November / 2020 CONTENT ……… Presentation ……… Greeting (Fr. Michael Gergen) ……… Seven Reasons: Why Are Saints Important? … Saints of the New Millennium (Juan Carlos Montenegro) ……… One Click from God (Jorge Galvis) ……… Fratelli Tutti (Fr. Fabián Cárdenas) … In Memory of Our Deceased (Luis Chacón) … "It is enough that you know" ……… NEWS SAVIO ……….… Schedule Presentation The bulletin that you have present here, has the sole intention of offering you a formative and educational opportunity in order to grow in your Christian faith with a special emphaiss on the Salesian style of life and action. We hope that the articles and stories that we publish here will help you in be a more positive member of our multicultural society. It was the vision of Don Bosco that our efforts to read and relflect would world for creating a world where each of us would grow in our Christian faith and understanding and at the same time make us better members our civil socitey. We hope you can enjoy this small space that we lovingly provide; in advance, we extend our sincere thanks for allowing us to reach you by this digital medium. Cordially, Your Parish St. Dominic Savio 4 Schedule A year ago none of us expected a What is the meaning behind our pandemic nor the kind of life that celebration on November 2nd, the we would be living today. The “Day of the Dead”? pandemic has challenged us, not just It is our hope at St. Dominic Savio to change our way of life, but also to that we will “come out” of the ask ourselves: What is important? pandemic with a faith that has been Where is God in all this? Where is made stronger by having been God in my life? tested. We at St. Dominic Savio have prepared this digital magazine to Fraternally yours, Fr. Mike Gergen, SDB offer you a way to deepen your faith Pas tor – St. Dominic Savio Parish A Salesian and your friendship with God. Who Community are the saints? Who is Blessed Carlo Acutis? What does Pope Francis have to say to us about life today and how we should respond to the pandemic? 5 Seven Reasons: Why Are Saints Important? 1: The Saints are real Seeing a photograph of Saint Therese of Lisieux resting in a chair near the end of her life, some American parochial students surprised their teacher with the question: “You mean she was real?” The reality of Saints is the place for us to start; these men and women and their stories and words are not legends, or some kind of religious equivalent of super heroes, or even two-dimensional historical figures, however inspiring. They really lived, and still live in the heavenly world. 2: The Saints struggle with the same problems we do. When we’re anxious about the pandemic and the shutdowns, we should remember Saint Catherine of Siena, who ministered lovingly to the sick when her townspeople were dying in the streets from the Black Plague. When we’re dismayed by the limitations placed on Christian worship and the aspersions cast on Christian faith that we see today, we should remember Saint Lawrence the Martyr, who, while being roasted to death on a grill, told his pagan torturers, “I’m well done on this side. Turn me over!” When we’re troubled by harmful thoughts, we should remember Saint Mary of Egypt, who fought heroically and alone in the Palestinian desert for decades, fighting the urge to return to the decadent life from which she had been called. The Saints know what we are going through and will respond to our calls for their help. 6 Seven Reasons: Why Are Saints important? : por qué los santos son importantes? 3: The Saints are our heavenly helpers. Many of us have experienced, for ourselves, what millions of Christians have found during the long history of the church – that the saints are ready to respond to our prayers, to bless, protect, heal, and sanctify us. And during their own earthly sojourn the Saints themselves discovered this for themselves. See how Saint John Vianney continually turned toward the martyr Saint Philomena for her miraculous intercession; how Saint Andre of Montreal found Saint Joseph to be a healer and helper in all troubles and counseled all he met to "Go to Saint Joseph"; how the little-known contemporary Egyptian Saint Pope Kyrillos VI made the third-century martyr Saint Mina his miraculous helpmate in his difficult task of leading the Coptic Christians. 4: The message of the Saints’ lives and teachings are timeless and timely. We may not face an emperor demanding we sacrifice to pagan gods, or a king requiring us to condone his adultery, but the supernatural courage and heroic examples of a Saint George or a Saint Thomas More are an inspiration for all times. And how pertinent they are to our own struggles, as the Christians of today face a new degree and manner of persecution. “For a Christian, there is no teaching that is more efficacious than reading of the life of a saint, especially of one who has lived in his own time.” - renowned contemporary iconographer Photios Kontoglou. 7 Seven Reasons: Why Are Saints important? 5: The words and :actions por ofqué the los santos son importantes? saints are a sure guide and authority on how we should live. In an age when millions find celebrities more attractive than sanctity, and virtue-signaling takes the place of real virtue, we need to move our focus from the ways of the world and turn to the saints for a guiding light. And why not use the very tools of this age to do this? You can find excellent videos of the lives of the saints on YouTube, and Amazon is a great source for biographies of the saints and books of their writings, many of which are out of print and only available from the many independent bookstores that list their inventory there. 6: Saints are the best models of holiness. If we make the remembrance of the saints our constant companion and study, we will discover that their example will become the measure of our own behavior. You become what you behold, as one of our subscribers wrote about his own veneration of the saints and their icons. “Blessed is he who plants good plants in his soul, that is, the virtues and the lives of the saints” -Saint Ephraim the Syrian. 8 Seven Reasons: Why Are Saints important? : por qué los santos son importantes? 7: Become friends with the saints, who will be with us and help us. Christian tradition clearly shows us the way to open a window to Heaven. If we place the icons and images of the saints in our home and church, we honor and pray to them (especially on their holidays), and we always remember to turn to them for guidance and help in every need, large or small, we can experience for ourselves their blessed protection, healing and intercession. “Join the saints and set out on your journey, because those who join them will be sanctified” - Saint Clement of Rome. Visit: Monastery Icons- (https://www.monasteryicons.com/) and see the images of these and many more saints. Parroquia St. Dominic Savio 13400 Bellflower Blvd C.A. Tel: 562 920 77 96 9 www.saintdominicsavio.org Saints of the New Millennium By Juan Carlos Montenegro If we ask ourselves what it is to be a saint, surely our answers will be very different depending on our history and our points of view, but really, what’s it like being a saint? According to Wikipedia “Use of the term. The Hebrew and Greek words for "holiness" convey the idea of pure or clean in a religious sense, apart from corruption. The holiness of God denotes his absolute moral perfection. ... The word saint is used as an adjective to indicate a direct relationship with God.” As I read this definition I say to myself, my God I will never be holy, as a human being, we have to deal with the corruption of our humanity every day, but what is actually being a saint? It is a person who seeks to create a relationship with the living God, a relationship where God is present in everything we do. When Don Bosco was to be canonized as a Saint, one of the objections to him being declared a Saint was that he never had time to pray, that he was so involved in day-to-day activities, that he did not have time to pray, but as we study the life of Don Bosco more deeply, we realize that everything Don Bosco did, turned into prayer, so Don Bosco was a man who prayed all the time. If I do an examination of conscience, I could say that many times my life is on "automatic pilot" meaning, that I live life without really being aware of what I am doing. I get up, have breakfast, work, and sleep, without really being present in the moment and really be able to thank God for the day he has given me. I think that is Holiness, the ability we have to see God in everything we do. It is obvious that many times we will make mistakes or get angry, but the ability to get out of those moments and surrender them to God, is what will make better human beings and above all better Catholics. The challenge we have, is how can we teach this to our young people? And maybe this will be the topic of our next magazine, so stay tuned.