Archive for November, 2010

Second Sunday of Advent

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Matthew 3:1-12

The prophet Isaiah had announced him, John the Baptist: “A voice of one crying in the desert… Prepare the Way of the Lord! Make straight his paths. Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

At best, John the Baptist was an original character. At worst, he was a weirdo. It is said of him: “He wore clothing of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts (bugs) and wild honey.” And yet he was effective as he preached “the coming of the Kingdom.” He got people’s attention. Even the religious leaders, the Saducees and the Pharisees, sought his guidance. But John was tough on them. “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. It isn’t enough to have Abraham as your ancestor. You will be judged according to the good fruit you produce!”

“Good fruit?” What is John talking about? It isn’t very complicated. We’re all called to produce good fruit, like kindness, giving people hope, helping others, raising children, being good to our pets, caring for family members, being a willing taxi driver for our kids and their friends, etc. Producing good fruit is the ordinary, everyday response to our personal, professional, and family responsibilities. We don’t think much about it, but we usually give it our best. When we do our best with generous love, the fruit we produce is really sweet.

On November 1, 2010, we celebrated All Saints Day, which is the official recognition of day by day good fruits, the celebration of good people doing what we’re supposed to do. Nothing in the spiritual life is automatic. The Saducees and Pharisees thought, “all I need to do is to be baptized and I’ll be all set!” No one is ever once and for all “all set.”

As life develops and as we get older our circumstances change, but we still are called to produce good fruit. Once it was toward our children, now it’s our grandchildren and helping out our grown children. Our own children never outgrow the need for parents; in fact, many grow to bear good fruit themselves as they now help and assist their own parents meet their aging needs with diminished capabilities. It’s called life cycle. It’s called full circle living.

We work in a healthcare facility. We all have different jobs to do. We produce “good fruit” when we do our jobs well. We can be trained to be housekeepers or nurses or aides or doctors or case managers or secretaries or chaplains or food specialists or material managers or department heads. We produce good fruit when we perform our jobs with competence and when we live our lives according to our personalized spiritual convictions.

In Advent, we prepare the “way of the Lord” inside us. Jesus is already born and has been for 2000 years. During this Advent, we are celebrating Jesus being born in us. Together we can indeed bear very sweet fruit. 

Kenn Rancourt
Pastoral Care

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First Sunday of Advent

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

                                                              
Isaiah 2:1-5                Psalm 122                  Romans 13:11-14                   Matthew 24:36-44

 Sunday, November 28, 2010

The first Sunday of Advent marks a new year in the Christian calendar and the season of Advent is a time of waiting and preparing for Christmas.  The message in the gospel of Matthew for this first Sunday of a new year is to wake up.  In fact, the words of Jesus in this week’s gospel are: “Stay awake!…Be prepared!…For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  In the second reading from Paul’s letter to the community of Rome he writes, “You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.” (Romans 13:11).


Jesuit scholar Dean Brackley asks, “How do you want to spend your life? We all know you can ruin it. But what is more important to recognize is that you can sleep through it.” There are many ways to “sleep through” our lives–we become numb to wonder or desensitized to suffering.  Our goals or vision may be overrun by endless daily tasks that overwhelm our energy.  Advent is a time to slow down and refocus on what is truly important and life-giving, so that we can be alert and attentive to the beauty, pain, joy, and sorrow around us. 


December 2, 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Sisters Maura Clark, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and laywoman Jean Donovan who lived their (too brief) lives fully awake to the great suffering of the people of El Salvador. Despite the violence and terror, the women were inspired and compelled by the hope of the Salvadoran people, and with them, they held onto God’s promise of peace from this week’s first reading, when “One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” (Isaiah 2:4). Their solidarity with the poor brought the fate of the poor upon them; on December 2, 1980, they were killed by Salvadoran soldiers.


Maryknoll Sister Ita Ford wrote a letter to her 16-year-old niece a few months before her death.  One “birthday wish” she had for her niece was “that I hope you can come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you, something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead.”  These are the aspects of our lives that keep us awake and prepared.  In spiritual grounding sessions and Work Sabbath programs at St. Mary’s, many employees have shared how the care they offer to patients, residents, families, and co-workers holds deep meaning for them.  This Advent may we rekindle the parts of our lives that energize and enthuse us so that St. Mary’s can be a place of deeper love, brighter light, and authentic hope.


Elizabeth Keene

Mission Effectiveness

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Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Sunday, November 7, 2010

2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14       2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5           Luke 20:27-38 

The Gospel reading this week may well be called an arid passage, not one that is very inspirational or easily discussed.  However in conjunction with the first reading from Maccabees, I would say that the theme for this week is life after death.  Do we believe in life after death?  Do we believe that the way we live and the relationship one has with God make a difference?  Good questions to ponder… 

In the Old Testament reading we hear of a mother and her seven sons who were tortured and at least four of them put to death because they refused to go against one of the Jewish Laws.  Their martyrdom and their willingness to die rather than disobey God’s law actually amazed the pagan king. This mother and her sons believed in the God of Israel and they believed in an afterlife.  That is what gave them such courage and strength.

 In the Gospel passage, it is another matter.  The Pharisees and the Sadducees were two groups of Jews with different beliefs.  The Pharisees were very “religious,” very much concerned with the smallest prescriptions and rituals of the law.  The Sadducees were more into politics and wealth and, unlike the other group, they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or in an afterlife.  Their question about the woman who had married seven brothers, one after another upon the death of the previous one, in order to give them descendants, was “Whose wife will she be in the afterlife?”  By asking such a question they were being facetious and sarcastic, trying to show how ridiculous it was to them to even believe in life after death.  Jesus takes them where they are and basically says that we must not think of heaven in terms of earth.  Life after death will be quite different because we will be quite different.

 Jesus is saying that God is a God of the living and that we continue to live after our physical death.  Our bodies are mortal.  As healthcare workers we are very familiar with the fact that our body wears out, can be diseased, can be broken in an accident.  We will all die, but we know neither the day, nor the hour.  Believing in life after death helps us to live well and to die with hope.  I always wonder what it is like to die when one thinks it is the end of everything…

 Many people who believe wonder about heaven.  Where is it?  What will it be like? Who will be there?  Many books have been written about all those issues. One thing is for sure, it is a mystery to us now.  As healthcare workers, may we all strive to be witnesses of hope to our patients and to one another, that there is more love, more goodness, more happiness to come in life after death.  Let us believe and trust… The second reading reminds us of this by saying that God our Father has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace. 

Sr. Suzanne Beaudoin, SSCh
Director of Pastoral Care

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The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

2 Samuel 5:1-3                              Col 1:12-30                                   Gospel: Luke 23:35-43
Sunday, Nobember 14, 2010

We end our liturgical year with a festive solemnity—that of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. Yet the readings do not permit a one-sided approach to this day by only celebrating Christ’s glory.

Paul’s exalted vision of Christ as ruling over all powers and all creation (see second reading) is tempered by the sober presentation of Jesus as a crucified “King of the Jews (Gospel).

The tension between the two readings (and an inherent tension in this solemnity) is that we can never celebrate an exalted Christ without also acknowledging the suffering of Jesus.

Yes, even a jubilant celebration of Christ our King includes the reality of our King as savior—one who suffered and died for us. This is the pattern of our own lives: we suffer, die to self, and only by joining ourselves to the suffering Christ will we share in the glory of the victorious Christ.

How is Christ a king? Not by sitting on a throne; he hangs on a cross. Not by accumulating property; he establishes a kingdom of mercy and forgiveness. Not by wielding power; he does not save himself. What makes Christ our King is that he gave himself for the salvation of others.

Although Jesus, in fact, has the power to “save himself” he chooses, rather to save a condemned criminal. The extent and reach of his kingship is revealed in saving mercy. In this Gospel, one criminal acknowledges that “we have been condemned justly.”  Yet, when the same criminal asks, “Jesus, remember me,” Jesus responds, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” In this short exchange Jesus reveals the kind of King he is—one who is full of mercy and uses his power to save others. When we, like the criminal, confess our own sinfulness and seek divine mercy, then Jesus can be for us our merciful King.

As the Good Thief had the insight of faith to recognize who Jesus was, so do we share in the same faith and the same glory, as we recognize who Jesus is for us. We can never celebrate the sovereignty of God revealed in Jesus without first acknowledging the suffering Christ.

Where in our own lives have we received or do we need God’s mercy?

What repetitive, self-centered weakness keeps us from being mediators of Christ’s gift of mercy?

Do we see the opportunities to reach out and extend mercy to those who are sick and suffering as our participation in Christ’s saving Kingdom?

Father Joseph Manship
Pastoral Care

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Week of All Saints Day: November 1

Friday, November 5th, 2010

October 31, 2010

Matthew 5:1-12 (Beatitudes)

This week we celebrate my favorite feast: “All Saints Day!” On this day, we recognize all anonymous saints – all uncanonized and uncanonizeable good people. People who are part of our lives…the good people we know. On “All Saints Day”, I spend my day wishing good people “Happy Feast Day!” I get weird stares but this good wish is for real. Holiness is very familiar with diapers, dust, laundry, cooking, yard work, picnics, jobs, and vacations. Holiness is not necessarily found in church but in everyday activities.

I remember one time in a sermon I asked: “What is the opposite of a saint?” I waited for answers. The most frequent answer was “the opposite of a saint is a sinner.” “Nope,” I said, “Every saint is a forgiven sinner. For me, the opposite of a saint is a FLOP…someone who fails living. Someone whose life seems to amount to a hill of beans. Sounds like a flop to me!”

“What about me?” said a stay-at-home mom. Raising children is the opposite of a flop. You know what it takes to bring up children…how it never ends when they grow up and leave home. We still worry about them. We wish to help them. We welcome our grandchildren. Our children always remain the center of our caring. The act of raising children is the frequent cause of our holiness. It demands total other-centeredness. But when we are a parent being other-centered comes from our love of our kids. Other-centeredness is part of parenthood. Because it is so widespread doesn’t make it less heroic or less holy.

When we are born, we are born in God’s image. We already have God inside us. Growing up hopefully consists in becoming more aware of our basic goodness. In my spiritual journey, I was often encouraged to “open” myself up and let God in. Thereby, I could more conscientiously become a man of God. I often wondered why this directive never worked. Was it because “I didn’t get it?” Was it because I was so immature and distracted that I couldn’t stay still long enough to let God in? Oh, I believed that if I wasn’t a better person it was my fault. At this point in my life, I no longer think that. My spiritual mentors had it all backwards. I was not supposed to be still and let God in. I was supposed to be in contact with God in me to let God out! What a different point of view! God is already in me. I am the beloved of Abba. I have God’s life inside me. I am made in my Abba’s image. How can I be still and let God in when God is already in? Our lives would be more exciting and stimulating if we used our energies to let God out!

All Saints Day was Monday, November 1, 2010. From this All Saints Day on, take the resolution to spell God with two “o” so that you have before you and inside you the presence of Good to make you see in your children, your spouse, and you, the presence of Good. Take pleasure and dare to get excited that Good is alive and well in you and your family.

And in your work, in our health care facilities, make a point of letting God out to touch patients and to give them hope. That, to me, is the pure opposite of a FLOP.

Kenn Rancourt
Pastoral Care

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