Readings:

Proverbs 31,  When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls.

Psalm 128, Blessed are those who fear the Lord

1 Thessalonians  5, 1-6, The Lord will come like a thief at night

Matthew 25, 14-21, A man goes on a journey & entrusts possessions with his servants.

Thanks to the Team

Music,  Ben & Shonda, Ben sick & Shonda on Air Force duty.  Wow, do I miss you both.  

Readers,  Jackie & John Simari & Buddy, the candle blesser

Gospel,  John Cade 

Homily,   John Stack

Eucharistic Prayer A & B, Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,  Richard & Hue & Mike

Final Blessing, Rosemary

For hosting us at Legacy, Becky

Note: This week in 1989 the six Jesuits in El Salvador were murdered in the patio of their residence at the university by army soldiers, along with their house keeper & daughter.

Download Readings Week 33

Download Reading Gospel Week 33

Intro to the readings:

On numerous occasions I’ve talked about my discomfort with fear based spirituality.  I say it again this morning because all the readings this morning, with the exception of the first reading from the Book of Proverbs, encourage a fear based spirituality.   You will see what I am talking about.

So, if not fear based spirituality, what?  Gratitude!

Our up coming celebration?  My favorite: Thanksgiving. gratitude.  

Homily by Stack

It is that time of year again, Folks, Thanksgiving, my favorite of the year.  In the spirit of gratitude, Rosemary & I like to scan our year and note the special blessings.  I got three I would like to share with you.

First, the time after the October 20 tornado.  You have heard enough of this.  I would just say that we are totally grateful for finding a new house and getting settled enough that we can feel that it is home.

The second blessing came about as a result of the corona virus. The Sunday Zoom broadcast.  I so look forward to coming in here a little after 9:00 and hearing people chatting and laughing via Zoom.  I so long for the day when we can come really together .  Meanwhile, I see & hear everybody.   This special blessing is a huge help until we can return in person, healthy and grateful.      

I am overwhelmed with gratitude to the people who put this Zoom gift together for the community, namely Richard & Hue, David Dinsmore, Tom & Becky, and especially Mike, who was like walking in the dark when he began this adventure.

Mike on watch

My third blessing comes right out of the first reading, the one from Proverbs, describing my partner, my wife, Rosemary, as more special than pearls. 

For most of the 15 years of our marriage I presumed that as we got to the senior citizen stage of our lives I would be ready and delighted to help us in our golden years.  I have spent 75 years of my life healthy as it gets.  

Whoa, as I hit 79 & 80, the place started falling apart.  Other personal tornados came, that is, lumbar stenosis, shoulder arthritis, loss of memory, and just to add a final treat, Parkinsons.  

Guess who takes care of me.  Guess who negotiated our new house, who packed most of our stuff (with our good friend Grace), unpacked everything (with our good friend Grace), and has made a home out our new house.

These are my special blessings of the year.  Yours?

Please Remember these special people:

For Paul & Carrie recuperating;  For Alan Stryker;  For Joe Sullivan;  For John Doherty recuperating from an operation for his back pain;   For Rosemary's great niece, Rylie ;  For Richard's grand daughter, Madeleine; For David Dinsmore's bad shoulder from a biking accident;  For Esparza's new great grand-son baby, son of Monique;  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;   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 & Ben & Leo & all of Shonda's dear family;  

Tranquility.

For Jackie's mom, sister, & friend, Lynn;  For both Jean & Cliff Wright;  For Rick Turner searching for a kidney donor, Type O neg; For Meredith, cancer free;    For John O'Donnell;   For Dee, and for her daughter, Lisa; For John Schanot's continued health;  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,  For the students, teachers, and coaches in our public & private schools.

Birthdays:  Diane McMahon, Frank Esparza, Cody Mashburn, John Anderlick

1989: 6 Jesuits killed by Salvadoran military in a midnight raid at their university

Community Finances, November 15, 2020

Expenses: $900.00

Outreach   $400.00  (often for Souls Harbor, Legacy, etc.)

Thanks, Folks, for doing what you can.

Rosemary's Blessing:

O God, when I have food,
    help me to remember the hungry;
When I have work,
    help me to remember the jobless;
When I have a home,
    help me to remember those who have no home at all;
When I am without pain,
    help me to remember those who suffer,
And remembering,
    help me to destroy my complacency;
    bestir my compassion,
    and be concerned enough to help;
By word and deed,
    those who cry out for what we take for granted.
Amen.

 Samuel F. Pugh

Readings:

Revelation 7, 2-4, 9-14, These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress

Psalm 24, Lord this is the people that long to see your face. 

1 John 3, 1-3,  See what love the Father has bestowed on us.—–

Matthew 5,1-12, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom.

Thanks to the Team,  Ben & Shonda's  

Readers,   Denni & Tom & Buddy, the candle blesser

Gospel,  Deacon Mike 

Homily,  Deacon Mike 

Eucharistic Prayer A & B, Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,  Richard & Hue 

Final Blessing, Rosemary

For hosting us at Legacy, Becky

Download Readings Week 31 All Saints (2)

Homily by Mike Carrell,   All Saints            

The Mark gospel teaches us how potential saints come alive:  It begins with the unexpected: an accident; a death; a fire, a flood. It is then that a call comes to us; the kingdom of God is at hand; repent. Live the Good News! 

Buddy, this morning, revealed to us from the Matthew Gospel how the beatitudes call us each to be the light in the world, to be saints.

The feast of All Saints teaches us that holiness comes in all sizes and shapes. Saints are rich and poor, young and old, warriors and peacemakers, scholars and those who don’t even know how to read. Every era has its saints as does ours. We read about the struggles our nurses and doctors face day after day to keep patients alive during this pandemic.

Mary Ellen, Honfleur, France, 2011, one of our Saints.

We give thanks to our parents, grandparents, and god parents who gave us names of known saints when we were baptized; they were intended to challenge us to be ready to respond to a call to holiness.

Most of the names of these heroes that we read about in the News have already faded away; however some of our teenagers have chosen not to forget about these holy ones by taking their names when they were and are confirmed.

Praise be to God.

Please Remember these special people:

For Alan Stryker;  For John Doherty recuperating from an operation this past week for his back pain;   For David Dinsmore's bad shoulder from a biking accident;  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;   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 & Ben & Leo & all of Shonda's dear family;  

Mike, how come you did not invite us to this beautiful lake?  Daisy State Park, Arkansas.

For Jackie's mom, sister, & friend, Lynn;  For both Jean & Cliff Wright;  For Rick Turner searching for a kidney donor, Type O neg; For Meredith, cancer free;    For John O'Donnell;   For Dee, and for her daughter, Lisa; For John Schanot's continued health;  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,  For the students, teachers, and coaches in our public & private schools.

Birthdays:  John DeGenova, Ed Kless, Karen Anderlick, Ryan McCabe, 19

Community Finances, November 1, 2020

Expenses: $750.00

Outreach   $200.00    (often for Souls Harbor, Legacy, etc.)

Thanks, Folks, for doing what you can.

Home, Sweet Home for Mike & Gerry.

Rosemary's Blessing:

Gracious God inspire us with the hope in the gift of shalom, the gift of wholeness and the promise of your presence.

Give wisdom to seek nonviolence as an answer to the violence of our lives and world.

Give us courage to seek wholeness in a fractured and divided world, to find reconciliation rather than revenge, to abandon the instruments of violence and death and entrust our lives, our homes and our families to you.

May your presence fill us and others with the thirst for unity, wholeness, and the desire to see all people valued as created in your image.

May we and others receive your shalom, that we might be faithful instruments of your love.

Blessed be your name forever,

Amen.

Rabbi Andrew M. Paley, senior rabbi with Temple Shalom, Dallas.  He emailed this letter to his congregation and gave The Dallas Morning News permission to publish it.

Readings:

Exodus 22, 20-26, You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves  

Psalm 18, I love you, Lord, my strength

Thessalonians  1, 5-10, You know what sort of people we were among you.

Matthew 22, 34-40, Which commandment is the greatest.

Thanks to the Team

Music,  Ben & Shonda's  

Readers, Mary Jane & John  & Buddy, the candle blesser

Gospel,  Deacon Mike 

Homily,  John Cade 

Eucharistic Prayer A & B, Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers,  Richard & Hue 

Final Blessing, Rosemary

For hosting us at Legacy, Becky

Download Reading Week 30

Homily by John Cade

10/25/20:  Most often the first reading each Sunday is chosen for its connection to the Gospel reading and its teaching.  Today is no exception.  I have 3 points based primarily on the Gospel and first reading: First, on Jesus and the first and greatest Commandment of the Law; Second, on the new Great commandment of Jesus; and Third, the story of the Good Samaritan, and the story of the King who equates being a neighbor with loving God?

First, the Greatest Commandment.  The Jewish people gave credibility to the Book of Deuteronomy by framing it as the addresses of Moses, their most revered leader and prophet.  In his second address of Deuteronomy, right after he lists the Ten Commandments, Moses repeats the Greatest Commandment:  “Hear, O Israel!  God, our God! Is the one and only God!  Therefore, you shall love God with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.  This passage became known as the ‘Shema,’ or ‘Shema yisra’el,’ the first words of the passage in Hebrew. 

When Jesus was asked by the Pharisee Rabbi what was the most important commandment, Jesus gave the well-known ‘Shema’ straight from the Law in Deuteronomy—to love God with your whole being (heart, soul and mind), calling it the “most important” and the “first on any list.”    

My second point—Jesus upgraded and completed the greatest commandment.  I learned from Wikipedia that the number of commands in the Law of Moses is 613.  (And we thought 10 were plenty!)  Why so many?  Because they covered every aspect of Jewish life—how to worship God, what and how to cook, what and how to eat, what to wear, rules about all the many things considered ‘unclean’, everything  to do with family relations, with business dealings, and so on. 

Morning Tranquility.

In today’s Gospel Jesus picks one of those 613 commands in the Law of Moses (Leviticus, Ch. 19), and says, “If you add this other command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” then, you have the “whole Law and the Prophets.”  And, by the time the Gospel of Luke was written, 20 or so years later, these two commandments were considered as one—the greatest commandment. 

Luke, in Ch. 10, has a scholar of the Law, test Jesus by asking, “‘Teacher, what do I need to do to have eternal life?’  He answered: ‘What’s written in God’s Law?’   The scholar said, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” So, by then the most important commandment has two inseparable parts, the love of God and the love of neighbor.

My Third Point:  Guess what Luke follows-up with and writes immediately after that passage?—the Good Samaritan story about who is a neighbor.  The ‘Good Samaritan’ is the one who treats the robbed and beat up person with first aid, and the one who makes sure the person will be taken care of.  In the story, being a neighbor is not defined by who the other person is; it is defined by how one responds to the other.  When you respond to another with mercy and kindness, you are being the neighbor. 

John Cade sharing the Good News.

        Matthew’s gospel also gives us the sure way to know if we are keeping the great command.  In Matt. (Ch. 25), this teaching tells how the twofold great command is totally interrelated.  When you are a neighbor to another, you are loving God.  This is the story of the King who said, ‘Enter the kingdom. I was hungry and you fed me, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me, and so on.’ 

And then how the saints entering the kingdom asked, ‘When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or see you sick or in prison and visit you?, and so on.’  And the King said, ‘Whenever you did one of these things to another, especially to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’  

When I look at this community, I see good neighbors.  You remember others in prayer, privately and in our prayer of the faithful; you visit the sick—in the pandemic you email, telephone or text them—giving the encouragement and hope of someone to lean on; you reach out and care for others in countless other ways, e.g., many of you have given of yourselves to kids who are poor or disadvantaged or disabled at the ‘Love for Kids’ events (of course, with Bill Hammond’s leadership), some of you traveled with Bill and Bona Responds to help people in other areas of Texas and Oklahoma suffering from devastating storms, and right here helping John and Rosemary restore some order to their tornado-damaged home and destroyed trees. 

A few years ago, a number of you helped with the counting of homeless people in Plano to provide data on their actual existence; I have seen you and heard about you, keeping up with and giving care for others in our community who suffer any kind of adversity.  You generously contribute, as you can, to keep this community in existence, over fifteen years now, and to help with our ability to do outreach.  These don’t even take into account how you welcome community members and visitors, (even virtually) with total acceptance.  For me, you are for our time Good Samaritans, living out the great commandment to love God and showing your love of God by being a true neighbor.   Amen.

Please Remember these special people:

For Alan Stryker;  For John Doherty with an operation this week for his back pain;   For David Dismore's bad shoulder from a biking accident;  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;   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 & Ben & Leo & all of Shonda's dear family;  

For Jackie's mom, sister, & friend, Lynn;  For both Jean & Cliff Wright;  For Rick Turner searching for a kidney donor, Type O neg; For Meredith, cancer free;    For John O'Donnell;   For Dee, and for her daughter, Lisa; For John Schanot's continued health;  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,  For the students, teachers, and coaches in our public & private schools.

White Rock Lake at sunrise.

Birthdays:  Zoe (& Samantha), Patricia AA 22nd, Rob 68,

Anniversary:  Bill & Zaile, 11th

A rose is  a rose is a rose . . . .

Community Finances, October 18, 2020

Expenses: $775.00

Outreach   $    (often for Souls Harbor, Legacy, etc.)

Thanks, Folks, for doing what you can.

Rosemary's Blessing: