The technology team would like you to join us in
Congratulating Father Victor Hoagland on 60 Years of Priestly Ministry!
A Celebratory Mass will be held at 10 am on Sunday September 15th
at the Parish of Sainty Mary in Colts Neck with refreshments to follow.
Thank You Father Victor! Much Love from us all!
SEPTEMBER 9 Mon USA: Saint Peter Claver, Priest Memorial
Col 1:24—2:3/Lk 6:6-11
10 Tue Weekday
Col 2:6-15/Lk 6:12-19 (438)
11 Wed Weekday
Col 3:1-11/Lk 6:20-26 (439)
12 Thu Weekday
[The Most Holy Name of Mary]
Col 3:12-17/Lk 6:27-38 (440)
Pss III
13 Fri Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Memorial
1 Tm 1:1-2, 12-14/Lk 6:39-42 (441)
14 Sat The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Feast
Nm 21:4b-9/Phil 2:6-11/Jn 3:13-17 (638) Pss Prop
15 SUN TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Ex 32:7-11, 13-14/1 Tm 1:12-17/Lk 15:1-32 or 15:1-10 (132) Pss IV
If you look at our church calendar this week, St. Peter Claver, the Jesuit who ministered to African slaves in Columbia, South America, in the 17th century, is listed as a saint who is to be remembered in all the churches of the United States on September 9. His feast is an obligatory memorial in our country. We have to remember him.
When the Roman calendar was revised in 1975 there were 95 optional memorials–saints and feasts that can be celebrated at the discretion of the local church or community and
63 obligatory memorials, saints and feasts that are more important for the universal church and should be celebrated by the universal church.
This week, for example, the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, September 12, is an optional memorial. The Feast of John Chrysostom, September 13, is an obligatory memorial.
In the church in the United States, Peter Claver is to be remembered. The reason, of course, is that he dealt with an issue that not only affected the world he lived in, but also still affects the world we live in, the issue of racism.
For this week’s homily please watch the video below.
One of the exhibits at the “Deep Time” exhibit, currently at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, is called “Your body through time: Your body is the result of more than 3.7 billion years of evolution.”
So we didn’t just come from Mommy and Daddy, our favorite human way to say it; 3.7 billion years has been at work bringing us to where we are, and we’re not the only ones. A vast tree of created beings has come to be in deep time.
The Book of Genesis says in its creation story we come from “the dust of the earth”. All of us. The story we know now is much more complex, and we still don’t know it all .
I’m sure the young children and an adult viewing the exhibit in the photo above went away, like me, wondering at the mystery it presented. “ Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.” (Psalm 139)
The same can said of St. Paul’s words to the Colossians read today in our liturgy:
“In Jesus Christ, everything in heaven and on earth has been created, things visible and invisible.” (Colossians 1,12-20)
Yet, this knowledge tells us who we are and what we are to do. We need to keep it in mind.
We begin reading the Letter to the Colossians today in our liturgy. Paul never visited this church near Ephesus. Commentators don’t agree about the situation Paul addresses in the letter. It’s not about problems of human behavior and morality as the letters to the Corinthians are. The Colossians have faith in Christ; they love for one another. But some of them here are trying to figure out the cosmos. What’s this world beyond our human world all about?
Don’t leave Jesus Christ out of that larger world, Paul says. He speaks to the Colossians about the Cosmic Christ.
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the Body, the Church.He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the Blood of his cross through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.” (Colossians 1, 15-20)
Last week after a family wedding in southern New Jersey, I went with a cousin of mine to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, to see an exhibit called “Deep Time” about the 4.5 billion years it took the universe to arrive at where it is now. It’s a wonderful exhibit, but it was really hard to take it all in. No matter how clever the presentations, our minds find it hard to grasp what happened in 4.5 billion years..
It hasn’t been 4.5 billion years without troubles, either. The exhibit made clear that our earth was almost destroyed a number of times, and it offers a strong warning about what might happen as our climate changes now.
The exhibit was about what we know from science; there was no reference to religious knowledge here. But maybe Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a timely message our age needs to hear. Jesus Christ was not just Jesus of Nazareth, rejected by his own people in a little corner of the Middle East long ago. He was not just a teacher who tells us how to get along with one other.
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God…in him were created all things in heaven and on earth.” “He holds all things together” for 4.5 billion years and beyond.. He brings peace through the blood of his cross. He lives and reigns with Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.
Like the Colossians, we need to hear this, today.
Church of St. Gregory the Great, lower left, off Via di San Gregorio (google maps)
SEPTEMBER 2 Mon Weekday
1 Thes 4:13-18/Lk 4:16-30
3 Tue Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
Memorial 1 Thes 5:1-6, 9-11/Lk 4:31-37
4 Wed Weekday
Col 1:1-8/Lk 4:38-44
5 Thu Weekday
Col 1:9-14/Lk 5:1-11
6 Fri Weekday
Col 1:15-20/Lk 5:33-39
7 Sat Weekday[BVM]
Col 1:21-23/Lk 6:1-5
8 SUN TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Wis 9:13-18b/ Phlm 9-10, 12-17/Lk 14:25-33
We begin reading from the Letter to the Colossians this week, a letter Paul wrote from prison to a community he never visited. “Christ is the image of the invisible God,” that beautiful hymn begins the letter.
We also begin to read from Luke’s gospel. Jesus goes first to Nazareth, then to Capernaum. He was not successful in his own hometown.
Gregory the Great, the greatest of the popes to me, is celebrated on Tuesday.
For this week’s homily please watch the video below.
From a family wedding last weekend where the bride and groom gave us a love story, a cousin of mine took me to Washington, DC, to visit the “Deep Time” exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It’s been a panoramic few days.
The wedding itself, in the words of our Irish visitors, was “grand.” Young kids and old people, two big families and their friends were there. They were all at the Mass in church and then ate and danced through the night and then most came back the next day for a splendid brunch in a garden filled with flowers and a new litter of dogs. A celebration.
It lasted almost as long as the Marriage Feast of Cana, I think. The words used about that feast could be said for this one:
”But you shall be called ‘ My delight’ and your land ‘espoused’
for the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.” (Isaiah 62)
The land stretched out at the “Deep Time” exhibit, which takes you back 4.5 billion years to the origin of our earth
The exhibit itself is an attempt to foster the broad thinking we need to face the future by understanding the past. It’s hard to think big. That applies to both the world of science as well as the world of religion, but we need big thinking today.
One wonderful presentation at the exhibit asks you to see how you are connected with 4.5 billion years ago. We just didn’t happen.
And doesn’t it go beyond that? Science only goes so far.
The Victor's Place 