CHURCH NAME AND ADDRESS Immaculate Conception 353 Grove Street Worcester, MA 01605-3907 PHONE NUMBER 508-754-8419 CONTACT PERSON Sharon Rainville CHURCH NUMBER 005046 SOFTWARE Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 Adobe Acrobat X Windows 7 PRINTER Canon MX860 NUMBER OF PAGES 6 SUNDAY DATE OF PUBLICATION January 18, 2015 TRANSMISSION TIME Tuesday, 10:00 AM SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS
Immaculate Conception Parish SUNDAY MASSES SATURDAY VIGIL: 4:00 PM SUNDAY: 7:30 AM, 10:00 AM SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION Saturday 3:00-4:00 PM (or by appointment) RECTORY ADDRESS 353 Grove Street, Worcester, MA 01605 Phone: 508-754-8419 Fax: 508-754-8508 Religious Education Phone: 508-868-8119 REV. WALTER RILEY, PASTOR KEVIN DEIGNAN, PERMANENT DEACON FRANK MYSKA, PERMANENT DEACON MARY SYCKS, ADMINISTRATOR OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND YOUTH MINISTER C. HENRY MASON, MUSIC DIRECTOR SHARON RAINVILLE, PARISH SECRETARY MATTHEW FOSTER, PASTORAL COUNCIL CHAIRMAN LYNDA MONAHAN, SAFE ENVIRONMENT COORDINATOR Please visit our website at www.icworc.com and Facebook WEEKDAY MASSES MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY 9:00 AM THURSDAY 8:00 AM SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM Parents and godparents of infants to be baptized are expected to participate in a preparation session. Call the Rectory to register for this process and set a date for the actual Baptism. For Baptism of adults please contact the Rectory. SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE Please contact the rectory one year prior to your desired wedding date SACRAMENT OF ANOINTING OF THE SICK Father Walter can be called whenever someone can benefit from this sacrament of healing. NEW PARISHIONERS Anyone is welcome to join the Parish Community. Please contact the Rectory and introduce yourself.
SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME January 18, 2015 MASS INTENTIONS Sat. Jan. 17 4:00 PM Robert Trocchi by the Sullivan family Sun. Jan. 18 7:30 AM M/M Zajasnkowskos, 90th Anniversary by family 10:00 AM Virginia Murphy, 1st Anniversary by family Mon. Jan. 19 9:00 AM Tues. Jan. 20 9:00 AM (St. Fabian; St. Sebastian) Wed. Jan. 21 9:00 AM William O Neil by family (St. Agnes) Thurs. Jan. 22 8:00 AM Sat. Jan. 24 4:30 PM Nicholas Agurkis by family Sun. Jan. 25 7:30 AM Robert O Neil by family 10:00 AM Buddy Goranson, 8th anniversary by family THIS WEEK the text for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time may be found at #952 in the Journeysongs hymnal. FRIDAY FASTING AND INTENTION Our faith lost one of its beautiful traditions not long after the Second Vatican Council when the Church eased the practice of not eating meat on Fridays which commemorated the day of our Lord s death. We pray that this minor tradition that can make a major spiritual impact in our lives will one day return for the benefit of all Catholics who devoutly embrace their faith. Our Parish extends an offer each week to our parishioners who have an interest in participating in our Friday fasting. The purpose, first and foremost, is to maintain an awareness in our lives that Friday is the day our Lord died on the Cross and was laid in the tomb for our salvation. Our fasting each week, however, will also be for a specific intention that appears weekly in this column. Thus, our fasting is twofold; sacrificing one meal, and abstaining from eating meat. The intention for this coming Friday is for vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life in our Diocese of Worcester in this Year of Consecrated Life. WELCOME TO FR. ENOCH We welcome to our Parish Fr. Enoch Kusi Kyeremateng from the Archdiocese of Kumasi in the African country of Ghana. Fr. Enoch is here in America to study for a Master s Degree from Assumption College for the next two years, study that will eventually serve and benefit his home Diocse in Ghana. He will be living at Immaculate Conception during his duration in Worcester. Please welcome Fr. Enoch to our faith community when you have an opportunity to do so. May God bless his studies over the next 2 years as he continues to serve the Church of Ghana from a distance, and also bring his gifts to Immaculate Conception and the African community in Worcester. SCARISTAN FOR 4:00 MASS We offer many thanks to Doris Herrmann who has been setting up at the 4:00 Mass for many years now. Doris would like to retire from this position, thus we are offering the position of sacristan to someone in the parish who attends the 4:00 Mass and would like to perform a ministry. If you are interested or would like to find out more about what a sacristan does, please speak with Fr. Riley. ON COMMITMENT TO ECUMENISM Dialogue does not extend exclusively to matters of doctrine but engages the whole person; it is also a dialogue of love. The Council has stated: Catholics must joyfully acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brothers and sisters. It is right and salutary to recognize the riches of Christ and virtuous works in the lives of others who are bearing witness to Christ, sometimes even to the shedding of their blood. For God is always wonderful in his works and worthy of admiration. St. John Paul II, from Ut Unum Sint, On commitment to Ecumenism (1995) RELIGIOUS LIBERTY Under duress, St. Thomas More remained faithful to the truth of divine and ecclesial realities rather than yield to the force of an earthly king. Although condemned to death, Thomas More, like Christ, was truly free and faithful. After his sufferings in the tower of London, Thomas joked with the man assigned to be his executioner, who would drop the sharp-edged blade on his neck. In a later age, the poet Paul Claudel, would honor such inner freedom in his admonition: To mount the Cross laughing. Bishop Paul S. Loverde, Diocese of Arlington, VA. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT 1/11/15 Sunday Ordinary Income $ 3566.00 Winter Fuel $ 1410.00 Initial Offering $ 121.00 Catholic University $ 70.00 Misc. Envelopes $ 56.00 READINGS FOR NEXT SUNDAY, January25th, 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 25 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Gospel: Mark 1:14-20 SCRIPTURE STUDY RESUMES There will be no Scripture Study on Wednesday, January 21st. Scripture Study will resume on Wednesday, January 28th.
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION PARISH WORCESTER, MA Religious Education There are no Religious Education classes January 18th & 19th due to Martin Luther King Day Observance. The Confirmation Retreat is scheduled for Monday, January 19, 2015. The retreat takes place at St. Joseph s Center, 29 South St., Barre Ctr. Please contact Mary Sycks if you need a ride to the retreat. Girl Scout Cookies! The Girl scouts of Immaculate Conception church will be selling cookies after all 3 masses the weekends of January 17th & 18th and January 24th & 25th. Cookies are $4.00 a box. Funds raised from the cookies sale goes towards badges, community service projects and field trips. Thank you for supporting the Girl Scouts of Immaculate Conception Parish! Inclement Weather Policy...If school is cancelled due to weather conditions, religious education Classes will be cancelled for that evening. For cancellations of Sunday morning classes due to weather conditions, please check the Immaculate Conception website or Facebook Page. You can also call the Office of Religious Education at 508-868-8119. ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE Our Parish Activities committee wishes ALL Parishioners a Happy and Productive New Year. We also want to thank everyone that has helped or has supported the 2014 Activities at Immaculate Conception. We are looking to have some new activities in 2015, and hope to expand the activities team. The Activities committee voted for new officers for 2015. President is Jim Hester; Treasurer is Kevin Shaughnessy; Parishioners/Sick committee representative is Darya Kuruna; Coffee Shop committee (1st & 3rd Sunday of each month) is Jim & bev Hester, Marie & Phil Dowd, Jill & Paul St. Martin. The nominees for respective activities in 2015 are: Irish dinner, March 14 (Team Leader is needed); Meat Raffle, April 18, Jim hester; Church Flea Market, May 16 (Team Leader needed); Spaghetti dinner, October 3 (Team Leader needed); Turky Lurkey, November 21 (Jim Hester). If anyone can assist in moving a freezer from 48 Gifford Drive to the Fr. Connors center, please call or email Jim Hester at 508-852-3473, bevhester13@gmail.com. WINTER FUEL COLLECTION THANK YOU Thank you to all of our parishioners who so generously supported our annual winter fuel collection. This collection helps to support the high cost of heat in the church throughout the duration of our long winters here in New England. I encourage all parishioners use this envelope since we all benefit from the heat in our church. And for any parishioners who do not receive envelopes, please consider using your own envelope to make a donation for this collection so that the entire responsibility of fuel support does not fall only on those who do receive envelopes. Thank you, Fr. Riley. INTERESTED IN BECOMING A DEACON? Find out everything you wanted to know about the diaconate program for the Diocese of Worcester. If you are a male, college graduate (or have an equivalent to a degree) and are between the ages of 31 and 60 and have an interest, now is your opportunity to get some answers. Spouses are welcome and urged to attend with you. Saturday, January 31, 2015, Our Lady of Mount Carmel/ St. Ann Parish Center, 28 Mulberry Street, Worcester, 9:00 a.m. Contact information: Diaconate Office: 508-929-4335; Website: worcesterdiocese.org HOPE FOR HOUSING FOOD CARDS Please consider purchasing food cards for the purpose of helping to stop homelessness here in Central Massachusetts. 5% of each card purchased will be donated by the participating grocery chain, while the purchase receives the full value of the card that is purchased. The money raised from this ministry has helped to prevent hundreds of families from being homeless, a situation that no one in our country should have to experience. Last week at Immaculate Conception our parishioners purchased $300.00 of cards. Thank you to those who continue to participate in this very worthy program. RELIGIOUS QUOTE OF THE WEEK Crisis in the family has produced an ecological crisis, for social environments, like natural environments, need protection. And although the human race has come to the need to address conditions that menace our natural environments, we have been slower we have been slower in our culture, and also in our Catholic culture to recognize that our fragile social environments are also at risk. It is therefore essential that we foster a new human ecology. Pope Francis (1936-) 15th ANNUAL DIOCESAN CATHOLIC MEN S CON- FERENCE All men are invited to this important annual conference, scheduled for Worcester s DCU Center, on Saturday, March 21, 2015. For a Conference brochure, further information, or registration, call 508-929-4345. visit our websitewww.firstmensconf.org-for information and ticket purchases. More information in next week s bulletin. From the Pastor Continued from the following page what can she actually believe about God if she was never introduced to her Creator from an early age? What results when this happens is profound confusion. And I ve witnessed this firsthand a bit too often. Jesus didn t call any atheists or anyone unfamiliar with the ways of God when he called his disciples. Even the tax collector Matthew was familiar with the God of Israel. He called disciples who were familiar with the Lord, thanks to their being taught from the start. With that said, we pray for the young and older who are searching for some meaning in life. And if we are presented the chance to guide someone to the Lord whom may have been cheated for any reason in the early part of their lives, may we be the catalyst to help them find their Creator. Peace, Fr. Riley
FROM THE PASTOR All siblings should be this kind to one another. When Andrew led his brother Simon to the presence of the Lord, little did Andrew know that he was leading Simon, who would become Peter the Rock, to a meeting that would lead Peter to guard the Pearly Gates of Heaven itself. A simple, uneventful meeting that blossoms into Apostleship. An unexpected meeting with Jesus that leads to a Chair in Rome to this Very day, occupied by a present priest who chose the name Francis. Talk about the unexpected, and what God can do! When Andrew introduced his brother Simon to the Rabbi, it s not like either one of the brothers had no religious background when Jesus called them. They were handed, throughout the course of their early lives, the teachings of their forefathers. The seeds were planted in Peter and Andrew to go on and become Apostles of the Lord. They were not raw in terms of religious instruction. To be Jewish at the time of Christ was to be familiar with the many prayers and laws that were ingrained in the daily thinking and living of the Jewish people. Peter and Andrew undoubtedly were familiar with the Psalms of David. Since they were probably illiterate, which was common 2000 years ago, I m certain they had many of the Psalms memorized, reciting there prayers each day in their worship of the one, true God who revealed himself to the chosen people of Israel. We may easily forget today, with so much busyness in the lives of so many families to the point where worshipping God takes a backseat to human activities, that the Jewish family, village, and town of Jesus day were ensconced with the daily practice of their religious living. To those people, putting God on the back-burner at any time meant they were worshipping idols All began with love of God. So when Jesus was approached that day by Andrew and Simon, and the two brothers being invited to find out where he was staying, they entered with hearts ready for Apostleship. Their foundation of being introduced to God by their peers and, most likely, parents, had been set. There are times we can think of the Apostles of the Lord as being purely raw with regard to their faith. Jesus himself is critical at times of their slowness to grasp what he s all about, such as when Peter walked on water initially, then began to sink for lack of faith. It s easy to forget that their Godfoundation was alive and well as a result of their upbringing in the Jewish tradition. The past two weeks we ve celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany and the Baptism f the Lord. We were introduced to Christ by the Magi, and incorporated into the Body of Christ, the Church, in Baptism, most likely by our parents. We depended upon others in both situations. The message here is to express the importance of trusting others who have given us much in the faith, and also our responsibility of passing on to others the gifts we have received. I recently became familiar with a situation where the parents of a young adult allowed their daughter to be raised without introduction to God in any way. The reason was that she could make up her own mind as to what she wanted to believe when she was old enough. With all due respect, such thinking and practice is one of miserable failure in the God department. My question can only be, When she does get old enough, From the Pastor is continued on the previous page
THIS WEEK AT IMMACULATE CONCEPTION Sat. Jan. 17 3:00 PM Confessions 4:00 PM Mass Sun. Jan. 18 7:30 PM Mass 10:00 AM Mass Mon. Jan. 19 8:30 AM Rosary 9:00 AM Mass Tues. Jan. 20 8:30 AM Rosary 9:00 AM Mass Wed. Jan. 21 8:30 AM Rosary 9:00 AM Mass Thurs. Jan. 22 7:30 AM Rosary 8:00 AM Mass Fri. Jan. 23 Sat. Jan. 24 3:00 PM Confessions 4:00 PM Mass Sun. Jan. 25 7:30 AM Mass 8:45 AM Religious Ed 10:00 AM Mass SIGN OF PEACE With cold and flu season upon us, we ask that anyone who is under the weather to refrain from the traditional handshake at Mass at the Sign of Peace. A simple smile or nod will do, and please don t feel offended if someone smiles or nods at the sign of Peace. They are, instead, keeping us healthier by doing so. YES, WE WOULD LIKE TO REGISTER AT IMMACULATE CONCEPTION!! Name Address: City &Zip Phone Envelopes yes No Number of People in Household PLEASE, TEAR THIS OFF AND PLACE IN THE COLLECTION BASKET!