Seventh Sunday Ordinary Time - February 24, 2019

Transcription

1 Seventh Sunday Ordinary Time - February 24, Addison Street, Berkeley, CA Phone (510) Fax (510) info@stjosephtheworkerchurch.org STAFF Rev. Kenneth Nobrega Deacon José Manuel Pérez, Permanent Deacon Gloria Maldonado, Parish Secretary, Safe Environment Coordinator Elizabeth Oishi Comly, Parish Events Coordinator MONDAY-SATURDAY Mass: SUNDAY Mass: 8:00 am Confessions: 9:45 am Mass: 10:00 am Mass: (Spanish) 11:30 am WEDNESDAY EVENING Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament: 6:00 pm 7:00 pm Confessions: 6:00 pm 6:45 pm MINISTRIES Baptism/Bautismos Deacon José Manuel Pérez Platicas: Los domingos. Para otro dia llamar a la oficina. Lectors/Lectores Chris Notti (English) Erika Guerrero (Español) Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion Tita Brodt (English) Ruben Araujo (Español) PARISH OFFICE HOURS Monday thru Friday 5:00 pm (Closed 12 Noon 1:00 pm for lunch)

2 + + St. Joseph the Worker Beautiful Liturgy - Reconciliation - Healing THIS WEEK AT ST. JOSEPH THE WORKER SUNDAY MASSES - February 24, :00 am Fr. John Gribowich 10:00 am Fr. Kenneth Nobrega 11:30 am (Spanish) - Fr. Hugo Franca ON WEDNESDAY EVENINGS Holy Hour, Confessions and Rosary Prayer Group Every Wednesday evening we have Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 6:00 7:00 pm with Confessions available from 6:00 6:45 pm. Sunday 8:00 am 10:00 am 11:30 am MASS INTENTIONS February 24th Cliff Price Rosaria Zichichi + Carlos Perez + The Rosary & Devotion Prayer Group meets at 7:00 pm, following the Holy Hour. All are welcome. Sant Egidio Community The Community of Sant Egidio meets every Thursday at 7:00 pm for prayer in our church chapel. All are invited to join for prayer and for some Christian fellowship. March 6, 2019 Ash Wednesday Mass Schedule Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday February 25th Harry Granadillo + February 26th Steven Strid February 27th Rachel s Vineyard Retreats Ministry February 28th Rachel s Vineyard Retreats Ministry March 1st Juana Habla + Saturday March 2nd Rachel s Vineyard Retreats Ministry Would you like to have a Mass offered in honor or memory of someone? 12:15pm 6:00pm 7:30pm (Spanish) It is easy, stop by our parish office or Gloria Maldonado, our parish secretary at: gloria@stjosephtheworkerchurch.org If you have a particular date in mind, let us know and we will try and accommodate you. The suggested donation is $10.00.

3 Dear Visitors and Guests: If you have been blessed by your visit to St. Joseph, please consider blessing our parish with a gift. Through generous donations by faithful people like yourself, we intend on restoring this historic church back to its former glory, little by little. You can make a safe, fast and easy one (1) time donation or a recurring donation with the ease of your smart phone through PUSHPAY. Follow these steps below: Step 1) Enter the number: Step 2) Enter the letters SJW in the message section. A Sacred time for Holy Preparation From personal experience, I find it crucial to arrive at least 10 minutes before the start of Mass in order to decompress from the busyness of life and to quiet down the mind from worldly cares in order to properly focus on God and the Sacred Mysteries we are about to enter. Please do not arrive late to Mass. Thank you. - Fr. Kenneth Nobrega Illuminate our church with devotion and prayers. Your votive candle is a silent but visible sign of prayer and devotion. "Love our Enemies?" In today s Gospel, taken from the sixth chapter of Luke, Jesus offers a very challenging, seemingly impossible approach to daily life. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak do not withhold even your tunic. It makes one want to say, Seriously, Lord? And He doesn t stop there. Jesus adds, Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. It seems so unfair! That is, unless we look at this way of life from a stewardship point of view. Then, not only does it seem doable (though challenging), it actually makes perfect sense. A disciple understands clearly that all he has and all that he is his very life is a gift from God given to him from an unfathomable abundance of love. This changes everything! This means my cloak, my tunic, my money and time all of it ultimately belongs to God. He has entrusted these things to each of us in love to use for His purposes and His glory. Does this mean we are to be passive doormats to anyone who wants to take advantage of us? Certainly not. Jesus explains this in the next verse of this passage when He says, Do to others as you would have them do to you. There is nothing wrong with loving oneself since God loves us and has made us in His own image and likeness. Jesus is simply asking that we also approach others, and the sharing of our gifts, with this same attitude. He is giving us a definition here of real love, a disciple s love!

4 New Weekday Mass Schedule Starting on Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019 How Much Should I give? Many people recommend that Catholics consider working toward biblical tithing: 10% of your gross income. Fr. Kenneth Nobrega supports and recommends the venerable practice of tithing 5% to the parish church and 5% to worthy charities. Starting on Ash Wednesday, our weekday Mass schedule will be 12:15pm Monday thru Friday in the Church replacing our current Chapel weekday Mass schedule. We believe because of current local demographics and a growing interest in our parish that our new schedule change will allow for a greater number of persons the ability to attend a simple, reverent "lunch time" Mass at St. Joseph. As part of our ongoing parish renewal, we plan with the support and commitment of our parishioners and the local Catholic community to begin offering Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament following the 12:15pm Mass in the near future. (details soon to follow). Please Contribute as much as possible to the material needs of St. Joseph the Worker so that we can continue to keep our doors open and be a refuge for those seeking spiritual help and healing. Your help in needed and important - Together we can restore our beautiful church to its original glory. Donate to St. Joseph the Worker TEXT: Need A New Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation or Marriage Certificate? Sacramental certificates from St. Joseph the Worker can be obtained from our parish office usually within one or two business days. We kindly ask for a $25 donation for each requested certificate which will go towards the support of St. Joseph the Worker Church. Please contact Gloria Maldonado our parish secretary at (510) or gloria@stjosephtheworkerchurch.org Safe, Fast, Easy. Thank you! Parish Office Hours Gloria Maldonado, our office secretary is ready to welcome and assist our parishioners and visitors. St. Joseph the Worker Parish Office Hours are from Monday thru Friday 9:00am to 6:00pm (closed noon to 1:00pm for lunch).

5 Has an abortion left you with a broken heart? Experience the healing... V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace, The Lord is with Thee; Blessed art thou among women, And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, Now and at the hour of our death. Amen V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. R. Be it done unto me according to thy word. Hail Mary, etc. V. And the Word was made Flesh. R. And dwelt among us. Hail Mary, etc. V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God. R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. LET US PRAY Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen May 17-19, 2019 Rachel s Vineyard is a safe place to renew, rebuild and redeem hearts broken by abortion. The weekend offers a supportive, and non-judgmental environment to transform the pain of the past into love and hope. We encourage women, men and couples to attend. SPACE IS LIMITED. SIGN UP NOW. For Retreat Details Contact: Gloria Maldonado: afterthechoice@oakdioadmin.org or Kim Fuentes: kfuentes@stocktondiocese.org or The Diocese of Oakland in collaboration with the Diocese of Stockton Project Rachel. For information and testimonies about Rachel s Vineyard retreats, visit: OUR CHOIR NEEDS MORE SINGERS! Do you enjoy and sing well? Did you sing in a church, school or university choir? Call Sam Dorlaque at (510) or him at spdorlaque@sbcglobal.net for more information.

6 What I ve learned from soon-to-be-saint John Henry Newman Tom Hoopes Plenty of deep spiritual lessons, but also an amusing one about how even saints don't get along with everybody Blessed John Henry Newman is going to be canonized a saint. That announcement, made February 12, is great news. His work has been foundational to me and my family. My family has a history of extreme reactions to Cardinal Newman. My grandfather a Spaniard who was a voracious reader in several languages went blind in his old age and donated his treasure trove of books to the the University of Arizona library all except one British author. If I ever regain my sight, he told me, Newman is all I will want to read. Later, when I moved to San Francisco as a young graduate with only $57 in my pocket, the first thing I did was walk to the offices of Ignatius Press to buy Newman s Plain and Parochial Sermons, written in the 1830s when he was still an Anglican priest. The book cost $54. The next thing I did was find a friend s apartment to crash in and maybe get dinner. It was a bad decision financially, but one that has done wonders in my spiritual life. After that, I have spent a lifetime getting to know Newman better. Here are my favorite lessons from the British convert. Newman helped me understand what heaven is like. I learned from Newman to stop thinking of heaven as a reward God gives those who work hard. Instead, I learned heaven is a place where people who know and love God get to know and love him more deeply. Supposing a man of unholy life were suffered to enter heaven. He would not be happy there; so that it would be no mercy to permit him to enter, wrote Newman. When he arrived there, he would find no discourse but that which he had shunned on earth, no pursuits but those he had disliked or despised, nothing which bound him to aught else in the universe, and made him feel at home, nothing which he could enter into and rest upon. Heaven is the perfect end of a life spent loving God, not the end reward for a life spent being perfect. Newman prophetically warned about social media. Newman once warned that the sin of notoriety had been turbo-charged by the new media of his day: large circulation daily newspapers. Think of Facebook and Instagram when you read his warning about newspaper fame : Never could notoriety exist as it does now, in any former age of the world; now that the news of the hour from all parts of the world, private news as well as public, is brought day by day to every individual, he wrote. It used to be that only the very rich could cultivate a public persona by spending money on houses, gardens, and parks. But now, anyone can achieve notoriety by being covered in the newspaper. Notoriety, or, as it may be called, newspaper fame, is a sort of idol, worshiped for its own sake, and without any reference to the shape in which it comes. Newman taught me that our brains doesn t convert us our hearts do. Newman s Grammar of Assent shares this brilliant insight into how you can t argue someone into the faith. You have to love them in.

7 The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination.. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion. Newman did that for me. He also taught me that it s hard to be loving with everyone. I spent my junior year of college at Oxford University, where Newman s ministry began, and attended several talks about him and his works. One was by an Oxford man active in Newman s cause. He shared that the Vatican Congregation for Saints Causes received testimony from an acquaintance of Newman who said that whenever he visited Newman, he found him to be surly and abrupt not saintly at all. After exhaustive interviews with people who knew Newman, the Vatican filed this testimony with a note that said something like: Since no other visitor to Newman has described a similar experience, we are forced to conclude that Newman s normally sunny mood was only darkened by visits from this particular individual. Why Light a Votive Candle? A Votive Light is a "silent sentinel" and can burn for your special intentions or for someone who is in need of prayers. This is a thoughtful expression of your sentiments and best wishes for any occasion. Your Votive Light can be an act of faith and charity - the light is a symbol of the sacrifice you have made in behalf of someone else - and it is a silent reminder of your prayers for them. Unlike a regular purchase, a votive candle donation is an "offering" made to God through the intercession of the Saints which also helps support our St. Joseph the Worker Church's mission of beautiful liturgies, reconciliation and healing. Your prayerful votive offerings are "lighting up" our church with beauty and prayer. Thank you, and may God bless you. His Most Sacred Heart transforms In other words, even saints had certain people in their lives that they had a hard time dealing with. Then, Newman helped me focus on each day s holiness. Once, when Newman was stuck in Italy, sick and unable to find a boat back to England, he found himself bursting into sobs. He decided, while he was stuck, he would keep busy visiting churches in the area. There he found peace, which he expressed in a poem that was later made into a hymn: Lead, kindly Light, amid th encircling gloom The night is dark, and I am far from home Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see / The distant scene; one step enough for me. Heaven is a long way off and life is hard. So be it. One step is enough right now. Our sins into its opposite - Love.

8 Saying Yes to Spiritual Discipline - Maurice Blumberg Why then, since we are watched from above by such a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of all that weighs us down, of the sinful habit that clings so closely, and run, with all endurance, the race for which we are entered. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the origin and the crown of all faith, who, to win his prize of blessedness, endured the cross and made light of its shame, Jesus, who now sits on the right of God s throne. (Hebrews 12:1-2) When you watch your favorite athlete what do you notice? Are you impressed by the grace and skill he brings to the game? Are you awed by his flawless technique? No doubt, you re also taken with how much he seems to enjoy what he is doing. Because it looks so easy and fun, we should not assume that he is so good just because he was born with all those talents and skills. We know of many talented athletes who were failures through lack of discipline. For most athletes, to get to the top of their profession requires rigorous discipline. Discipline is also an important element in the call of Christ to us to be Catholic men of God. Jesus wants us to receive the greatest prize of all-eternal life. And so he warns us not to fall into the trap that the people of Noah s time did. They did all the things we do today: eating, drinking, buying, selling, and getting married. There s nothing wrong with any of these activities, of course. But the problem was that in all their busyness, there was little or no room for God. We are all on the way to heaven, and we should let nothing get in our way! The problem is that the word discipline can scare us off, especially spiritual discipline. But spiritual discipline does not have to be depressing! Such disciplines as praying and reading Scriptures every day, doing a daily examination of conscience, attending Mass and the Sacraments, putting to death our flesh, avoiding temptations, repenting of our sins, and being merciful and just to others are not intended to be heavy burdens. Scripture tells us to persevere in running the race. But then it adds that Jesus died for the sake of the joy that lay before him (Hebrews 12:1-2). He didn t drag his cross-he embraced it! As those who are in training for the next life, we will face our own share of challenges, and yes even suffering. But they will all seem light if we remember that we will overcome them by God s grace and if we remember to keep in mind the glory to be revealed for us (Romans 8:18). The key to discipline is to maintain our vision of what s ahead. It may help to use Paul s imagery of the sprinter. Picture yourself at the starting line looking far down the track, and at the finish line is-heaven! Is there anything that would stop you from running as hard and fast as you can to get there? Whatever it is, just let go of it, and feel yourself fly! Know that no matter how hard things get, you will be rewarded. And this is not some temporary reward, but as St. Paul tells us, our reward is an an imperishable one (1 Corinthians 9:25). So Brothers, let s Run so as to win (1 Corinthians 9:24).One day, Jesus himself will tell you: Well done, my good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:21) Addison Street, Berkeley, CA Phone: (510) Fax: (510) info@stjosephtheworkerchurch.org