ST. PIUS X CATHOLIC COMMUNITY 16 Smithville Crescent, St. John’s, NL A1B 2V2 Tel.# 754-0170 Finding God in All Things

28th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME October 11, 2020

This weekend we celebrate Thanksgiving expressing our gratitude for the blessings we have received over the year. But in our review of the past year, negative events and emotions may rise up. Where is gratitude then?

I don’t believe gratitude is simply a smile-through-everything-and-ignore-what-hurts mentality. I don’t believe gratitude looks only at what is going well. Rather, it bravely pauses and takes account of life—of everything going on—and chooses to say thank-you for the whole of it. Gratitude that issues from a Christian worldview recognizes that there is always a much bigger picture than the snapshot a person is working from on any given day. The Christian sees the redemption beyond whatever darkness we face right now. The Christian sees our capacity to endure great sorrow and trauma and grow in spite of it.

But growth and endurance don’t simply happen. God provides grace, but I make choices. I grow stronger and kinder—or I grow helpless and bitter. Sometimes I think the difference between those two outcomes relies on my willingness to give thanks every day. Somehow the gratitude then feeds the hope. And hope does not get along with bitterness; one of them has got to go.

So where is that perfect point of gratitude? Where is that balanced place at which we speak the truth without succumbing to sadness and anger? And at which we relinquish our fears and hurts and welcome the life we’ve been given? Vinita Hampton Wright

SOURCE: www.ignatianspirituality.com/22799/finding-your-perfect-point-of-gratitude

Fr. Earl Smith, SJ (Pastor and Superior of St. John’s Jesuits) ([email protected]) Fr. Wayne Bolton, SJ (Associate Pastor) ([email protected] ) Maria R. Kelsey (Pastoral Assistant and Religious Education Coordinator) ([email protected]) P arish E-mail: [email protected] Webpage: www.spx.ca Archdiocesan Webpage: www.rcsj.org

www.spx.ca SCRIPTURE READINGS CATHOLIC WOMEN’S LEAGUE FOR NEXT SUNDAY NOTES October 18, 2020

Rosary You could read/discuss/pray with your family, The month of October is dedicated to with friends or by yourself.’ the Most Holy Rosary First Reading: Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 During this month, members of the 1st Thessalonians 1:1-5 Second Reading: CWL invite you to join the praying of the Rosary 96 Psalm: after the 9:30 am Mass (approximately 10:00 am) Matthew 22:15-21 Gospel: on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

OUR ‘PIUS’ SMILE Happy Thanksgiving Wishing our members, pastors, staff, parishioners, Please stand up their family and friends a very One day a college professor of Psychology was Happy and Blessed greeting his new college class. He stood up in Thanksgiving! front of the class and said, Although we have all faced the challenges of "Would everyone who thinks he or she is stupid Snowmageddon and COVID-19 over past seven please stand up?" months, we are thankful for the sisterhood of the After a minute or so of silence, a young man CWL, for the support of our St Pius X Parish stood up. community, for our families and friends we cherish, "Well, good morning. So, you actually think and for the blessings to come. We are very grateful you're a moron?" the professor asked. for the beautiful creation of which we are a part and The kid replied, "No sir, I just didn't want to see pray for the grace to be more caring towards it. you standing there all by yourself." Happy Thanksgiving from the St Pius X CWL Executive! Impressing the young lady! An old guy was working out in the gym when he CWL General Meeting spotted an attractive young lady. The next General Meeting of the He asked a nearby trainer, "What machine CWL will take place in the Parish should I use to impress that lady over there?" Hall on Tuesday , October 20, 2020 The trainer looked him up and down and said, after the morning 9:30 am Mass and Rosary. "I would try the ATM in the lobby.” Everyone is welcome.

OFFERTORY SOMETHING TO THINK COLLECTION ABOUT ...

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the October 3 and 4: $2,965. web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound Envelopes $2,934. together. All things connect.” Loose 31. Chief Seattle Thank you for your continued generous support.

www.spx.ca DE MELLO FOR KIDS 2. Create a Chain Reaction Make a “God is Good” chain. Gather scissors, OF ALL AGES stickers, pencils, crayons, glue and construction Favorite Gifts paper. Cut the paper in strips and ask your kids to think about the many ways God is good. What are some of your favorite Have them write or draw these attributes on the things? Do you like snowflakes? strips, then connect them to form a chain and How about feathers or piles of hang it in a place where it will remind your leaves or goldfish crackers? All family of God’s goodness. the things you love are gifts from God. From fluffy clouds in the sky 3. Make a Blessing Basket to rich black dirt in the ground, God gives you Place a pretty fall basket containing a pencil and many wonderful things to enjoy. The next time pad of paper in an easy-to-reach location. you’re enjoying one of your favorite things, be Throughout the month, encourage family sure to say, ‘Thanks, God!” members to jot down ways God has blessed Thank you for snowballs and blue skies and them. Younger children can draw or cut out mittens, Friends and feathers and small, fluffy kittens! pictures from magazines. Read these together and give God thanks each day.

THANKSGIVING FAMILY ACTIVITY 4. Trim a Tree of Thanks CELEBRATING THANKSGIVINGS Draw and cut out a large paper tree with lots of AS CHRISTIANS loose leaves in autumn colors. Mount the tree in a prominent place and put the leaves nearby in a box with glue and markers. Ask your family to write things they are thankful for on the leaves, filling the tree by the end of the month. Consider the following question: “If I could keep only the gifts I’ve thanked God for today, what would I have?” Ask younger children: In the United States and , Thanksgiving is “What do you want to thank God for today?” Encourage your family to add to the tree daily. celebrated by people of every religion and background – that is part of what makes it such a wonderful holiday! For those looking to integrate 5. Let your Lights Shine some Christian traditions into Thanksgiving, here Give an unlit votive candle to each person. Begin are several suggestions to use at church and/or by lighting your own candle and thanking God home. You are invited to choose one activity (or for specific blessings. Then, continue the process more) for Thanksgiving Day or you can continue around the table until all the candles are lit, for the rest of the month, to make October a month making sure to keep the flames away from small of Thanksgiving) children. Lead your family in a candlelight service of thanksgiving. 1. Act it Out SOURCE: Sharon Ely Pearson, Read the story of the ten lepers (Luke www.buildingfaith.com 17:11-19). Remind your children that was pleased with the one man who returned to give thanks for being healed. Provide rags for bandages and let your children play the roles of the lepers and Jesus. www.spx.ca FR. EARL DREAMS A ON THANKSGIVING WEEKEND THANKSGIVING BLESSING Let us continue to acknowledge our (sometimes) welcomed gifts/benefits due to the Coronavirus 19. In focus are the precariousness and May your basket of blessings surprise you sacredness of human and created life that is ‘here with its rich diversity of gifts today and gone tomorrow’. We Catholics often and opportunities for growth. first think and behold unborn human life in all May all that nourishes and resources your life its vulnerable sacred giftedness. Currently, there bring you daily satisfaction and renewed hope. is an wondrous, positive expansion of global May you slow your hurried pace of life concern for the life of our planet. We wonder if so you can be aware of, and enjoy, earth, our dear home, will survive many years of what you too easily take for granted. exploitation (?) There is a renewed inspired cry May you always be open, willing, in support of voiceless persons of different races, and ready to share your blessings with others. colour, social standing, mental illness or national May you never forget the Generous One origin who suffer injustices and live on the fringe who loves you lavishly and unconditionally. of our society. We are invited, no urged through God’s prophetic Word, to embrace, accept and invite into the spaces of our too often closed (SOURCE: Joyce Rupp, Out of the Ordinary, p 191) hearts, persons who are different than ourselves although yet members of God’s eternal family. There is the life of the economy which, MASS because of the coronavirus, has caused OF unemployment as people find themselves out of THANKSGIVING work, some even becoming homeless. Life is fragile. Humanity’s need for God, our true first love is more so awakened into our collective consciousness. These are indeed great +blessings that we and surrender to our beloved There will be a special Mass of Thanksgiving on Lord God this Thanksgiving weekend and Thursday, October 15, 2020 at the 9:30 am Mass. perhaps with growing humility, and a willingness All are welcome to attend this Mass to give thanks to be of service to God’s Kingdom on earth. Let’s for everything that we are grateful for in our lives. hope for no less a privilege! A Jesuit brother priest, Max Olivia, SJ, writes these challenging words: It seems to me that we are in a struggle to protect the life of: Honesty, Empathy, Decency, Kindness Compassion, Forgiveness. We further the Reign of God: Every time we stand up for life in all its forms. Every time we seek unity over division. Every time we seek love over fear and hate. Every time we choose the truth over conspiracy. Every time we speak up on behalf of those who are discriminated against. Thanks be to God. Fr. Earl Smith, SJ, Pastor, St. Pius X

www.spx.ca SAINTS SPEAK ELDER MINISTRY’S THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

The only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much. If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. Dom Chapman [20th C.], Spiritual Letters, Anglican priest

Because prayer is indeed a supernatural act, a movement of spirit toward Spirit, it is an act in which the natural creature can never begin or complete of itself. Though it seems to come by one's own free choice that one lifts the soul toward God, it is in truth this all-penetrating God, Who by His secret humble pressure stirs us to make this first movement of will and love. Evelyn Underhill [20th C.], OCTOBER IS The Golden Sequence CYBER SECURITY Prayer is the search for God, encounter with God, and AWARENESS MONTH going beyond the encounter in communion. Thus it is an activity, a state, and also a situation; a situation both with respect to God and to the created world. It arises from the awareness that the world in which we live is not simply two- October is Cyber Security Awareness Month – an dimensional, imprisoned in the categories of time international campaign to remind everyone about and space, a flat world in which we meet only the the importance of pro-actively protecting your surface of things, an opaque surface covering connected devices, such as your mobile phone, emptiness. Prayer is born of the discovery that laptop, desktop computer and smart appliances the world has depths; that we are not only from cyber threats. surrounded by visible things but that we are also While banks go to great lengths to prevent and immersed in and penetrated by invisible things. detect of cyber security threats, there are also simple And this invisible world is both the presence of steps you can take to protect yourself. With a cyber God, the supreme, sublime reality, and our own hygiene checklist and tips on how to spot common deepest truth. scams, the CBA’s Cyber Security Toolkit can help Metropolitan Anthony, you protect against online financial fraud. Creative Prayer, You can download a copy for yourself and to Edited by Hugh Wybrew, share here: cba.ca/cyber-security-toolkit (Dayton, Longman, and Todd, 1987)

www.spx.ca CATHOLIC MAN OF THE MONTH

Fr. Patrick Ryan (1844-1878) Our pre-COVID 19 Mass schedule allowed for ten Masses each passing week including seven weekday Masses. Although we are currently restricted to two When Yellow Fever hit Chattanooga, Tennessee, in weekday Masses it is possible to request a Mass 1878, there were few treatments and no vaccine; it intention of your Jesuit Community. If you would was not even understood how the disease spread. like to do this, please contact Michele in our Parish Most people panicked and deserted the city, but a Office - 754-0170 or [email protected] at young parish priest Fr. Patrick Ryan, remained to your convenience. serve the afflicted. Born in Ireland in 1844, Ryan immigrated with CATHOLIC WOMEN'S his family to the United States as a boy and grew LEADERSHIP up in New York City. He entered seminary in FOUNDATION Missouri at age 21 and became known for his sound faith, common sense and athleticism. In 1869, he Application forms are now available for the was ordained for the Diocese of Nashville, whose 2021-2022 Catholic Women's Leadership bishop was from the same county in Ireland as the Foundation Program. The Certificate program, Ryan family. Fr. Ryan enthusiastically built up his facilitated by the Providence School of small, mostly poor flock, first in Clarksville, Transformational Leadership and Spirituality at Tennessee, and then in Chattanooga. He was Saint Paul University (Ottawa) runs from April particularly determined to improve Catholic 2021 to June 2022, including both face to face and education, and he convinced the Dominican Sisters online courses. in Nashville to establish a school in his parish in For more information, visit 1876. www.//cwlfcanada.ca or email Rita Janes Two years later, as more than 4 out of 5 [email protected] . th residents fled in the face of the epidemic, Fr. Ryan The application deadline is November 20 , 2020. continued his work. A local journalist described seeing him in an infected neighbourhood: WORLD MISSION SUNDAY COLLECTION “Cheerfully but resolutely he was going from house to house to find what he could do for the sick and Next week is World Mission Sunday. This needy ... like one so absorbed in the afflictions of celebration of the missions will take place in very his fellow men that he was unconscious of personal parish in the world. It is also a global celebration suffering.” of the Universal Church. Your prayer and Fr. Ryan died of Yellow Fever September 28, donations will assist churches, hospitals, schools 1878, at age 33. “Bury me in Chattanooga among and vocations where the Church is still at a my people” was his last request. When his remains formative stage. With the assistance which Catholic were interred in a new cemetery in 1886, a mile- Communities throughout the world receive through long procession followed his coffin. Council 610 World Mission Sunday, they will become self- and Assembly 1084 (Knights of Columbus), both sufficient and continue to flourish. But sharing the in Chattanooga, were later named in honor of Fr. gift of faith, we can bring hope and love to those Ryan, and the Diocese of Knoxville opened his who need it most. cause for canonization in 2016. (Sister Rosemary Ryan, SOURCE: Columbia, September, 2020, page 5 Director for the Pontifical Missions Societies) www.spx.ca Homeless Jesus,[1] also known as Jesus the Homeless, is a bronze sculpture by Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz depicting Jesus as a homeless person, sleeping on a park bench. The original sculpture was installed at Regis College, University of , in early 2013. Other casts have since been installed and blessed in many places across the world.

Walk With the Excluded One of the four Universal Apostolic Preferences that we introduced in last weekend’s bulletin was Walk with the Excluded. Some key points from Francis’ recent encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti’: A Radical Blueprint for Post-Covid World” can provide us with some insights on how to walk with the excluded, and especially on how to look at the world through the eyes of someone who is excluded.

The following are some comments about this new encyclical as reported by Devin Watkins at www.vatican.ca

Christine Allen, Director of the Catholic International Development Charity in England and Wales, CAFOD, says the encyclical is a “radical blueprint for a post-coronavirus world.” In a statement, Ms. Allen highlights the Pope’s message regarding the relationship between politics and poverty.

“Politics is failing the poor,” she notes, “and it is shameful that some political decisions that are made affect the poorest, plunging them further into poverty, suffering and despair.”

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hopes were high that greater solidarity would arise from the suffering left in its wake, says Ms. Allen. But lately, she laments with , there has been a rush “to return to politics ‘as normal’– one of self-interest and indifference to the plight of those left behind.”

Pope Francis, she adds, offers a “vision for real and lasting change, by calling on us to build community at all levels – personal, societal and global, where walls of fear and distrust are replaced by a ‘culture of encounter’, and our solidarity with others restores human dignity.” Now, she says is the time to improve the structures of the global economic system, for the benefit of the poor and marginalized.

Cardinal Dew, the Vice-President of New Zealand’s Catholic Bishops Conference, says the Pope’s message touches on the very survival of our contemporary world. “It is that serious. It is that compelling. It is that demanding,” he says. “Fratelli Tutti” urges Cardinal Dew, “is an invitation for everyone to broaden our perspective to view a world without borders and to view every single person on the planet, and yes, the planet itself, as brother and sister.” “Rather it is very much about a way to re-read and to live the Gospel for our times.”

Pope Francis, he says, “makes a special appeal in the name of justice and mercy for the orphan, the poor, the stranger, the migrant, the refugee and all those on the ‘margins’, the ‘peripheries’ of life and society.” The gaze of a homeless person or images of refugees on the news, he says, can lead us to “feel sorry for them but never really question our own values, lifestyle, or attitudes.” SOURCE: www.vatican.ca

The next page gives us an overview of “Fratelli Tutti’: A Radical Blueprint for Post-Covid World”

Something to think about? Who are the excluded persons whom you see, hear or interact with on a regular basis? What action, no matter how big or small, can you do to “walk” with this person, to show solidarity with this person? What can you learn from this person?

www.spx.ca www.spx.ca CALENDAR OF MASS INTENTIONS

Sun. Oct. 11 10:00 am Mass 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Tues. Oct. 13 9:30 am Funeral: Frances Buckley 1:00 pm Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

Thurs. Oct. 15 9:30 am Mass Michael, Mary and Sheila Martin

Sat. Oct. 17 4:45 pm Mass 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sun. Oct. 18 10:00 am Mass 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

GONZAGA JESUIT COMMUNITY IN RESIDENCE Fr. William Browne, SJ, Fr. Joe Mroz, SJ, Mr. Richard Mulrooney, SJ, Fr. Charles Pottie, SJ, Fr. Joseph Schuck, SJ WEBSITES: Four to recommend are: www.jesuits.org www.ignatianspirituality.com www.jesuitresources.org www.aleteia.org SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION: By appointment by calling the Parish Office (754-0170). TIMES OF MASSES: Tuesdays and Thursdays - 9:30 am Saturday: 4:45 pm; Sunday: 10:00 am BAPTISMS. Please call the Parish Office (754-0170) ONE MONTH in advance. A copy of the child’s birth certificate must be provided before the baptism. PRE-BAPTISMAL COURSE: Call the Parish Office for more details MARRIAGES: By appointment SIX MONTHS in advance. Marriage Preparation Course required OFFICE HOURS: Monday - Friday - 8:30 am - 4:00 pm TELEPHONE: 754-0170 E-MAIL: [email protected] CHAIRPERSON OF PARISH COUNCIL: 739-5780 DIRECTOR OF MUSIC: 233-0302

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