PARISH BULLETIN September 21 – 22, 2019 – 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time PARISH TEAM Fr. Joseph Vadassery “… You SACRAMENTAL Pastor (Ext 3) PREPARATION [email protected] cannot BAPTISM Fr. Jossy George Thomas Associate Pastor serve Preparation 1st Sunday of the month [email protected] at 1:00 pm God October 6 & November 3 Deacon Gem Mella Permanent Deacon (Ext 6) and Celebrations 2nd or 3rd Sunday [email protected] at 1:00 pm Sr. Delia Rubio RVM wealth.” October 13 & 20 Sacramental Preparation (Ext 7) November 10 & 17 [email protected] Luke 16.13 FIRST RECONCILIATION & Ingrid van Dolder-Frigon FIRST HOLY EUCHARIST - Grade 3+ Secretary/Bookkeeper (Ext 4) [email protected] MASS TIMES Sacramental Preparation in the Fall. Mike Petruchik WEEKDAY Register by Friday, October 25 Monday - Saturday 9:00 am Maintenance/Custodian (Ext 5) Parent Information Session [email protected] First Friday 9:00 am, 7:00 pm Sunday Nov 3 at 2:00 pm Josefino Gutierrez WEEKEND Custodian Saturday 4:30 pm CONFIRMATION - Grade 6+ Giselle Horne Sunday 9:30 am, 11:30 am, 5:00 pm Sacramental Preparation occurs once Receptionist (Ext 0) each year. Next Session: Spring of 2020. [email protected] Register by Thursday, April 30. ADORATION Sessions begin Thursday, May 7. IN THE CHURCH MARRIAGE Monday—Saturday 8:00 to 9:00 am Six months prior to your wedding date, IN LUMEN CHRISTI CHAPEL plan to meet with Fr Joseph or Fr Jossy. Monday—Friday 9:45 am to 8:00 pm To sign up contact Marie 780.450.0907 WEEKLY COLLECTION Welcome ORDINARY RECEIPTS RECONCILIATION MONDAY—FRIDAY September 14 & 15, 2019 30 minutes prior to Mass $6,618 SATURDAY CHURCH MORTGAGE 2019 3:00 to 4:15 pm Principal $720,000 to our new seminarian: Interest $125,970 Deacon Brian Trueman OFFICE HOURS Total $845,970 Transitional Deacon Monday—Friday 9:00 am - 8:00 pm Year to Date $308,281 Closed for lunch Noon - 1:00 pm for the Archdiocese of St. Boniface Thank you for your generosity. Teaching from our Holy Father The Pope, as Bishop of Rome and successor of Peter, is the visible and perpetual foundation of unity among the bishops and among Christ's faithful. It is the Pope's role as Vicar of Christ and Pastor of the entire Church to guide the community of Christ's faithful, to safeguard them in the truth, and to confirm his brothers and sisters in the faith. Dear Brothers and Sisters: In our continuing catechesis on the Acts of the Apostles, we now reflect on how Saint Peter and the Apostles respond with courage to those who wanted to stop the spread of the Gospel. Strengthened by the experience of Pentecost the Apostles become the “megaphone” of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming the saving word of God which cannot be silenced. In the midst of the Sanhedrin, which feels threatened by the Apostolic preaching, a different voice is heard. The highly regarded doctor of the Law, Gamaliel, demonstrates the “art of discernment”. Filled with prophetic wisdom, he invites the leaders of the people not to give in to haste, but to wait for developments over time. This kind of discernment is valuable for the Church because it invites us to be farsighted, to contemplate events and not to make hasty judgments. Discernment is an art that does not provide standardized solutions. It is an exercise of spiritual intelligence carried out by the children of God who learn to see traces of the Father’s presence within history. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us acquire the habit of discernment in order to learn that both time and the faces of our brothers and sisters are messengers of the living God. General Audience, St Peter’s Square, Wednesday, 18 September 2019: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190918_udienza-generale.html The Reason for our Hope By Most Rev. Richard W. Smith, Archbishop of Edmonton Monday, September 16, 2019 Read the Instructions! OK. I admit it. I’m one of those who waits too late to read instruction books. Somehow I have it in my head that I should be able to figure out how to set up a new gadget or use an unfamiliar product without needing to follow the how-to instructions. Anyone who knows just how mechanically or technologically challenged I am would see how preposterous such an assumption is on my part. Needless to say, by the time I do accept the fact that I should look at the directions, I’ve made a rather total mess of things. If anybody is nearby, the dreaded question is soon asked: “Why didn’t you read the instructions to begin with?” I expect that God would like to pose the same question to a large part of humanity today. His query would arise not from our incapacity to assemble things properly but the inability to live together peacefully. Looking at the mess we have made – widespread isolation and loneliness, homelessness, family dysfunction, hostility separating groups of people from one another, wars among nations, killing the innocent, and so on – God could rightly ask, “Why didn’t you read the instructions?” The pain and hardship impacting vast swathes of the human family today could have been avoided if we had. In point of fact, God has provided us with instructions for how to live. They are found in that instruction book we call the Bible. Some critically important pages of instruction were given to us at mass on Sunday. From the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel we were given the magnificent parables that Jesus taught concerning God’s mercy. They speak of God’s desire to seek us out and forgive us, and in so doing teach us that the cause of our difficulties is rebellion against God’s love. In so many ways we think we can get along without God and his instructions: like the prodigal son we make a mess of life by squandering the good things God gives us; like the elder son, we get it wrong by thinking that the love of God is something to earn by our own efforts; or, like the Israelite people following Moses in the desert, we botch things up entirely by casting away our reliance upon God and fashioning gods of our own making (cf. Exodus 32:7-11,13-14). It’s time to consult the instruction book God provides. In the Bible, He is telling us to turn back to Him in repentance and ask Him to fix, by His mercy, the mess we have made of living by not following His directions in the first place. There is another instruction book that God provides us to read. It is the witness of his saints. The lives of the saints form a book of instruction by furnishing us with examples of how we are to live in accord with God’s design. Today many people are quick to go to YouTube for instruction videos on all sorts of things. When it comes to right living, consult the saints. A wonderful example was given to the Church on Sunday. I visited St. Boniface parish that we have here in Edmonton for German-speaking Catholics. They invited me to join them to celebrate the beatification that same day in Limburg, Germany, of Father Richard Henkes. Now his is quite the example! I confess, I had not heard of Fr. Henkes prior to receiving this invitation from the parish, and I am now very moved by, and grateful for, his witness. He served as a Pallottine priest in Germany during the Nazi era. In the face of the horrible evil perpetrated by that regime, he did not hesitate to speak out against it from the pulpit. For that he was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died. From the “instruction book” that was his life, we learn that attacks against human dignity, in whatever form, are never acceptable and must be met not with silent acquiescence but clear denunciation and a call to repentance, even though there be a cost. Instruction books are given so that we get things right. Reading them is obviously insufficient. They need to be followed. This is supremely true in the case of God’s instruction books for right living: the Bible and the witness of the saints. Let’s be sure to read them and follow the directions we are given. This article can be found at grandinmedia.ca/archbsmith In Jesus’ parable of the Unjust Steward, we encounter a financial We pray for . manager who has wasted his master’s wealth and faces dismissal from . those who are sick, especially John Ang, his position. To overcome the crisis confronting him, the steward Anna Hwong, Bernard Lim, Nicholas Scott, reduces some very considerable debts owed by poor neighbours to Simon Chen & Bobbie Mitchell. May they his master in order to help them out. Though the steward has sinned receive the peace & healing of the Lord. against God and his master by squandering what belongs to someone else, both the . the repose of the souls of those who prudent way in which he goes about resolving the crisis coupled with relieving people who have died, especially Jean Plouffe, are in need can be seen as a way to better steward the gifts entrusted to us by God. Joseph Matthew Cherunilam, Juan Although good stewards today acknowledge that they may never use their God-given gifts Dizon, Thérèse LaBrie, Larry Fedechko in a way that completely conforms to the demands of the Gospel, a commitment to using & Ed Manning.