Sunday Homily 8-7-11, 19th Ordinary Time

Readings: Entrance procession, Luke 19, 28-40; Isaiah 50, 4-7; Psalm 22, My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?; Philippians 2, 6-11; Passion, Luke 22, 14-23, 1-49. 

 Some short reflections on the readings, short because of the length of the readings, i.e., the Passion.

It is very unfortunate that we only read little sections of the Luke’s Gospel each Sunday.  It is like seeing a few minutes of a movie; we keep getting interrupted and can too easily lose the whole plot.  Remember, Luke’s product is both the Gospel and the Book of Acts and together they form a complete message.

The very early church was Jewish.  After the Resurrection, the followers of Jesus continued to go to the synagogue or temple, this we see in Acts, and they also met in each other’s homes to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  As they reflected on the life of Jesus, they turned to what they were most familiar with, namely the Old Testament, in their efforts to try and understand Jesus’ place better.  And so after forty or fifty or even sixty years of this, as our Gospels emerge they are hugely influenced by the Old Testament.  It was the only way the gospel writers and the early communities knew how to understand Jesus and his message.

 

Today, we have one of those points, if we were watching a movie, when the music would be cranked up.  For Luke, from Chapter 9:51 up until today’s first Gospel reading Chapter 19:28 Jesus has been journeying towards Jerusalem.  Today he enters Jerusalem and begins what we know as the Jerusalem ministry, a mere two and a half chapters. You will remember way back at the beginning of this gospel, when Jesus gets left behind in Jerusalem, he says to his parents, “Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs.” Right after today’s reading, Luke has Jesus go to the temple and clean it out and then begin teaching in the Temple every day. 

 

We get the sense of more time than just the few days we experience between Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and what we will read about shortly as the Holy Week events. 

Finally, recall on the first Sunday of Lent, we read of the temptations of Jesus after his 40 days in the desert.  Luke ends that story with the words “the devil left him to return at the proper time.”   We will see that return in our reading of the Passion when Peter denies Jesus 22:31, when Satan enters Judas 22:3 and at the hour of darkness, 22:53.

 

We are almost done with Lent.  Now we turn to the events of Holy Week and Easter.  Our Gospels give us different interpretations of these events, influenced by the early church’s interpretation in the light of the Old Testament.  Each one of us also needs to reflect on what these events mean to us and how our lives are different.  Was this just a sad story, which happened over two thousand years ago, or are our lives today lived with a different meaning because of Jesus?

 

 

Picture 1:   Palm Sunday Mass begins with Tony

 

Picture 2:   Tony blesses the Palms

 

Picture 3:   Denni, Nancy, & Ron await the Procession

 

Picture 4:   The Procession with the Palms

 

Picture 5:  The Kless Family await the blessing, Christine, Cara, her friend, Sean, and Ed

 

2 Kings 4, They shall eat and there shall be some left over.

Psalm 145, The hand  of the Lord feeds us, he answers all our needs.

Ephesians 4, ..unity of spirit through the bond of peace.

John 6, Where can we buy enough food for them to eat.  

 

 

Music Magic with Shonda & Ben

 

Thanks……

Music,    Ben & Shonda

Readers,  Patricia & Fred, & Buddy, our candle blesser 

Gospel,     John Cade

Homily,   John Stack

Eucharistic Prayer A & B,  John Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,     Richard, Hue, & Mike

Final Blessing, Rosemary

For hosting us at Legacy for all these years & will miss you enormously, Becky

 

 

Patricia reading 2 Kings.

 

Readings:

Download 07-25-21 R1 – PatJansky – 17h Ord (1)

 

 

 

Fred reading from Ephesians.

 

Homily by John Stack

Download Homily by John Stack 7-25-2021. 17th Ordinary Time

 

 

 

Today's Team.

 

Remember these special people:

For John & Karen Anderlick's unborn grandson;  For Alan Stryker;   For Candice Taht, friend of Mary Hall;   For Rosemary's great niece, Rylie ;  For Richard's grand daughter, Madeleine;   For Esparza's new great grandson baby, son of Monique, & Frank with shingles;  For all the medical personnel struggling to treat the tsunami of sick people, in particular, locally, Cindy's staff at Presby, Dallas, and at Frisco Presby, the mother of Harper and Betsy, Kendle, working in labor & delivery, and for Hue & Linda's daughter, Doctor Rosemary Beavers;   For Mary & Dave Hall's g-daughter Allison Keller working at St. Lukes, The Woodlands,   For Loretta's aunt Alicia;  For Sir Charlie & Jan;  Shonda's mom & Cody &  Leo & all of Shonda's dear family; For Ursuline Sr. Mary Troy, 

 

Who are these two beautiful girls?  How you have grown, Zoe, and, Wow!, Michelle, how you have really trimmed down.  Welcome home, Both of You!

 

Jackie's mom, sister, & friend, Lynn;  For Rick Turner searching for a kidney donor, Type O neg.; For Meredith, cancer free & John Schanot;    For John O'Donnell & Jean;   For Jean & Cliff Wright;  For Dee, and for her daughters, Lisa & Lauren  ;  For Anthony & Sabrina;    For a young man who is suffering from depression;  John Cade's mother in law, Kalliopi Piskiouli and Lambrini, plus John's daughter, Joey, with cancer; from Barbara, a little 4 month old baby boy named Ford recuperating from an operation; for David McKeon's brother, Hugh; For Beth's friends & brother;   for the medical staffs, teachers, and coaches in our public & private schools.

 

 

Happy Anniversary to you & David, Donna.  I wish I could be with David now beginning the first day of Ragbrai.

 

Birthdays:    Dawson, Cindy Ekes

Anniversaries:   Donna & David

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Dawson.

 

Community Finances,   July 25, 2021

Expenses: $960.00

Outreach: $405.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

 

Rosemary doing her blessing of the week.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Rosemary's Blessing:

 

Life is not a journey to the grave

With the intention of arriving safely

In a pretty and well preserved body,

But rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke,

Thoroughly used up,

Totally worn out,

And loudly proclaiming

—WOW—What a Ride!

 

Hunter S. Thompson

 

Readings: Acts of the Apostles  2, 1-11; Psalm 104, Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the Face of the Earth; 1 Corinthians 12, 3-13; John 20, 19-23

 

Intro to the readings

 I would just like to draw your attention to the reading we have today from Acts of the Apostles.  Luke is very clever in the way the scene is described and unless we are aware, much of what he is doing can easily be missed.  We will be told that there were “pious Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem”.  Even though this Feast of Weeks, Pentecost, was one of the three major Jewish pilgrimage feasts when the Jews would have traveled to Jerusalem, these Jews that Luke mentions are actually “living” in Jerusalem, not just visiting.  And he goes on to list what is most likely all of the places that the Jews would have been scattered to over the many invasions they have experienced, in other words this is the “Diaspora” the scattered Jews. 

 

 It has dawned on me that to really understand a lot of the subtleties in the New Testament it would help to be Jewish!  Today is Pentecost Sunday.  The word pente means fifty.  And so we are counting backwards and I always thought it was back to the resurrection, but in Luke’s mind it was counting back to the Feast of Passover.  Passover for the Jew was “the moment” when Yahweh freed his people from slavery in Egypt.  For the Christian, it is Jesus’ death and resurrection, laid right on top of this feast of Passover.  Now for the counting bit, and the Jews did in fact count the days from the Passover to the next most important event, described in the Book of Exodus chapter 19 v 16ff, namely the time Moses receives the Torah, the Ten Commandments!  How was that event described, we are told of the sound of thunder and God descending in the form of fire, this was the Old Covenant between God and His People.  Now it is quite common in the bible to have the sound of thunder or wind used when God appears, but nowhere else do both this sound and fire appear together except at Mount Sinai and today in the room with the disciples!

 Speaking about Moses, for Luke, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise.  When Jesus is baptized and receives the Holy Spirit, Luke immediately gives us this long genealogy of Jesus and Luke takes it all the way back not just to Abraham, but to Adam!  Now we look in the other direction and Luke has Jews from every nation present for the gift of the Spirit.

 

Pentecost Sunday – Homily

 If today’s gospel sounds familiar, it should, because it is a shorter version of our gospel reading from the Second Sunday of Easter.  It is a similar description of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which we also have in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.  Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church.  It is the day the church officially recognizes the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles from today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. 

 The Holy Spirit is third person in the Trinity.  That is about as much as can be said without wandering into heresy of some sort!  But what we can do is talk about the effects of the Holy Spirit.  We see in today’s readings that it totally transformed the disciples from fear to faith!  But if we look around other places we find the Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism and then He begins his public ministry.  The big discussion in John’s gospel was that until Jesus left the Holy Spirit could not come.

 

 If we think about Luke’s description from our first reading, he takes only four verses to describe the descent of the Holy Spirit, very brief. He is mostly interested in describing the results brought about in the disciples by that event.  And I think it makes sense for us to do the same.  We have been promised the Holy Spirit, we receive the Holy Spirit and so the question is – so what now, what happens, how are we different?

 There was an interesting little event described in the Old Testament Book of Numbers chapter 20.  The folks have been wandering in the desert for a few months, and they have arrived at a place where there is no water.  God tells Moses to take a branch and strike a rock.  Unfortunately Moses kind of thought it was up to him, and so when he hit the rock the first time, nothing happens, so he hits it again.  He got in trouble, because it seems he was thinking that the miracle was going to happen by his efforts.  For me this is a powerful lesson about God and each one of us.  Remember, the gift of relationship with God is a freely given gift, and our response is really and truly free.  We have many great stories from the Old Testament of how many times the people strayed from their covenant with God, and each time when they got into trouble they came crawling back.  They are not too different from us. We can too easily forget that God is in charge.  When we do that, forget who is in charge, we get into all kinds of trouble and fear.  Then we start to worry about stuff that we have no control over.  I believe that is where the disciples were in our readings today, in fear, forgetting that Jesus had told them he would be with them.

 Sometimes when I look at the church today, I see the same thing happening.  The church authorities seem to have forgotten about the presence of the Spirit and instead try to keep the folk in line with rules and threats.  The problem is that threats only work with little kids and only for a short while.  Adults will ignore threats. 

 

I believe that the Spirit is very much present in each one of us.  But He can only be present when we acknowledge that He is in charge.  When we try to run things, then the messes happen!  We tend to forget that Jesus did tell us he would be with us.  And when we do forget, it seems that then we are in charge.  It was when Paul became helpless by blindness that he was able to listen.  And we know how effective he became once he allowed the spirit to work in and thru him.  This weekend, as we celebrate the birthday of the church, we might we ask ourselves, who is in charge!

Picture 1:   Mass Begins

Picture 2:   The Team

Picture 3:   Communion Volunteers, Joanne, Jackie, Mike, Nancy, Jan, Don, John, & Patricia

Picture 4:   Communion with Nancy & Tony, Richard & Bernadette

Picture 5:   The Kites, Doug & Julie & Emily on their 25th Anniversary

 

 

 

 

Readings: Acts of the Apostles 6, 1-7; Psalm 33, Lord, let your Mercy be upon Us, as we place our Trust in You; 1 Peter 2, 4-9; John 14, 1-12 

 
 

Acts observations & review—(Author, Date, Place, Subject) a repeat from Easter

 Author: This is Luke, the physician, the companion of Paul, the Gentile writing for Gentile Christians, and the same Luke who wrote the Gospel of Luke.

 Date: Around 65 years after Christ.  Probably just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (70 C.E., a big date in Jewish history), or Luke would have probably mentioned it. 

 

Place: probably Ephesus, today a ruin on the west coast of Turkey south of Constantinople.  Once this town was a major Christian center.

 Subject: the material works like in concentric, expanding circles, beginning in Jerusalem and ending in Rome after touching Judea, Syria, Ephesus, & Europe.  It treats activities in the early Christian community, some of which may describe they way they wished things were. 

 Sources: Good News Bible, New Interpreter’s Study Bible, St. Louis U. Jesuits’ Liturgical web

 

Homily

 This past week four of our community, Bill Hammond, Bob McGrath, Charlotte Gelineau Katner & her husband, Harry, all went to Tuscaloosa, AL to help with the tornado clean up. 

Bill took the homily time to share how he was touched by the students from St. Bonaventure College in Buffalo, NY, by their faculty moderator, and by the people of Tuscaloosa. 

The fifteen boys and fourteen girls who made the trip from Buffalo worked tirelessly cleaning up people's property, sawing up fallen trees, and consoling the victims of the tornado.

 

One of the kids even found the lost wedding ring of a lady.  It was found under a piece of trashed wall board.

Everyone spent nights on the floor of the all purpose center of the Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa.  The community housed all the volunteers and fed the whole group. 

Bill said he returned with sense overload and a marvel at the good will & generosity of so many people.

 

Picture 1:   Mass begins

Picture 2:   Bill Hammond talking about Tuscaloosa

Picture 3:   Offertory, Melissa, Jenny, & their mom Diane Holcomb 

  
Picture 4:   Chloe & Emma

Picture 5:   Leo joins the music with his dad, Ray, and Wendy.

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome, Betsy.  We have been awaiting your debut.  Your big sister Harper has been telling us that you were coming.  And doubly nice, with your dad, Brian.

 

Readings: 

Acts of the Apostles, 10, 37-43,  Peter said, "we are witnesses of all."

Psalm 118,  This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice & be glad.  (an excellent first stanza)

1 Corinthians 5, 6-8, A little yeast leavens all.

John 20, 1-9, On the first day of the week, Mary Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning.

 

 

Congratulations, Leo, you have not lost your touch as the candle lighter.  Thanks.

 

A little Yeast Leavens a Whole Loaf

This morning I would like to talk about that line that says a little yeast leavens a whole loaf of bread.  For me that idea is translated into the idea that a little act on my part may make an enormous difference.  Little resurrections take place, which I would propose happen every day in lots of ways.

 

 

Will somebody please go sit with Sir Charlie.

 

For instance, there is this girl.  She is probably in her mid twenties, average height, average size, brown hair.  I first noticed her when I realized she was suddenly becoming a regular at the gym of the Jewish Community Center, where I work out mornings Monday through Friday.

I know most of the people who work out at the same time as I, namely about 5:00 A.M.  The hour is the result of long years of Jesuit training.  I noticed the girl because she went about her work out pretty seriously.  Moreover, she seemed to know nobody and never talked with anybody.  My heart went out to her.

 

 

Welcome Home, Doug, and thanks for introducing us all to Kim.

 

So one morning I just walked over to a machine where she was working out and where I intended to work a bit.  I waited for her to finish up, then said to her, “Hi, I’m John.  I see you here most mornings and I admire you.”

 

 

Washing of the hands Holy Thursday evening.

 

Well, suddenly all the lights on the downtown Dallas Omni Hotel flashed on.  The girl broke out this glorious smile and her blue eyes shone.  Her serious face was transformed.  “I’m Molly,” she said.  And now every morning that we are at the gym together we greet each other and she flashes her delightful smile.

 

 

Good Friday.

 

A resurrection event.  Just add a little yeast and watch the results.

What is your latest Resurrection event?

 

 

The Hostesses with the Mostesses,  Marlene & Cindy.

 

What a surprise gift Friday evening, Rose was back in town from CO and showed up.

Readings: Isaiah 8, 23-9, 3; Psalm 27; 1 Corinthians 1, 10-17; Matthew 4, 12-23.

Isaiah: This great book continues for one more beautiful week.  Today we are presented with another vision of a people walking in light with joy and rejoicing.  Just a reminder: the visions in the book come from ca. 800 years B.C.

To what are You Called?

I would like to talk this morning about The Call.  Has anyone heard about a guy named Franz Jagerstatter?  This man was beatified last October in the cathedral in Linz, Austria.   He was Austrian, born in 1907 to poor farming parents.  He toyed with the idea of joining a monastery when he was 27, but decided his mother needed him to stay and help her with the farm.

At 29 he married Franziska and later said he could never have imagined that being married would be so wonderful.  The year was 1936.  Two years later you know what happened?  What happened in Austria?  Nazi Germany unified as it were Austria, and it became basically a state in Germany.  Coincidentally, Adolf Hitler was born in a small Austrian town neighboring the small town Franz was born in. 

With the Nazi take-over of Austria the arrest and exportation of the Jews began immediately.  The majority of the Catholic Church gave full and complete support to the Nazi take over and unification.  The diocese of Linz was an exception, and it was near Linz that Franz & his family lived and listened to the debate.  He was torn.  Some priests even encouraged Franz to get along, don’t endanger his family and keep his head down.

While Franz was struggling with his conscience, Germany spectacularly continued its unification plans, taking over Poland in ’39, France, and the Netherlands.  And arresting Jews.  In February,1943, just two years before the end of the war in May,1945, Franz got his orders to report for military service. March 2 he reported to the military base and refused to serve.  He was arrested and spent the next five months in prison in Linz.  In July he was found guilty of impeding the war effort and condemned to death.   August 9, 1943, 4:00 P.M., he was beheaded.  He was 36 years old.

Franz Jagerstratter heard The Call, Folks.  I am humbled by his example.

Jesus is walking along the lake.  He sees these rough fishermen and calls them to come along.  They do. We get the same call.   I am tempted to think the call is for that guy, for Franz, or someone else.  Not me.  Wrong.  We each get The Call.

To what are you called?

AUDIO:  http://mysite.verizon.net/reso7rjy/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/2008-01-27.mp3