Special Reminder for Holy Thursday & Good Friday

Wisdom 9:  Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?

Philemon 9:  … but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.

Luke 14:  In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.

 

Sunset on the Baltic

 

 

Music,    Ben & Shonda

Readers,  Mary Jane & John

Gospel,   John Cade

Homily,  John Cade

Eucharistic Prayer A & B,  John Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,      Hue & Richard & Kevin

Final Blessing, Rosemary

         

 

Starting Sunday, September 11th, we will be meeting at:

Art Centre of Plano

902 E. 16th St, Plano

             

 Please use the Haggard Park side entrance.

                 

                

Readings:  Download 09-04-22- Readings – 23rd Sunday Ord

Homily:  Download 09-04-22- Homily – 23rd Sunday Ord

   

Flowers from Giverny, France

 

 

Remember these special people:

For Jan; For Sandra who has been diagnosed with Large B Cell Lymphoma;   For Lambrini, John Cade's wife, who is dealing with cancer and Kaliope, John Cade's Mother-in-law;  For Donna and the Dinsmore Family after her brother, Dennis died  from pancreatic cancer;   For Hue; For Jackie;  For John's sister, Kathey recovering from a fall;    For Tom Good;  For a young man, 19 struggling with a brain tumor and cancer;     For Mary Hall's friend Cadence still suffering from a serious medical condition;   For Sir Charlie & Jan; 

                           

 

Jackie's mom, sister, & friend, Lynn;  For Rick Turner searching for a kidney donor, Type O neg.;   For Jean & Cliff Wright;  For Dee, and for her daughters, Lisa & Lauren;     For a young man who is suffering from depression;  John Cade's daughter, Joey, with cancer; from Barbara, a little baby boy named Ford recuperating from an operation & friends, Annie, a mom of 3 kids and Michael ;    for the medical staffs, teachers, and coaches in our public & private schools.

 

 

Flowers from Giverny, France
   

 

Birthdays:   Aggie Stryker 9/8

Anniversaries:   Beth & Rob Robinson 9/7,  Aggie & Allen Stryker 9/9

      

Community Finances:   

Expenses: $   875.00

Outreach: $   350.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

                 

 

 

 

Rosemary's Blessing:  

O Lord, you mark the journey of life with change. Once again we witness your creation moving from one season to the other. Change is your instrument of growth that brings us to a deeper relationship with you. May your Word be the lantern that guides the roads of change in our lives. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

www.catholicrurallife.org/resources/spiritual/calendar-of-blessings/9-september-blessing-of-change-and-letting-go/

 

 

Acts of the Apostles 4:  He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

1 John 3:   Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. 

John 10:  I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep.

Proverbs 9:  "Are you confused about life, don't know what's going on? Come with me, oh come, have dinner with me!   I've prepared a wonderful spread – fresh-baked bread, roast lamb, carefully selected wines.  Leave your impoverished confusion and live! Walk up the street to a life with meaning."

Ephesians 5:  Sing songs from your heart to Christ.  Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.

John 6:  In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me.

 

 

Another Reminder for 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 18, 2024

Readings: Isaiah 40, 1-11; Psalm 104, O Bless the Lord, My Soul; Titus 2, 11-14, 3, 4-7; Luke 3, 1-22.

 

Baptism & Original Sin: traditional & contemporary theology

 

Traditional theology on baptism & original sin:

 

a.  Original sin: the 1 sin of Eve & Adam, the eating of an apple, ruptured the relationship between God & Humans.

 

b.  Why we baptized: purification & removal of that original sin inherited by all babies.  A new born baby was a sinner & would go to Limbo forever if not baptized before dying. 

   

 

Contemporary theology on baptism & original sin:

  

a.  Original sin:

 

1.  no original sin

  

2.  Genesis story of the fall is allegory, not fact.  No Garden of Eden and no Adam & Eve.

  

3.  from Darwin's Origin of the Species the idea has developed that in our human infancy, we needed certain behaviors to survive.  For instance, killing another person & stealing (like food).  As our ancestors formed communities, norms of social behavior emerged, for example, the 10 commandments. 

  

4.  St. Augustine, ca. 400: 

 

–A major, if not the major influence on Christian/Catholic theology of original sin and human nature from his time to today 

–After conversion from a rather lusty life at 32, he had a pessimistic view of human nature, different from early Christianity

–St. John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople (Istanbul), Pelagius, a British monk, & Julian of Eclanum, Italy, a bishop, all found nature good and fought against Augustine

–Augustine used all means to vanquish his opponents with their positive view that nature was good, even to sending a gift of horses to the pope to influence his decision.  Augustine won.

   

 

b.  Why we baptize today: (using the contemporary theology)

  

1.  To celebrate a new life

   

2.  To ritually & formally welcome the new person into a family, a community, and to a God famous for love and acceptance.

  

3.  To cleanse after the journey

 

Sources: Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent; John Shelby Spong; Wikipedia

 

 

We are Getting Better

 

I have one more Christmas story to celebrate this baptism today. 

 

There are three people in the story.  My good friend, her little daughter, and her niece, who is about 16 or 17.  The story took place at Collin Creek Mall one or two days just after Christmas.  Guess what they were doing.  Bringing things back. 

 

It happened that the niece had offered to take the daughter to the mall to have girl fun while her mother went to the mall to return various items.  After they had been there a while, the niece phoned to say that it was getting to be time for her to leave.  So could she return the daughter? 

 

They agreed that the easiest way to arrange the swap was for the niece to take the girl in her car, drive over to where my friend's car was, and then transfer the daughter & her car seat.  So they met in the parking lot, my friend's car in a parking place, the other car in the aisle behind the first car. 

 

Mother goes into the niece's car, unbuckles her daughter, and places the girl in her car.  Then she disconnects the car seat and reconnects it in her own car, securing her daughter in place.  Somewhere in this process she set her purse down.  Yep, you guessed it.

 

Who knows where she set it down.  Maybe by her niece's car, maybe by her own.  But apparently outside. 

 

She gets into her car and drives off.  Almost immediately she notices her purse is missing.  She calls her niece and asks her to look in her car.  No purse. 

 

So they both return to where the car was parked.  They drive around, ask people.  No sign of the purse.  The niece finally departs and mom  goes home.  She calls her mom, then she calls the mall security.  Nothing had been reported or brought in.  Security says to call the police.  The police do not know what to do.  Was it stolen?  Or was it forgotten? 

 

She thinks of her credit card, of getting a new license, she thinks of her phone.  So, using her mom's phone, she starts calling her phone hoping someone will answer   No one answers. 

 

 

Time passes.  A few hours later in the evening, her mom gets a phone call.  It is young boy, a high school aged kid.  He has the purse.  He says he and his dad found it in the parking lot and simply used the phone's incoming calls to call the number identified as "Mom."

 

The mom who got the purse back was Bobbi Jo Whitley, mother of Dillon, Hunter, and Audry.  Bobbi's mom is Jo Whitley, who read this morning.  The purse came back.  Nothing missing.

 

Are there not lots of good stories like this?  Are we not evolving into a better people?  Scott Burns said so in his column in the Dallas Morning News a couple of weeks ago.  A great Jesuit geologist and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, thought so, saying that the human race is slowly becoming more mature, more sensitive, more peaceful.  I think so, too.  For lots of reasons.

 

What do you think?

 

Picture 1:  Mass begins with Kevin helping

 

Picture 2:  Daniel (Mr. A&M) & Beth

 

Picture 3:  Bob & Jerry with 2 new knees

 

Picture 4:  Georgie

 

 

Rosemary's Blessing Video:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks…     

Music,   Ben 

 

  Expenses: $    790.00

  Outreach: $   260.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

 

 

The Godfather (Steve) and Godmother (Frida) hold Harrison as he is baptised

 

 

 

Rosemary's Blessing:

 

 

Isaiah 43: I am doing something new!  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  In the desert I make a way,  in the wasteland, rivers.

Philippians 3:  Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

John 8: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

 

 John Cade's homily from last week: Download 03-30-25 Homily -4th Sunday in Lent

 

 

Music,   Ben & Shonda

 

 

Expenses: $   990.00

Outreach: $    80.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

 

 

Tom gets a cookie for his birthday

Rosemary's Blessing:

Oh God who made me absolutely unique,

Help me to value more the Person You made Me to be.

And protect me from comparisons and envy and discouragement over what I am not.

 Andrew Greeley,  Irish American Blessings