Historic St. James at Sag Bridge Church

Transcription

1 Historic St. James at Sag Bridge Church Founded 1833 A Parish of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago South Archer Avenue, Lemont, IL Phone (630) FAX (630) Website: historicstjames.org stjames1833@att.net Founded in 1833, St. James at Sag Bridge is the sole country parish of the Archdiocese of Chicago serving a growing community of Catholics who come together to worship God through the celebration of the Eucharist and traditional devotional activities within truly unique and beautiful surroundings. Our faith filled community strives to bear witness to Jesus Christ by loving and serving one another to bring about the Kingdom of God. July 5, 2009 FOURTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY Rev. Edward D. Gleeson, Pastor Mr. John M. Wilkinson, Permanent Deacon Parish Boundaries The Village of Willow Springs Unincorporated Lemont Township Along Archer Avenue and Bell Road, Village of Burr Ridge (Cook County) Mass Schedule Weekends: Saturdays, 5:30 PM. Sundays, 8:30, 10:00, 11:30 AM Holy Days: 8:15 AM and 7:00 PM Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays: 8:15 AM Wednesdays: 7:00 PM Confession Schedule Saturdays: 4:30 to 5:15 PM By appointment. Baptisms First Sundays of every month by appointment. Parents must be registered parishioners. Weddings Minimum eight months in advance. At least one partner must be a registered parishioner. Religious Education Classes 1st through 8th Grade Tuesday evenings, September through May Parents must be registered parishioners. Registration In Rectory Office Hours Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays: 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM Thursdays: 9:00 AM to 12:00 Noon. Parish Ministerial Staff Father Edward Gleeson, Pastor Deacon John Wilkinson, Minister of Care Brian Tishuk, RE Director Pamela Stafford, Music Coordinator Pamela Mikrut, Organist JoAnn Starha, Altar and Rosary President Rodney Poynter, Holy Name President Barbara Tishuk, Our Lady of the Forest President Rectory Support Staff Donna Slosowski, Administrative Assistant/Bookkeeper Bernice Raj, Housekeeper/Cook

2 Page Two July 5, 2009 JESUS WAS NOT FROM THE DESK OF THE PASTOR A SONG AND DANCE CELEBRITY OT A S After Jesus preached in the synagogue on the Sabbath the people of Nazareth murmured: Where did this man get all this? Is He not the carpenter, the Son of Mary? Before the gambling scandal Pete Rose made it big in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. But Jesus did not make it big in His hometown of Nazareth. The good reputation of Jesus has, however, lasted a lot longer than that of the guy with over 4000 major league base hits. In most instances people will get behind a home grown boy or girl who does well in entertainment, sports, and politics. So why did the people of the Christ s hometown reject Him? The answer lies in that question above. Where did this man get all this? Jesus Himself had it figured out and explained it to His disciples. A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house. It was precisely preaching like a prophet that aroused the animosity of the townsfolk. If Jesus had been a song and dance celebrity in the temple, He would have been no threat to them. They would have been proud of His notoriety. But a prophet? Who needs a prophet? Prophets are troublemakers. Prophets can upset the apple cart. Prophets present unwanted challenges or even rebukes. And worst of all prophets claim to speak the truth. The neighbors of Jesus didn t want to hear the truth. They were afraid of it. And fear leads to rejection. The Nazareans were like their ancestors who were described by God to Ezekiel in this first reading. Hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to whom I am sending you. Would we also have turned against Jesus? The truth is that Jesus the Christ is still with us. He speaks to us when the Sacred Scriptures are read at Mass. He instructs us through the tradition of the Catholic Church. Are we afraid to listen? Are we afraid of the truth? Are we afraid that we may have to change our way of thinking and acting? Are we afraid of our own faith because some of our teachings are controversial within this society? Are we afraid to accept Catholic truths because of the disapproval of our neighbors? The Church warns us that abortion is an unspeakable crime, the taking of the most innocent of all lives. And yet many in our country, own townsfolk, say that the right to choose death is more important than the right to choose life. Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI have all taught us to be on guard against the culture of death. But many of the nations on earth have already legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia. Given the kind of individuals who hold office in this country, will we be next? Has our hometown become even more indifferent to us than the hometown of Jesus was to Him? The people of Nazareth protested about a local carpenter becoming a prophet. Inactive Catholics protest that the Church should stay out of politics and stick to the business of saving souls. But we need to speak the truth in order to save our souls. Many people make the mistake of thinking that we live in two worlds, one religious and one secular. They conclude that faith should not intrude upon their private lives. The truth is that we live in one world, God s world. Where did this man get all of this? Is the prophecy of the Christ too much for us? Are the teachings of His Church too hard for us? It is time for all of us, the townsfolk of Jesus, to answer these questions. A Belated Happy Independence Day During the holiday weekend, we give thanks to God for those freedoms that we enjoy, most especially the freedom of religion. But when the state legislature presents a bill that would force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, how safe can that freedom be? God Bless Our Parish, FATHER ED GLEESON, PASTOR

3 Fourteenth Ordinary Sunday Page Three FLOWERS The two large flower bouquets adorning the main altar were donated by TOM & GRACE KULAWIAK. Due to the 4th of July holiday the bulletin printer requires all bulletin copy be submitted ahead of the normal schedule. Therefore Our Weekly Offertory information will be delayed and reported in next week s bulletin. BLESS YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED AND VALUED SUPPORT. DID YOU LOSE ANY KEYS? A set of two keys on a rosary ring were found in church. Please call or come to the rectory during business hours to claim your lost keys. BELL RESTORATION PROJECT DONATIONS The bell restoration project will cost about $16,000. Donors have already contributed over $13,000. Our many thanks. The stained glass window restoration project will cost about $8,000, so we need about $24,000 or so to complete both projects. As a result we continue to request donations of $500 or more until we have reached the combined goal of $24,000. Thank You. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION REGISTRATION The deadline to register students for our Tuesday evening Religious Education classes is Monday, August 17. New families must register at the rectory for the parish before registering for RE. PETER S PENCE COLLECTION THANK YOU Thank you for your generosity in last week s Peter s Pence Collection. Because of you, Pope Benedict XVI will be able to help millions of people around the world quickly and effectively. In 2007, the United States was responsible for onethird of worldwide proceeds for this Collection. Your important contributions are truly helping the Holy Father to make a difference for those most in need. TIME TO ORDER... PERSONALIZED GROTTO STONES Memorial Pathway The Our Lady of the Forest Memorial Pathway leading through the grotto commemorates the intensions of many parishioners, families and friends of St. James parish. Space is still available. Orders for personalized grotto stones must be submitted by July 13th in order to have them done and installed sometime in September. Two sizes of blocks can be purchased. The 8 square blocks are available for $ each, and the 12 square blocks are available for $ each. Contact the rectory for order forms and to make payment. SUMMER IS MISSION CO-OP TIME On the weekend of July 18 and 19 Brother Robert Koppes of the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers of North American will visit here at St. James to present a mission appeal. The proceeds of the appeal will benefit the missionary activity of the Brothers in Latin America in the countries of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, as well as the Leeward Islands in the island nation of Dominica. The mission of the Brothers is to bring the message of Jesus Christ primarily to the young through education in the developing world. Your response to the missionary appeal of the Christian Brothers will be another way for you to bring the good news of Jesus to those in poor lands.

4 Page Four July 5, 2009 By R. Kenton Craven Dr. R. Kenton Craven describes himself as a scholar-inexile in Sparta, Tennessee When I awoke as a boy, it was always to bells; first to the slow, dipodic clanging of the switch engine bells on the Norfolk and Western Line, the main yard of which ran past our house and carried millions of tons of freight and coal, troop and passenger trains, and shrouded armaments for war. No matter the time of day or night, the bells were there, a part of consciousness as sure as the fog and drizzle of the Appalachian valleys. Then, from the Spanish gothic bell tower of Sacred Heart, the lesser bell rang out the Angelus, serving notice to the world that the Word had become flesh and dwelt among us, calling us to kneel and pray. At Mass the triple hand bells I rang insisted on the greatest happening in the universe, and they echoed in the stone of the sanctuary, a place where bells said, "Awake! Awake to these Mysteries!" At Easter, when the Gloria was sung for the first time since Ash Wednesday, we rose exulting as two bell-ringers were lifted off their feet, pulling hard on the bell ropes, and the great bells pealed out the news that He is risen. On school mornings, Sister Innocentia stood in the school door and rang the large hand bell, which must have reminded her of school and her own youth in Germany. And, a special memory: One morning my mother and I were on the way to church when every train and church bell (and steam whistle) sounded together. I looked to her in fear and amazement; she explained through her tears, "The war is over!" Bells permeated my existence then: life meant bells; church meant bells; bells called me to the mystery of things. A world without bells was unimaginable, but in the grim modern process of unimagining, the unimaginable happened when I wasn t looking. The railroad locomotives and their bells disappeared, to be replaced by the rude blatting of diesel horns; and churches gave up their real bells for electronic chimes. Bell towers were abandoned as unsafe or primitive, and new suburban churches simply ignored 1,500 years of Church history, from the times when the monks of Ireland marked the liturgical hours first with hand bells and then with larger ones, which they had to bury when the Danes came. From something like cow bells which have also mostly vanished, soon to be replaced by microchips the monks hand bells developed into the great cast bells that began to define the sacred time of Europe and beyond. Then, for more than a thousand years, Europe was not only the Faith, it was the daily sense of the hours marked by prayer, and even the humblest of churches strove to have the best and most melodious of bells. Bells meant prayer; bells meant the holy; bells meant the Church universal; and more, to borrow a phrase from Belloc, they meant "the physical network upon which the soul depends." Testimony to that need is ancient. Human beings have been striking wood and metal as far back as known, doubtless for various purposes, but most often in connection with religion. Some of the bells from the Orient seem clunky and have little tone. Apparently, the first hand bells used by Irish monks were little more than cow bells. But monasticism, as it came out of the desert and into Europe, required larger bells, and a proud art of great sophistication grew. At present in the West, only a few major church bell-makers exist, mostly in Poland and Russia, though Verdin s and McShane continue the tradition in the U.S. When one reads the history and literature of the Christian West from the sixth century onward, one is struck by the omnipresence of bells. As bell-making grew with Christian art and architecture, bells grew larger and the making of many great tones required both wizardry and tonnage, until the point that a bell commissioned by the Tsars weighed 220 tons, and required a warning before it was rung to keep the (continued next page)

5 Fourteenth Ordinary Sunday Page Five populace from thinking the apocalypse was upon them. (By comparison, the largest church bell in the West, in Cologne, weighs 27 tons; the great bell of St. Peter s, nine tons). Simultaneously, through the cunning of metallurgists, bells were developed to exact tones, and groups of bells became veritable orchestras. Bell-ringers became prized as artists, and were even invested with the minor order of ostiarius. Today, here and there, the great bells ring out the monastic hours with soul-moving force, as at Abbaye Fontgombault, where the Benedictines keep the ancient rule and liturgy, prompting one visitor, then Cardinal Ratzinger, to say, "Now that is the Catholic Church!" Despite some silly controversies in the 16th century over the "baptism of the bells," instigated by those who hate "the physical network on which the soul depends," Catholics have felt the mystery of the bells to be tied up with the mysteries of the Faith, which gave rise to the practice of the blessing and even naming of bells, for one blesses and names what is beloved of the soul. In 1991, I awoke in Kuwait to the sounds of a dozen mosques roaring that Allah is Awesome! and all must come to prayer. The shock ran up and down my spine. In several countries, I lived six years among the Muslims and daily felt the powerful presence of a serious religion that knows that the consciousness of man requires constant reminders of prayer. Even in the Arab countries that permit a few churches enclosed by walls, no bells are permitted. Islam instinctively understands the religious truth that time must be defined as sacred time, for their muezzins call their faithful to prayer five times a day, wailing away even during a sermon by Pope John Paul II. No phony ecumenism for them; they know that minarets and bells speak different and absolutely opposed languages. The Protestant Reformers sensed it too, and so Zwingli and others were much exercised to ban them altogether from the bleak Protestant landscape. So, too, atheists and humanists. During the French Revolution, the ideologues who murdered thousands of priests and nuns and sacked the churches and convents did not neglect to melt nationalized church bells into metal for cannon. In the U.S., fellow ideologue Thomas Paine wanted to eliminate those Romish bells because they meant Europe and Europe, of course, meant the Faith. Later, the rage of revolution would turn against the ten thousand bells of Russia but about that, more anon. After Vatican II, even the hand bells of the Mass disappeared from our sanctuaries, as the boundaries of the sanctuaries themselves dissolved into the misty Land of Nuance. I have heard of Catholic priests, the sort who like to be called Mister or Presider, telling their flocks to eschew the Sign of the Cross as potentially offensive to "those of other belief systems," and I suspect that they, too, would prefer the electronic chimes set to the Harry Potter theme or Buddhist gongs. Shall we call it the New Puritanism? As the New Oxford Review s Michael S. Rose demonstrates with great clarity in Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces and How We Can Change Them Back Again (re-released in paperback this year), American neo-protestant theology translates churches into suburban meeting halls without aspiring bell towers or bells. No bells, no calling of souls to the highest. Yet Christian bells do call to us. Dolefully, joyfully, peremptorily, insistently, grandly, slowly, powerfully, undeniably. A bell requires silence; it speaks out of the silence that surrounds it. A bell must be rung with human hands, and ring into something, and it depends on a landscape and a faithful body of hearers for its fulfillment. In a Catholic world, grace flows through God s created things, not the least of which is sound. Catholicism will not unashamedly live its full cultural life again until a Catholic people reclaims its ancient liberty in the building of church towers, and the making and hearing of bells that remember the monastic hours and the Angelus. In England and many European countries, the landscape rings not with bells, but with the raucous Islamic call to prayer. In America we have neither; we have an insidious modernist denial of the thunderous pealing our bodies and souls need.

6 Page Six July 5, 2009 SEVEN PROMISES FOR CATHOLIC MEN by Richard Rohr, O.F.M., and Joseph Martos 1. I promise to seek Jesus as my teacher, my model and the goal of my life. Without a Lord I am burdened with trying to be my own (see Colossians 1:24). 2. I promise to seek union with the eternal Christ, who is both hidden and revealed in all people, and in all created things, especially in those who are wounded, rejected or outside my limited worldview (see Hebrews 13:2). 3. I promise to pursue vital relationships with a few other men as the basic building block of the mystery of Church (see Matthew 18:20). 4. I promise to pursue a regimen of spiritual disciplines in my life, a gospel ethic in my private and my professional life, and unpaid service toward the needs of my community (see Matthew 6). 5. I promise to support the mission of my parish, to unite my family in public prayer with my parish, and to model a positive attitude of love and justice in all parish efforts (see 1 Corinthians 1:10-13). 6. I promise to take personal responsibility for my actions, to be accountable for my commitments, especially those of husband, father, son, brother fully active in the house Church (see Ephesians 5:21-33). 7. I promise to be a truly Catholic man by retaining unity with the Bishop of Rome and the universal Church, by weekly participation in the Eucharist and concrete concern for those suffering throughout the world (see John 13:1-20). WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF CATHOLIC CEMETERIES? Catholic Cemeteries serve three purposes: Its first purpose is to serve the members of the Catholic Church and their families. Secondly, it is to carry out the religious function of the burial of the dead. Finally, it is to care for the resting places of the faithful departed. Catholic Cemeteries consist of parcels of land that have been set aside for use by Catholics. The ground has been consecrated (blessed) by the Bishop of the Diocese. The specific purpose of this land is to provide Christians with a dignified and holy resting place. The sacred nature of cemeteries is directly related to the Church's belief in the resurrection of the body. Catholic Cemeteries serve as reminders that we must all one day pass from this earthly life to a better one, because the Church teaches that death is not an end, but a beginning to eternal life. While Catholic Cemeteries are intended for the burial of Catholics, it permits the burial of non- Catholic spouses and other family members. This is especially appropriate where the non-catholic party worshipped regularly at the Catholic Church or identified with the Catholic Church more than any other. To be buried in a Catholic Cemetery is a clear devout affirmation of one's faith and a witness to the Resurrection. ST. GEORGE SCHOOL ANNIVERSARY St. George Parish in Tinley Park will be celebrating their 75th Anniversary as a parish. And just as important they are celebrating the 60th Anniversary of St. George School. CALLING ALL ST. GEORGE SCHOOL ALUMNI CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN TINLEY PARK ALL SCHOOL REUNION MASS AND CELEBRATION AUGUST 8TH, 2009 AT 4:00PM MASS Call or visit the St. George School website at: There will be a Mass for all couples married at St. George on July 12, 2009 and the 75h Anniversary closing Mass will be September 13th. They are researching their history of both the parish and school. In addition, they are looking for memorable moments that you would like to share with them. If you have any details regarding St. George please forward them to St. George at 6707 West 175h St., Tinley Park, IL in care of the Memorabilia Committee. The Memory Book will be available for $ It will contain historical data from 1934 through September 13 and many pictures to support the written word. The St. George Moments will be included free of charge in the form of a DVD. All details are available at the rectory office.

7 Fourteenth Ordinary Sunday Page Seven VOTIVE CANDLES Votive offering for the week of July 5th: St. James Altar & Rosary Sodality In memory of William Blinstrub Special intention for Greg Drozd Monday 8:15AM Tuesday 8:15AM Wednesday 7:00PM Thursday 8:15AM Friday 10:00AM July 6 St. Maria Goretti Special intention for Bishop Gustavo 25th anniversary to the priesthood July 7 Weekday Living & Deceased Parishioners July 8 Weekday Purgatorial Society July 9 Weekday Rudy Purkart July 10 Weekday Special intention for Bishop Gustavo 25th anniversary to the priesthood Saturday July 11 VIVIL: FIFTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY 5:30PM Marie C. Murphy WORD OF LIFE: In our own trials, and standing alongside others in their struggles, we glimpse the essence of our humanity, we become, as it were more human. Pope Benedict XVI, Address in Amman, Jordan, May 8, 2009 Sunday July 12 FIFTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY 8:30AM Betty Eby 10:00AM Irene Slosowski 11:30AM Paul & Patricia Pearson July 11 & 12 5:30PM 8:30AM 10:00 AM 11:30 AM Celebrant Father Gleeson Father Gleeson Father Lombardo Father Lombardo Altar Servers D. Lawler P. Lawler T. & B. Lawler J. H. Dillenburg A. Dillenburg E. Witter W. Tishuk T. Wall J. Beecher K. Smuda K. Janociak D. LaSota Lector J. Jagger M. Dillenburg C. Zarzycki D. LaSota LEM Deacon John Father Gleeson Father Gleeson Father Gleeson Ushers R. Lawler C. Hughes E. Liczwek T. Lang F. Pearman M. Hally H. Grutza M. Wall J. Wall D. Butalla M. Lavery B. Czaja J. Neadly R. Poynter M. Fleckenstein