33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 13, 2022

Community Finances:   

  Expenses: $  880.00

  Outreach: $   85.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

Rosemary's Blessing:

 

 

Author Unknown

 

 

Job 7: Job spoke, saying: Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?  Are not his days those of hirelings?

1 Corinthians 9: I have become all things to all, to save at lease some.  All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.

Mark 1:  He told them, "Let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach there also.  For this purpose have I come."

John reading from Micah

Music,   Ben & Shonda

Connie gets a cookie for her birthday

Expenses: $   1,275.00

Outreach: $    380.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

Rosemary's Blessing:

A Christmas Prayer

Loving Father, help us to remember the birth
of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and the worship of the wise men.

Close the door of hate and
open the door of love all over the world.

Let kindness come with every gift and
good desires with every greeting.

Deliver us from evil by the blessing
which Christ brings, and teach us to
be merry with clear hearts.

May the Christmas morning make us happy
to be Thy children, and the Christmas evening
bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts,
forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus' sake.

Amen!

 Robert Louis Stevenson

Readings: Wisdom 18, 6-9; Psalm 33; Hebrews 11, 1-19; Luke 12, 32-48.

Wisdom: this book is one of the 12 special books only finally approved by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1546.  Martin Luther, for instance, did not think the 12 books were genuine.  Whatever the case, the 12 books are in a special section of our bible after the Old Testament.

The book we are reading from today contains traditional Jewish and Greek ideas about life, basically saying that God rewards those faithful to him & punishes you know whom.

What are You Afraid of?

When I was about sixteen, I came home from the old Jesuit High School one afternoon probably in the spring.  Nobody was home, not even my sister as far as I can remember. My dad was at work. My mom was at one of her afternoon bridge clubs and had gone with one of her friends because her baby blue Pontiac was in the garage. 

After hanging around a bit and getting bored, I decided I was going to go visit a friend and use my mom’s car. Mom, however, did not like me using her car, so I could not find her keys. Now in those days all of us kids knew how to run a car without keys. It was called hot wiring a car. You used tin foil on the back of the key slot under the dash. 

So I hot wired my mom’s big Pontiac, pulled out of the driveway onto Stanford, and turned toward Preston Road. Arriving at the corner the car stalls. For five minutes I am working on the key slot to start the car, all to no avail, when a car coming north on Preston turns into Stanford. A lady is driving.  I know that lady and sitting next to her, my mom.

The master had returned and the servant was unprepared. In fact, the servant was caught red handed.

I never got that car started and, in fact, had to pay my hard earned paper route money to get it towed and fixed. I had shorted out some wires. I don’t remember my mom ever saying anything, but I was humiliated. 

I remembered this incident when I read about the master & the servant. I have some observations about these readings.

First, I don’t see our God as a thief who is trying to catch us off guard. He is not a strict master who is looking to catch us red handed and beat us. 

Secondly, I don’t see us as servants. In fact, in John’s gospel Jesus says he does not call us servants, but friends. In today’s psalm it says, "Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.  We are his chosen.  So is everyone.

To see this parable in a positive light, I would go back to last week when we talked about life being a gift.  When it says that the Lord will come at an hour we do not expect, I propose that the gift comes at moments and in packages we do not expect.  Appreciation is the goal and the process. It involves being sensitive and reflective.

One of the best lines in the whole gospel today is the very first line where Jesus says, "Do not be afraid any longer." This means I do not have to be afraid of God, afraid of death, afraid of getting caught red handed, or afraid of missing the gifts of the moment. 

I’ll always remember how stupid I felt when my mom came around that corner and saw me in her car, broken down. She did not tear into me, and neither do we have a god who is a thief or master who will beat us. 

So what are you afraid of?

Jeremiah,  … he shall do what is right and just in the land.

Psalm 25, To you , O Lord, I lift up my soul

1 Thessalonians 3, May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all,

Luke 21, There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, …

Port of Marseille

Thanks……

Music,    Ben & Shonda

Readers,    John & Connie, & Buddy, our candle blesser 

Gospel,     John Cade

Homily,  John Cade

Eucharistic Prayer A & B,  John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,      Mike 

Final Blessing, Rosemary

Cote d'Azur

Readings:  Download 11-28-21 – 1st Advent Readings

Homily:  Download 11-28-21 1st Advent Homily

The Readers, John and Connie 

Remember these special people:

For John Stack having a hard time right now with a bad back;  For Laura Chollick;  For John & Karen Anderlick's grandson, Cooper John who lived only a few hours with his parents;   For Rosemary's great niece, Rylie;  For Richard's grand daughter, Madeleine;   For Esparza's new great grandson  & Frank;  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 Sir Charlie & Jan;  Shonda's mom & Cody &  Leo & all of Shonda's dear family; For Ursuline Sr. Mary Troy,

Mike's Birthday

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 baby boy named Ford recuperating from an operation & a nephew; for David McKeon's brother, Hugh; For Beth's friends & brother;   for the medical staffs, teachers, and coaches in our public & private schools.

Cathy's Birthday

Birthdays:  Mike Moran 12/2,  Grace LeBlanc 12/4,  Cathy Bambanek 12/4

Anniversaries: Frank & Mary Esparza 11/28,  John and Michelle Simari 11/29,  Brent & Meredith 12/1,  Shonda & Cody 12/3

Cody and Shonda's Anniversary

Community Finances,   

Expenses: $  830.00

Outreach: $  

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

Eze

Rosemary's Blessing:  

Prayer for Good Humor
by St. Thomas More

Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.
Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it.
Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good
and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil,
but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.
Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments,
nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.”
Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor.
Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy,
and to be able to share it with others.

Readings:

Samuel 3, 3-10, 19,   The call of Samuel by Yahweh.

Psalm402,  Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will.

1 Corinthians 6, 13-15, 17-20,  Your bodies are members of Christ.

John 1, 35-42,  What are you looking for?    

Thanks, John, for celebrating this week while Rosemary & I had a wedding for her youngest sister's son, Sean, in Mount, Laurel, NJ, just east of Philadelphia.

The reading from First Samuel tells a story of Samuel’s call by God and how difficult it was to hear it. The Gospel reading tells a story of the call of Peter and Nathaniel by Jesus. These stories are both dramatic in their details and their telling.

But even kids seem to hear a call on some level—they seem to identify with things bigger than themselves. I remember my grandson Leo, at about age 3, saying: “I want to be a scientist”, or “I want to go to ‘space university’”. At that same age, we heard how strongly he identified with something bigger than himself. Joey would tell Leo that he was going to go to Texas U.(her college), and Daniel would say that he was going to Oklahoma State (his college).

Sir Charlie, I don't trust you so close.

Leo’s speech was still rudimentary then and when we said, “Leo, when you grow up, you’re going to Texas U.”, Leo would say with great determination, “No, I’m going to ‘okeenokee steak’. Without even knowing what it meant, Leo, so young, had listened, heard a call, and strongly identified with a parent’s alma mater. He became a follower.

In the olden days, today’s readings about a call from God would be used to talk up vocations to the priesthood and the religious life. Though the church still suffers from a clerical culture and a vertical patriarchy, we know all are called to priesthood, to minister—to serve and care for one another. So some calls are special, some are dramatic, like Samuel’s and like Peter’s and Nathaniel’s.

Hi, Beth, Hi, Emma.  So nice to see you.

I echo Stack in that the call to serve, to care, to follow—is most often a small voice, usually inaudible. We have to be listening for it. Problem: having a ‘habit of ‘listening’ is not automatic. We’re not born with it. But we can all learn to ‘listen’ and, by practicing listening, we all can develop it into a habit.

So, when we ‘listen’ daily to what we read or to what others say, or become attentive to random daily situations, we are developing the habit of listening. Our practice at the beginning of Mass to pause and ‘listen’ can be the beginning of developing the habit of listening.

Hi Tori, Hi, Zoe, So nice to see you girls, too.

There was the story on TV this week of a man who saved a stranger’s life by pushing her away from an oncoming car which then hit and killed him. This man and this woman had both stopped to help out another driver whose car was stalled. Like Samuel’s and John’s stories, this is a dramatic and amazing example of someone hearing a call, it’s a hero story—difficult, if not impossible, to identify with.

What the newscast doesn’t tell us is the back story, how this man and this woman likely lived their lives—my guess is they had a habit of listening for the many small daily calls to care about others in small ways, in ways we all can. This is within the reach of all of us: to develop a habit of listening for those small everyday calls to serve and to care for others.

 The Girls, Cheryl & Marilyn

 The question: Can you hear those small daily calls? And have you developed the habit of listening?