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.”

 

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 31, 2009

Opening Prayer

Jesus Asks for Prophets Like Himself

Let us pray to God
that we may listen to his word
and put it into practice
(PAUSE)

Lord God, our Father,
you speak to us today
the demanding words of the gospel
of Jesus your Son.
Let these not be words
coming from a distant past.
Let them be words that shock us now
out of the petty peace with ourselves.
Make us see the signs and needs of our times
and help us to speak without fear
with the living words of our lives
the message of truth and justice and love
of Jesus Christ our Lord. R/ Amen.

MEDITATION:

The Carpenter’s Son

This week the other shoe drops. Last time, Jesus spoke in the synagogue and now we will hear the people’s reaction to his message. A hint: they will try to throw him off a cliff.

To see why, look at how bold Jesus was. First he searched out a prediction of the Messiah from the book of Isaiah. Here are the words he read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord (Isaiah 61: 1-3)

Apparently, the people loved him for this, and for the words he spoke to them.
But then he applied the reading to himself! He said, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Gospel)! "This scripture passage" was known to all as referring to the Messiah. They knew, therefore, that Jesus was claiming to be Messiah.

The Nazareth synagogue was stunned. They already knew him well because he had grown up in their midst. He was the carpenter’s son, the one they had seen weekly in this same synagogue.
Why in the world would a local boy come up with such a silly story?

He had traveled since growing up. Once, at the Jordan river, he had received baptism, and right after it the heavens opened up and the Holy Spirit descended upon him and a voice from the heavens said, “You are my beloved son, and in you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21-22).

His life was different from then on. He could no longer remain simply an ordinary worker in Nazareth. Now that he had heard the Father’s voice out loud, his ministry began. He was the anointed servant of God.

Immediately he fled into the desert to brood and pray. “Who am I,” he must have asked, “that I am called the Beloved of God? What does this mean?” He was attracted to the wrong answers, ones suggested by the devil. Turn his closeness to God into satisfaction, into power, into reputation. He was authentically tempted, but each time he refused.

Back he came to Nazareth, now in the power of the Spirit, as Luke says. We can see why he selected that passage from Isaiah in the synagogue. As he told them, Isaiah's words were about him! He had heard it from God at his baptism.

How were the Nazarenes supposed to have any understanding of this? They saw him as a mad man claiming equality with God! He was simultaneously insulting his home town, his people Israel, and his God.
“He is out of his mind!” they murmured.

Jesus replied, “No prophet is accepted in his own native place.” He states to their faces that neither Elijah and Elisha, great prophets, could work their miracles in Israel, but went elsewhere to do them.

Is there any wonder the synagogue members went from admiration to shock and anger? They dragged him out to the cliff, planning to annihilate such a blasphemer. He escaped somehow, but look what his bold talk had done!
This scene, and it is the first one in his public ministry, forecasts his whole life. First loved and accepted, then dragged to his death.

In the coming months we will see the all his actions. Now he is filled with the Holy Spirit. What will he do? We must find out, because that same Spirit is offered to us daily.

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

Greetings and Peace!

Hello and Peace

Many thanks to all of you who joined us for our second annual Celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity last Wednesday night. Many thanks to the members of the Glen Ridge Congregational Church who joined us for our service as we prayed together for Christian unity;  I am always very grateful for your continued support as we try and grow the parish. A special thanks to Rev. Dr. David Stinson, pastor of Glenn Ridge Congregational Church, Rev. Fr. John Perris, rector of St. James Episcopal parish in Upper Montclair, and to Fr. Richard and Fr. David members of the Franciscan Community of God’s Grace. As usual Geety and Anthony did a masterful job leading us in song. Thank you all.

I spoke with the owner of Eclectic Café on Bloomfield Ave., asking him if he would be interested in hosting us once a month for a spirituality group discussion. I suggested we could call it Holy Grounds, and advertise it in the community. I would like to invite you to help me begin this as a community outreach event sponsored by the parish. We can invite other local churches to join us. If anyone is interested in helping me please let me know at stfrancisnj@yahoo.com or call me at the friary at 973-731-7765. Maybe we could try for a Thursday Evening.
Sunday February 28 seems like a good date to inaugurate our monthly Sunday Brunch. So I will bring the coffee and juice and some donuts. There will be a sign up sheet in the back of the chapel for the next couple of Sundays.

Please join us as we get to know each other a bit better.

We’ve had some requests to begin a catechetical program I will ask our two seminarians to take the lead efforts, and suggest that we begin on Sunday February 14. I have some educational materials for us to start with.
Lent will be upon us soon and I am asking, again, I we could have some volunteers to help me with planning the liturgies.

Welcome to all our new folks. See you Sunday!

General Intercessions

Aware of our mission in the world to be prophets of God’s merciful love, let us pray to our Father in heaven to make us faithful and courageous in our task, and let us say: R/ Lord, speak your mighty word today.

–    For all Christians, that they may be faithful to their prophetic task of pointing out to the people of our time the saving values of the gospel, let us pray: R/ Lord, speak your mighty word today.

–    For all prophets in the Church and in the world, that they may keep hope alive in the final victory of justice and truth, of God’s life and love, let us pray: R/ Lord, speak your mighty word today.

–    For the people without a voice or who are deprived of their rights, that they may find Christians who have the courage to speak out for them, let us pray: R/ Lord, speak your mighty word today.

–    For all those who work for a better world, that contradiction may not make them bitter, but that love may inspire them to unite rather than to polarize and divide, let us pray: R/ Lord, speak your mighty word today.

–    For us gathered here around the word and the bread of the Lord, that we may experience the gospel as a message meant for today, and the eucharist as our bond of unity, let us pray: R/ Lord, speak your mighty word today.

Lord our God, we do not ask you to satisfy our own expectations. Surpass our own insights and projects and open us to your world and your plans through the challenging word of Jesus Christ

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