Saint Angela Merici A Stewardship Parish Rev. Michael-Dwight Pastor Rev. Anthony Vu Parochial Vicar Deacon Benjamin Flores Deacon Mike Shaffer Deacons Rev. Dan Mc Sweeney Sunday Ministry Celebration of the Eucharist Monday-Friday 6:30 am & 8:00 am Saturday 8:00 am & 5:00 pm Vigil, Sunday 7:45 am, 9:30 am, 11:15 am 12:45 Spanish & 5:00 pm Adoration Chapel Monday-Friday 9:00 am - 12:00 midnight Sacrament of Reconciliation Saturday 3:30 pm or by Appointment Office Hours Monday - Thursday 8:00 am - 2:00 pm 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm Friday 8:00 am - 2:00 pm Saturday & Sunday 8:30 am - 12:00 Noon 2015-2016: The Year of Mercy So the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis has officially begun this past Tuesday, December 8: the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Perhaps no one in this parish is un- aware of this Holy Year at this point, for we have prepared the whole congregation well enough with a few bulletin announcements and parish events. In this short essay, I would like to discuss the theme of mercy in relation to Pope Francis and to the liturgical year that we are in—Cycle C, with the readings taken from St. Luke’s Gospel for most Sundays of the year. First of all, the very first reflection I wrote for our bulletin—besides the autobiography that I submitted when I first arrived here in July 2013—was on the theme of mercy in the pontificate of Pope Francis (10/20/2013). In that bulletin article, I quoted from an interview with the Pope by the Italian Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica in September 2013. In that lengthy interview, under the heading “The Church as Field Hospital,” Francis reemphasized that the Church must be a church of mercy; and ministers have to be merciful. It is interesting that two years after that interview, he declared the Jubilee Year of Mercy for the whole Church. [For his homily on the Year of Mercy and for his bull declaring the Year of Mercy, please see the bulletins of the previous two weeks.] When all is said and done, I think that Pope Francis will be re- membered in future generations as the “Pope of mercy.” However, what Francis says about mercy is not anything new. Neither is he the only pope who speaks on this subject. The Year of Mercy began on December 8, 2015- the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council (October 11, 1962 -December 8, 1965). There was a pope involved with Vatican II who spoke eloquently on the subject of mercy: St. John XXIII (d. 1963). When the Council began in October 1962, Pope John XXIII, an elderly man and also a beloved public figure like Pope Francis, gave his opening address entitled Gaudet Mater Ecclesia. In this speech, John said that the Church would not condemn anyone or any ideology. Instead of the medicines of severity, the Church would rather use the “medicines of mercy.” In the past, the Catholic Church has been re- lentless in condemning errors and heresies. But John saw no need for that as he tried to bring the Church up to date with the modern world… Here I can see a few similarities between the thinking of Francis and that of the late John XXIII. As we celebrate this year of mercy, we would do well to remember the Second Vatican Council. Secondly, our new liturgical year has also begun just about two weeks ago with the first Sunday of Advent. We are now in Cycle C of the liturgical readings. Our main Sunday Gospel for this whole year is St. Luke. It is very fitting that the Year of Mercy coincides with Cycle C. The Gos- pel of Luke is correctly known as the Gospel of “mercy.” Some of the most memorable stories about the mercy of God can be found in Luke. For example, one can find the story of Jesus’ en- counter with the notorious tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 18-19). Even someone as bad as Zac- chaeus can obtain mercy. And there is also the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15), perhaps the most well known story in Luke. It tells us very powerfully of the love of the Father for his way- ward child(ren). Besides the point of mercy, this parable reminds us not only that we are a pilgrim people in search of God, but also that God is a pilgrim God in search of his people. Fr. Anthony Hien Vu 2 JOY BEYOND HAPPINESS This particular Sunday, from a liturgical standpoint, is quite unique. Normally the first reading and the Gospel are thematically related, and most often the second reading rarely fits in with that theme. On this particular Sunday however, the first and second readings are thematically related, and on the surface the Gospel does not fit in. It is possible that the tie in of the Gospel with the other two read- ings is more intimate than is immediately obvious. The obvious theme for this Sunday is Rejoice. Perhaps the liturgy is inviting us to a deeper reflection of what that might actually mean. In our culture, “happiness” is the thing that everyone is seeking. The problem with happiness is that it is rather fickle and it comes and goes based on circumstances. When we read the word “rejoice” we are likely to translate that into some version of “be happy.” My suspicion is that neither Paul nor Zephaniah were thinking of happiness when they used the word rejoice. I believe that they recog- nized, unlike many of us, that joy is a deeply profound emotion rooted in the complexity of human experience. Joy includes dark times and bright times, life and death, consolation and desolation. Happiness merely feels good for a moment. In one scene of the film Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis and his wife (American poet Joy Davidman) are enjoying a splendid day in the countryside, having a lovely experience. Amidst the laughter, they both all of a sudden remember that she is dying from cancer. As you can imagine, that is quite a mood changer. He says to her, in a valiant attempt to rescue the experience without running from it, “The pain of then is part of our joy now, so that the joy of now can be part of our pain then.” I think that is a poignant expression of how joy transcends circumstances and gives life to the complexity all we experience. As we prepare for all the experiences that Advent invites us to fully enter into, we realize, and the readings point out, that the future can be pretty intimidating. Things are not always going to work out as we plan. Life has many twists and curves that we can rarely see approaching. Sometimes we receive a warning, but most often we don't. The Advent message of preparation is part of the notion of rejoicing we encounter this week. How do we recognize joy as more than happiness? It seems to me that joy must be SHARED. It is inclusive, where happiness you can experience all by yourself. That is why where John the Baptist fits in. His exhortation to share with others may well be the tie in to the rejoice of the first two readings. Sharing joy is a gift to those who give it and those who receive it. Perhaps that may seem like a stretch for some, but in terms of lived experi- ence, everyone is enriched with genuine joy. Joy is not bound by our usual categories of thinking. So how do we respond to life unfolding with all it's complexity when someone shares it with us? Rejoice! Again I say rejoice! Chuck Andersen Worship Council 3 For several Christian people throughout the world, especially Mexican and Mexican-American Christians, December 12, of course, is the celebration of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. The feast commemorates her December 9-12, 1531 appearances to Juan Diego, the recent Náhuatl-Aztec convert to Christianity, whose own tilma or cloak bore and continues to bear the miraculous imprint of her image from when “the desert rejoiced and blossomed” (Isaiah 35.1) at Mt. Tepeyac with Castillian roses blooming in December, the image of the Brown Virgin (La Morenita), the indigenous mestiza clothed with the sun and wearing the cinta, the band of pregnancy, standing on the moon, head bowed and hands folded in prayer, and born aloft by an angel of the Lord. I would like to suggest that the Virgin of Guadalupe belongs in a particular way to our Advent preparations because, like Mary herself in her great New Testa- ment hymn of God’s praise, the Magnificat, she proclaims to us the Gospel, the good news of our salvation in Christ, the good news of God who scatters the proud, exalts the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and remembers his promises to Abraham and his children for ever…We can celebrate the Virgin of Mary of Guadalupe, then, because in a special way she proclaims to us the Gospel! A second reason why we celebrate Mary of Guadalupe is because her very face, which already blends European and indigenous American features, proclaims the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, mestiza “Church” that came to be incarnated as the result of the sixteenth-century cultural confrontation between Spain and Mexico, and still struggles to be born in our own day. Both the person and the image of Mary of Guadalupe, we might say, function as a typus ecclesiae, a “type,” or “image,” or “model” of the Church.