesus sat at Jacob’s well at about noon, when a woman arrived. It is no wonder that the disciples were a bit surprised and stressed to see the two of them together at the well. It is also no wonder that the conversation turned towards marriage. But the conversation is about marriage of a different kind.
Jesus had come through Samaria on purpose and for a purpose: to woo the people of Samaria into a right relationship, to win them over. As we hear the conversation about, “Get your husband … I have no husband … you are correct, you have had five … and the one you are with now is not your husband,” we imagine Jesus fighting the inclination to end, “not yet!” We know what he has in mind. And we know who she is with right now, who is not her husband, yet: Jesus.
Rather than thinking of a woman walking down the aisle five times, each time to meet her man in a wedding ceremony, and five times being disappointed, think: marriage between God and his people, Christ wedded to the Church, the community of believers being the Bride of Christ, who is the Spouse of the Church.
Jesus had come through Samaria to win the Samaritans into a “marriage” that would be life-giving and eternally lasting, not like the five “marriages” that they entered into with the gods and the cultures of the conquering people, which always led to a disappointing life foreign to their Jewish faith.
Jesus had come to Samaria to win the whole people of Samaria over from their five bad marriages into the one good one – with him! He started with her, and she helped him pull it off. She left the well and went to her home and her town to bring the announcement that there was going to be wedding, not with a dead beat husband, but with the Savior of the world.
As I went to the well this morning at Mass, it dawned on me that I often speak to God the same five faults, failings, missteps, habits and sins. I confess the same handful of sins to the priest. It seems like I am married to this handful – these five things – that get me nowhere and keep me from being free and happy.
I must return to the well of Sunday Mass every week to be wooed from my bad five marriages.
Today’s homily is at minute 21:50 of our parish’s “On-Demand Archives” under the titled, “Bible eHarmony.com”
did Mother Nature take the hint?
21 Mar
Perhaps Mother Nature looked at the calendar, and took the hint.
It was piled up to the top of the grotto in the back of my house. I was thinking that it would never melt. Now I feel a bit of sadness, as the last of it disappears, drip by drip.
One day into Spring the long Winter seems like a pleasant memory. I love snow and cold, so these last months would have been just fine for me, if it had not been for the high gas and electric bills for our six buildings and for the low Sunday attendance with the low Sunday collections.
My mom used to sing, “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdies is.”
Well, mom, the “birdies is” in that tree right next to the grotto.
not the coach; the grandson of the coach
21 MarWho says that kids are not watching us and mimicking our moves?
Phillip identifies himself by referring to Phil. Looking to his grandfather, he knows who he is and who he is not.
Yesterday St. Joe’s lost to UConn, but the “coaches” are still enjoying their right relationship.
When he was asked who he was, John the Baptist insisted, “I am NOT the Messiah.”
How do you answer in these Lenten days, if you are asked, “Who are you?”
With Open Doors 