St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Parish is here for you.  Sunday Mass is at 12:00 noon at St Francis of Assisi Independent Catholic Chapel: 195 Ridgewood Avenue Glen Ridge, NJ.  Please call the parish office to arrange for the sacraments and please join us at our weekly mass.

“So that none might be Lost.”

 

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 14, 2010

Opening Prayer

Not from on high do you summon us, O God,
to tasks beyond our power.
Shield us from the false security
of possessions and privilege.
Fix our hearts instead on the blessings
promised to those who trust in you alone.
We make our prayer
through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.  AMEN.

MEDITATION:

Quiet Receivers

 “The glass is either half empty or broken,” said a discouraged detective in one of Jonathan Kellermann’s mystery novels

Jesus appears to choose the “broken” option this Sunday. The beatitudes he proclaims seem for all the world like shattered glass. Blessed are those who are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced.

Are these really beatitudes?

Beatitudes were an ancient formula for encouraging people to do good. For instance, in our Responsorial Psalm, the first psalm in the bible, we read, “Blessed is the one who does not take the wicked for his guide, nor walks the road that sinners tread.”

Psalm 41 says, “Happy those concerned for the lowly and poor; when misfortune strikes, the LORD delivers them..” Jeremiah 17 has “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord . . , he is like a tree planted [next to] water that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green.”

Numerous and beautiful are the beatitudes in the Old Testament. They all say, if you do this or that good thing, you will receive blessings. Consolations they were, helping us be a good person.

Jesus seems to have reversed them. Blessed are you if you do the deed of suffering. Wait, Lord, what do you mean? I am supposed to seek to be penniless and sorrowful and in pain? Why would you encourage us to be in such terrible states?

There have been many opinions on this reversal through history, but your author has his own guess. A person has to be open and empty in order to let God and others come in. If we want to love and be loved we need to have space at the center of who we are.

Consider a rich person who “has everything.” Isn’t he tempted to let his possessions define who he is? “Attack my property and you attack me,” he might say. Possessions become an “instead of.” Instead of love I choose something more stable (so it looks): cars or boats or corporations or just plain power. Instead of eating just what we need, each North American who goes to a restaurant eats enough for five people! Would you like another order of French fries, the waiter asks after we have already finished a steak the size of a serving plate and a triple order of fries (so it seems).

The principle running through all the beatitudes is this: you are blessed if you don’t cram yourself full. Full of food, drink, pride, drugs, fame, sex, visits to the beach, stunning hair-do’s, flattest abs, shiny teeth, fast cars, every kind of wealth, and of course reputation, reputation, reputation. Instead, blessed are you if you stay empty, if you become a spacious home for God, for other human beings, for the long-suffering earth.

That’s it. We are built to be quiet receivers, people who know they are empty and yet are patient. There is only one reality, only one Being who can give us the bread of life, who can satisfy our deep capacity for love. Don’t you want to welcome that being into your soul instead of flying around at fastest pace having fun, fun, fun?

Blessed are you if you let go into his arms.

Fr. John Foley, S. J. of the Center for Liturgy
 

Greetings and Peace!

Happy St. Valentines Day!

St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.


Hello and Peace!

I so grateful to see so many of you at Mass on these cold winter Sundays; it makes the days seem warmer. Congratulations to Eric and Catherine, two of our parishioners who will be united in the sacrament of matrimony on Saturday February 13.

It is hard to believe that next Wednesday we begin our journey through the holy season of Lent. We start by marking our foreheads with ashes as a sign of our willingness to let go of ourselves into the arms of God. We commit ourselves anew to journey with Christ through the Paschal mysteries with ancient disciplines of prayer, fasting and alms giving. Please join us for our Ash Wednesday Mass at 7:00 P.M. on February 17 as we start our Lenten spiritual journey together.

We are having a parish council meeting on Sunday, February 28 at 11:00 A.M. before Mass. I am hoping we can structure the parish so that some of our members can take the lead in developing a CCD program, participate more fully in the liturgical preparation and become more active in the Sunday liturgy, discuss our Holy Grounds project, as well as, our ministerial outreach to the poor.

After Mass on the 28th we will have the first of our monthly brunches, so come hungry and bring your favorite food.

Our parish was able to contribute some clothing to the efforts in Haiti. Thank you all!

General Intercessions

The Lord promises blessings on all those who place their trust in him. 
We now turn to him in confidence as we pray:

Our response is: Loving Father, hear our prayer. (Please repeat)

That the church may ever attend to the poor and champion their quest for justice and human dignity, we pray:
Loving Father, hear our prayer

That the rich, the powerful and the satisfied may learn to use the goods of this earth responsibly and in a spirit of sharing, we pray:
Loving Father, hear our prayer

For those who sorrow now:  may their weeping be transformed through God’s healing power and the comforting presence of others, we pray:
Loving Father, hear our prayer

 “Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother and other holy women.”  (pause)
For all women who lost their husbands or sons in war;  (pause)
For those whose families are broken by poverty or oppression;  (pause)
that they will find in Mary – the Mother of the Crucified One – a source of compassion, strength and forgiveness, we pray:
Loving Father, hear our prayer

Father, help us to live each day guided by the Gospel message. 
Hear the prayers we place before you. 
All this we ask through Christ, our Lord.  AMEN.

Blessings,
Most Rev. Dr. George Lucey,  DD, FCM
Presiding Bishop of the American National Catholic Church

A parish community of the American National Catholic Church Jurisdiction