5th Sunday of Easter, 5-2-2021

 

 

Good Morning, My Dearest Izzy, and welcome to our community.  We gather here this morning to baptize you into the the Catholic Community.  Thanks for coming. 

 

 

Readings:

Amos 6, 1, 4-7, Woe to the complacent

Psalm 146,  Praise the Lord, my soul.

1 Timothy 6, 11-16,    Pursue righteousness, love, and gentleness

Luke 16, 19-31,   The Rich Man & Lazarus.

 

Today's Homily will  be the baptism ceremony of Isaura Barbara Fleming,(Izzy), Daughter of Megan & TC Fleming.

 

 

 

This Baptism says that you belong to a community which loves you and believes in a God who loves you now and will love you forever.

 

 

 

 

Welcome, Everybody!

 

 

Readings:  

 Ezekiel   17, 22-24,   All the trees of the field will know…

 Psalm 130,   Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.

 2 Corinthians —  A special reading

 Mark 4, 26-34,   This is how  it is with the kingdom of God.  

 

 

 

 

Welcome to our Fathers' Day Special.

 

 

Homily by John Cade:  

Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is here all around us and, yes, it is miraculous, like the mustard seed or pine nut are miraculous. To Jesus’ listeners the gifts of nature, like the growth of plants, were a mystery, how they start out so little and somehow grow so big. This is how God’s Spirit works. From inside we are moved to grow, to mature, to share, to help create God’s kingdom. 

 

 

 

 

Emma sharing one of  her special gift, lighting our candles.

 

 

Examples of people building the kingdom abound. We see each week this wall of portraits of people who were like us, regular people, and who also dared to love their neighbors however they met them: Like Mahatma Gandhi in India, standing for non-violent civil disobedience and for self-government for the Indian people; like Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S., standing for racial equality and against unjust war; like Mother Teresa in India, serving the poor and outcast; like Oscar Romero in El Salvador, standing for his people against political tyranny and abuse; like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, standing for his native people of color against apartheid; like Cesar Chavez and Harriet Tubman in the U.S., Cesar standing against the unjust treatment of migrant workers and for the right to unionize, and Harriet standing for the freeing of slaves and risking her life supporting the ‘underground railroad’; and so forth with the others.

 

 

 

The Team.

 

 

These people were, like us, born as regular people. They had eyes like us to see, and ears like us to hear, and they, each in their own way, imagined how they could help build up the kingdom of God in their time. We tend to make our heroes seem other-worldly, bigger than life. We put them on a pedestal, just out of our reach, just a bit too super to imitate. But this is an overly idealized view. Most people who actively build up the kingdom of God don’t get known as super heroes, don’t get their portrait on a wall.

 

 

 

The Doughertys, Connie, John, & home from college, Kevin.

 

 

Like my sister-in-law who raised 2 children while working full time as a teacher and when her husband developed a brain tumor, being a caring partner in his journey. She now divides her time between helping her grown daughter, a single mom who has MS and a 3 year old son, and helping her 95 year old father, who is in failing health, to remain in his own home. 

 

 

 

The Best, Shonda, Ben, & David.

 

 

 

Or like two young men and fathers I know who, though their marriages did not succeed, stay true to their mission to be fathers to their sons, participating wholeheartedly in their growth and development.

 

 

 

The Bresson Offertory Procession, Kevin, John, & Connie.

 

 

These good people are builders of the kingdom of God visualized by Jesus. Look around. See all the ways people you know are building up the kingdom. How you help make the kingdom come in your time is limited only by the unlimited ways you can imagine it. It’s not how big a splash you make. It’s the love and courage and persistence of your choices and behaviors that make God’s kingdom come in our world in our time.

 

 

 

Welcome Home, Mary Ellen.  So nice to see you here with us all.

 

 

Who have you seen building up God’s kingdom, and you can imagine their portrait on the wall? And when did you last imagine how you could build up this kingdom in your lifetime?

 

 

Thanks for being special to us all, My Dearest Emma.

 

 

 

"Hi, Everybody," says our pretty Victoria with her momma.

 

Welcome: Catholic Mass with coffee & juice, and pastries, some bought, some home-made.

Time: 9:30; Celebrate with the Community & Stack. 

Place: Sigler Elementary, 1400 Janwood Drive, Plano, TX 75075

 

 

The Cookie Monster??  No way.  That is our Harper selling her Girl Scout cookies.  How can you not buy from a girl like Harper?   I think she cleaned up.
 

 

Readings:

Sirach 15, 15-20,   If you trust in God, you too shall live.   

 Psalm 119,  Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.

 1 Corinthians 2, 6-10,   What eye has not seen…

 Matthew 5, 17-37,    If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

 

 

 

The Gang, pretty scary.  Tom, Joe & Marsha, John & Connie.

 

Community Activities:  

ROMEO MEET: Friday, February 10, Jason's Deli, Collin Creek Mall, west side of Central, 1:00.  Welcome all wakos,  you will fit right in.  

JULIET LUNCHEON, (aka.,just us ladies into eating together), March, TBA

 

The Community.  I see you, Everett. 

 

What is going on in Our Catholic World

1.   Tommy & God, from Fr. John Powell, Loyola U. Chicago,    Download TOMMY & GOD 2-9-17

 

 

Total service: Alison caretaking a little dog off her game a bit, Aviana.

 

True?

In a world where you can be anything, be kind.

Johannesburg

 

 

Welcome back, Joe, so good to see you.

 

See you Sunday.

J.S., 214-783-0443

 

Healing for Angela.

JSM Mission-Faith Statement

Help create a Catholic Community that welcomes all God’s People, provides for and challenges spiritual and total growth.

Reaches out to help people who are disadvantaged and make the world we live in a better place to live.

 

 

"Peace, Everybody," says Everett and his mommy, Kristin.

The first Genesis creation story is included in this blog.  It is too long to read during the homily, so I invite you to read it prior to Sunday Mass when John Cade will talk with you about the story’s literary form.

Download 09-19-21 Genesis Creation Story 1

Exodos 17:  … in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, "Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?"

Romans 5:  And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit …  

John 4:  Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;

 

 

Tom reading from Paul's Letter to the Romans

 

 

Thanks…     

Music,    Shonda &  Ben

Readers,  Denni & Tom

Gospel,   John Cade

Homily,   John Cade

Eucharistic Prayer A & B,  John Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,   Hue & Kevin

Final Blessing, Rosemary

       

 

Denni reading from Exodus

 

Readings:  Download 03-12-23 Readings – 3rd Lent

Homily:   

 

                                                                                                                                                                    

 

The Kiss of Peace

 

 

There will be a Celebration of Life for Ron Senter on April 1, 2023 at Restland  at 2:00 in the afternoon. 

 

 

Remember these special people:

For the family of Ron Senter;  For Frank Esparza;  For Jan;  For John Simari's mother who is not feeling well;  For Tom  Quinn who had back surgery on November 21st;  For Sandra who has been diagnosed with Large B Cell Lymphoma;   For Lambrini, John Cade's wife, who is dealing with cancer ;  For Madeleine, Richard Eshelbrenner's granddaughter;  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.

 

 

Richard letting us know about the Love For Kids day

                                             

 

Birthdays:   John O'Donnell 3/14

Anniversaries:  

 

Community Finances:   

Expenses: $  735.00

Outreach: $  0.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

       

 

 

Readings:  Isaiah 55, 6-9; Psalm 145, The Lord is near to all who call upon Him; Philippians 1, 20-27; Matthew 20, 1-16.

 

Brief teaching on Liturgy of Word before first reading:

The disciples of Jesus were not only Jews, they continued to be Jews after Jesus Christ ascended into heaven by their presence in the temple and synagogue.  After attending the Sabbath service in the synagogue, on the first day of the week they would gather at someone’s home to celebrate the Lord’s Supper where they shared memories of His teachings and sayings.  But the early Church having no gospels did not have a Liturgy of the Word. The Jews, who believed that the Messiah had come-the Christ, were most likely not concerned that they didn’t have a Liturgy of the Word.  Why? They had the synagogue prayer and Scripture service on the Sabbath that continually catechized the Jewish communities.  It wouldn’t be until after the Jewish believers of Christ were being excluded from the synagogue and temple, thrown out and persecuted, that they realized how much they needed the gospels to be written for a Christian Liturgy of the Word to catechize new converts Sunday after Sunday. 

 

When the Matthew and Luke gospels were written, which were also meant to address the needs, tensions and concerns of the gentile and Jewish Christian communities, there should have been in one of them an acknowledgement of a Christian Liturgy of the Word that was being used prior to celebrating the Lord’s Supper.  There is, even though the Church has failed to recognize its presence during the past 19 centuries!  (Read the account in Luke chapter 4 when Jesus comes into the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth on the Sabbath to stand and give the reading, then sit to give the teaching. He was required to give a teaching on the words of Isaiah; but instead said that He had fulfilled the reading from Isaiah.  By doing so, the inspired writers are telling us that the words of Christ fulfill the reading from Isaiah as well as the synagogue service itself! What could it possibly mean to fulfill the Jewish ‘Liturgy of the Word?’ The inspired writers are presenting the Liturgy of the Word of the early Christian Church!  It fulfilled the Jewish Sabbath synagogue service but it didn’t abandon it! 

Therefore the Christian Liturgy of the Word would include a first reading from either the Law and the Prophets as well as the singing of the Psalm…all of which are the expectation for the coming of the words of Christ and their teaching…then the words of Christ and their teaching which would fulfill the expectation of the first testament and psalm.  Therefore there would be a harmony between the testaments, and the Jewish Christians, intimately familiar with their Sabbath synagogue service, had the catechetical method of weekly evangelizing the converts to Christianity—besides telling us how the whole four gospels were written (the words of Christ will fulfill the expectation of his coming within the Law, Prophets, Psalms, Judaism and its feasts as well).

 

Homily:

The parable beginning Matthew 20 on the landowner who goes to the marketplace to hire laborers for his vineyard can be readily understood if you understand the following symbolism (In doing so the words of Christ will fulfill the expectation of His coming from the prophet Isaiah who tells us that the Lord is generous, and that his ways are not our ways).

 

The dilemma of the parable is the reply made by the laborers to the landowner at 5:00 PM, an hour before sunset: ‘No one has given us the words that satisfy our spiritual hunger.’  (omitted the rationale from ‘no one has given us the words that satisfy our hunger’ to spiritual hunger) The landowner sends them into the vineyard where Christ is the vine. His words will satisfy their spiritual hunger.  The landowner is like a hound who has continually gone to the marketplace to bring back laborers who long to hear the words that will satisfy their spiritual hunger…so the landowner is the vine, the Christ.  The wage is that which is ‘righteous’, therefore what God would pay his laborers. 

 
 

Christ is an advocate for his laborers by going to the ‘manager’ (his Father) asking him to give each laborer the wage of salvation beginning with the last and going to the first.  The wisdom of the parable come from the words of Christ, ‘I choose to give to the last the same as I give to you (the first)’. The first do not understand that the ways and thoughts of God are generosity and mercy.  Jesus tells them to ‘go,’ which in Greek is to leave without noise or fanfare… to rather come to their senses and rejoice with the angels over these last who have repented….

 

Why is this parable placed where it is within the Matthew gospel?  Immediately following are the words of Christ on who is the greatest in the kingdom of God (the one who shows mercy and generosity by reaching out to the least by making them the first)

Why is this parable placed within the Matthew gospel instead of the Luke gospel? The Jewish Christians are to reach out the gentiles (who are the last) with the inspired Liturgy of the Word to welcome them as the first!

 

Picture 1:    Mass Begins   

Picture 2:    The Team

Picture 3:    The Guys, Jerry, Bill, Mike, & Tony

Pciture 4:    Leo with Rosemary

Picture 5:    Claire with her fiance & dad, Andrew & Tom

Picture 6:    John & Sandra