Continuing Action of the Spirit

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Blow in us, O Spirit of God, as we prepare to celebrate your continued presence with us and within us.  Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today’s readings remind us of the gift of the abiding Spirit. The action of the Spirit transformed our ancestors in the faith, strengthening them for the work of evangelization and encouraging them in times of doubt, difficulty, conflict or persecution. It plotted their path for the growth of the Christian community. But some of us are perhaps less aware of the continuing action of the Spirit in the Church today. Is it because the Spirit continually challenges believers to practice discernment? Is it because we think we will be caught off-guard by what the Spirit might say?

The scripture selections will enable us to see how the early church dealt with similar issues and to appreciate some of the principles of discernment that they developed under the aegis of the Spirit. Jesus in today’s Gospel (Jn 14:23-29) establishes the Spirit as God’s gift sent in Jesus’ name to remind the church of all that Jesus said and taught. An attitude of welcome is necessary on the part of all believers to benefit from this gift. This welcome should express itself in the form of constant collective and private prayer besides having a willingness to be surprised.

A second principle is suggested in today’s 1st reading from Acts (15:1-2, 22-29). Don’t backpedal, don’t attempt to restrict the action of the Spirit. After the Cornelius event (Acts. 10-11) and the Spirit-driven, landmark decision to accept gentiles, some wanted to impose Mosaic practice on gentiles as a requisite for salvation. After considerable dissension and controversy, the church agreed to gather, tapped into the power of the ever-present Spirit and decided not to burden the gentile converts “beyond that which is strictly necessary”.

In this post Vatican II era, we must allow the Spirit, so much in evidence at that Council, to continue to move us to realize its insights, decisions, reforms and renewals. Rather than backpedal or ignore or even deny the movement of the Spirit, let us be as bold as a Paul, a Peter, a Barnabas or a John XXIII.

To encourage our continued openness to the Spirit author Murray Bodo, a Franciscan priest, shares the following: “…from time to time, there is an unexpected, sudden revelation or shining forth of God,… call it insight, epiphany, the presence of the Spirit... because of that moment, all the rest of my days are changed permanently.”

WE WILL COME TO HIM… Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him. How will I respond to that love? Am I being called to the priesthood or religious life? If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 or send an email to vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca

 

"Priesthood is the Love of the Heart of Jesus" On Saturday, May 15, the Archdiocese of Toronto will celebrate the ordination of five new priests for service to the community. His Grace, Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, will preside at the ceremony, which will take place at St. Michael’s Cathedral. Please keep them in your prayers. They are: - 1 - Rev Mr. Luis Manuel Calleja Jr., 31, was born and raised in Toronto (baptised in St. Edith Stein Parish and will celebrate mass with us on May 23). - 2 - Rev Mr. Kim D'Souza, 27, was born into an Indian family living in Nigeria. - 3 - Rev Mr. Silvio Eljuga, 41, was born in Zagreb, Croatia. - 4 - Rev Mr. Landorff José García Mariona, 34, was born in San Salvador City, El Salvador. - 5 - Rev Mr. Bartlomiej Palczewski, 32, was born and raised in Poland. Visit the Archdiocese of Toronto website for photos and their brief biographies.

Living Gospels

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Risen Lord,  help us bring the good news to life and allow it to speak God’s love to all the unloved as well as the unlovable. Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday, as we continue our look back at our beginnings, we are reminded that the quality and character by which we are to be known and identified as Jesus’ own is the love that we have for one another. Love compelled Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:21-27, first reading) to persevere in carrying the message of salvation to as many places and people as possible. Love is the atmosphere that pervades the Seer’s vision (Rev. 21:1-5, second reading) of the new Jerusalem wherein the presence of God, who is Love, obviates all suffering, sorrow and pain. In today’s gospel (Jn 13:31-33, 34-35), Jesus makes it clear that truly authentic Christian love must be more than mere words; love must become a way of life.

In order to affirm the absolute necessity of genuine love for living an authentically Christian life, Anglican Canon William Barcus, in an address delivered to a Nashville, TN, audience (1988), cited a 1944 photo essay published in Life magazine. The subject of the essay was the red foxes of Holmes County, Ohio. One Saturday about 600 men and women and their children got together and formed a big circle, five miles across. They all carried sticks and started walking into the woods and fields, yelling and baying to frighten the foxes out of their lairs. Inside this diminishing circle, the foxes ran to and fro, tired and frightened. A number of them were killed on the spot. Finally as the circle grew smaller and smaller, down to a few yards, the remaining foxes went to the centre and lay down, for they didn’t know what else to do. But the men and women knew what to do. They hit these dying wounded with their clubs until they were dead.

While his listeners dried their eyes, wet with sympathy, Barcus continued “I stand before you today, as one weary of running, as one wounded myself” (Barcus was suffering from AIDS and all the surrounding stigma).
“My people are being destroyed, and your people and all our people together… not only by an illness called AIDS but by a darker illness called hatred… The Christ, Jesus, the compassionate Lord of Life and Lord of more forgiveness and Lord of more hope is the one we have vowed to follow and be ultimately guided by. Sadly, too many of these sick have wondered if they had any alternative but to go to the centre of the circle and lie down and die. Where are you in the circle? Where are we? Where would Christ be?”

A NEW COMMANDMENT… The new commandment of love is required of every one who follows the risen Lord. How do you fulfill the commandment? If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca

 

 

CATHOLIC EDUCATION WEEK

May 2-7, 2010 “Rejoicing in Hope”

Our parish Catholic schools invite parishioners to join them in celebrating Catholic Education Week 2010 this week. During this week, the Catholic community celebrates the distinctive contribution that Catholic schools make to our students, our community, our society and to the province at large. Catholic education continues to integrate Gospel values into every aspect of the school’s life and curriculum.

Thanks to all those who provide leadership in our Catholic schools. We pray for all educators and students, giving thanks to God for all those who faithfully spread the Good News.

Tracking the Movement of the Spirit

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Risen Lord, help us find a lasting home with you and all those who have gone before us, tracking the path of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

One of the advantages of tracking hurricanes is the possibility of preparedness; knowledge of the storm’s path and power allows those in close proximity to travel a predetermined escape route to safety. A very different type of “tracking” is set before the praying assembly today. We, the 21st century disciples of Jesus, are invited to track how the great and powerful breath of the Spirit moved the church’s mission slowly but surely beyond Judah to the rest of the then known world. The inevitable spread of the Gospel and the amazing growth of the church in apostolic times prove tiny beginnings can result in astonishing ends.

In the 1st reading (Acts 13:14, 43-52) we see Paul Barnabas and others working diligently to bring the good news to all of Jesus’ sheep (Gospel, John 10:27-30). We shall follow their movements when they are met with welcome as well as when their best efforts are rejected. We shall marvel as the universal embrace of the Gospel reaches out to gentiles as well as Jews. We shall learn what it means to persevere despite persecution and we will be challenged to ask ourselves, if we see any reflection of those first evangelizers in our own efforts for the sake of the Gospel.

Do we rejoice as they did at the very thought of proclaiming the good news and witnessing to its truth, justice and love? Can we set aside, as they did, our preconceptions, our racial biases, our penchant for judging the worthiness or not of others? Can we persist in embracing Gospel values and in living lives that will necessarily contribute to our lack of popularity within the current culture.

As we reconnect at this time each year with those who have gone before us in the faith and as we track their efforts and measure ourselves against the standards they set, we are also to be encouraged, as they were, by the visions of John the Seer (Revelation, 2nd reading for Easter 4,5,6). To those first evangelizers and to us, John’s visions hold out the hope that when, at last, our lives have been spent in service of the Gospel, we shall find a lasting home with God and Jesus and all those who have gone before us, tracking the path plotted by the Spirit, wherever, whenever and however it may lead.

AM I BEING CALLED? How am I being called to feed the lambs of Jesus? Could it be as an ordained or consecrated person? If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca

 

FEED MY SHEEP… In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells Peter again and again, “If you love Me, feed my sheep.” He says the same to each of us, “If you love Me, use the gifts I have given you to serve your brothers and sisters.”

Feeding and Tending

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Risen Lord,  help us make our love for you real by feeding and tending others. Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. With this triple imperative, the risen Jesus opened the way for Peter to come out of his despair and experience redemption. He who had vehemently denied his discipleship (Jn. 18:17, 25-27), as well as any association with Jesus, was given the opportunity to renew his love for Jesus. Jesus’ words to Peter not only helped to assuage his guilt, but they also set the agenda for the rest of his life - and ours. “Feed my lambs” would become the agenda of the post resurrection church.

Feeding Jesus’ sheep would challenge Peter to abandon his ancestors’ centuries–old practice of remaining separate from non-Jews and to accept all people as belonging to the one flock of Christ. That would challenge Peter, as is illustrated in today’s Gospel (Jn. 21:1-19), to welcome all into one boat (bark of Peter) and the one net of salvation. Feeding and pasturing Jesus’ sheep also meant that Peter and others would work so that John’s vision of the Lord, as shared in today’s second reading (Rev. 5:11-14) would eventually be realized and that the voices of every creature would unite to render praise and honour and glory to Jesus and to God forever.

Feeding Jesus’ sheep would soon find Peter exercising a healing ministry in the same manner of Jesus. For healing, teaching, and preaching in Jesus’ name, i.e., for feeding the hungers of Jesus’ sheep, Peter and the other disciples would incur the wrath and the hostility of the authorities, first of Jerusalem and then of Rome. Their bravery and boldness in the face of such personal danger is evidenced in today’s first reading (Acts 5:27-32).

While contemporary believers can readily appreciate the challenge of Peter’s agenda, what are the ramifications of that agenda for us today? For the answer to that question, Henri Nouwen says, first we have to ask ourselves Jesus’ question: “Do you love me?” Perhaps another way of asking that question would be, “How do you love my least ones?” Jesus equated loving him with feeding and tending his sheep. Therefore let us, as church, be renewed in our resolve to make our love for Jesus real by feeding and tending others.

AM I BEING CALLED? How am I being called to feed the lambs of Jesus? Could it be as an ordained or consecrated person? If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca

Easter Experience

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Risen Lord,  transform us radically from within and make us ministers of your forgiveness. Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Easter, the central feast of the year, is unique in many respects. It is the only feast that lasts for 50 days in the church calendar. St. Athansius called the seven weeks from Easter to Pentecost “the great Sunday”. The first inclination of the church’s instinct to extend this feast comes in the way we celebrate the Octave of Easter, the first 8 days of the 50. The celebration of Mass on each of those days takes place almost as if we were still on Easter Sunday itself.

What did the Easter experience mean for those earliest Christians and what it continues to mean for us, here and now? Jesus lives; fear not! The early Christians experienced and appropriated the freedom from fear achieved by Jesus-risen. This fact is admirably illustrated in the radical transformation that overcame them. The frightened became fearless preachers of good news and ministers of God’s forgiveness for sinners. What made the difference in their lives? Jesus, who died and rose to life and who in that saving act, conquered the power of fear. Unfortunately, however, fear continues to be the great human leveller. Everybody is fearful of something: fear of failure, fear of hurting or being hurt, fear of loss, fear of not knowing love, fear of pain, fear that what I believe in and hope in may not be so. But the message and the truth of Easter is “Fear not!”. These are empowering words. Freedom from fear is the achievement of the resurrection and the experience into which each of us has been welcomed by the victorious Christ.

Jesus is risen, explained the late, great Karl Rahner and the world with him. Because of this everything is different and we are too. Death is no longer a final stopping place but a passage to life that does not end. Because Jesus lives, death should no longer strike fear into our hearts. “There is nothing to fear”, says the risen Jesus in today’s 2nd reading from Revelation (1:9-13, 17-19). Aware that fear and peace cannot commingle in the human heart, “Peace”, says the Risen Jesus in today’s Gospel.

And yet, despite all these assurances and despite the fact that the imperative “Fear not!” and other similar admonitions against fear are repeated literally hundreds of times in the scriptures, we continue to allow fear to have the upper hand. Why? Could it be that we have yet to welcome Jesus-risen, the embodiment of forgiveness, into our lives?

WHAT WILL IT TAKE? Thomas believed because he saw Jesus. What will it take for you to respond to God's Call to priesthood or consecrated life? If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca

Easter People - Fearless People

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Risen Lord, help us live the Easter joy in our day-to-day life.  Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“We are an Easter People; Alleluia is our song.” This declaration was made almost 15 centuries ago by St. Augustine as an expression of Easter joy. But living our joy and enunciating our faith in Jesus’ resurrection in our day-to-day existence is a big challenge.

With regard to this daily challenge, Latin American theologian Jon Sobrino shares a personal memory in his book “Christ the Liberator”. About 30 years ago, Sobrino was present at a mass during which some of his fellow Jesuits were professing their religious vows. At the celebration, Ignacio Ellacuria (one of the Jesuits who were murdered for the faith in El Salvador, Nov. 16, 1989) spoke of the importance of following Jesus by living as already risen beings. Sobrino saw that he was accustomed to Ellacuria’s liking for historicizing the Christian faith.

Jesus resurrection in history means that we can continue to hope in a world grown dim with despair. In raising Jesus, God liberated an innocent, unveiled the injustices done against him and crowned his saving sacrificial death with victory and life. To live as risen beings in history is to share in all that God has done in Jesus and for Jesus.

Living as risen beings also means living free from fear. Fear must never again be the motive for anything we do or do not do. At various times and in variety of ways, we fear deprivation, boredom, loneliness, failure, suffering, but at the root of all these fears, insists David Knight, is the fear of death. Without our belief in resurrection death is the utter end of all; it is absolute loss. But through our baptism into the dying and rising of Jesus, death is absolute gain. Thereby we live as risen beings forever.

Marvellous was the transformation from fear to fearlessness in those who first experienced the power and reality of Jesus-risen. They learned to readjust their priorities, concentrating not on the passing things of earth but on the things that are above (Col. 3:1-4, 2nd reading). They could powerfully preach the good news of salvation (Acts 10:34, 36-43, 1st reading). Their experiences with the crucified Messiah and with the empty tomb (Jn. 20:1-9) will provide renewed impetus for our own continued growth in faith and our commitment to live as risen beings until Jesus comes again.

HERALD THE GOOD NEWS The Lord is risen, it is true! Through our baptism He calls us to proclaim new life to the world. Pray for those who herald the Good News as priests, brothers and sisters. If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca

BEYOND WEEPING

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus,  stay with me and help me reach out to those who walk the way of the cross. Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On this Palm Sunday, we begin the week called “Holy”. Our intent during this week is to remember the suffering and death of Jesus. Those sufferings were borne in fidelity to God and with total reliance on God’s help (Is. 50:4-7, 1st reading). Those sufferings were embraced with a humility that accepted not only the human condition but also the position of a slave and even a disgraceful death on the cross (Phil. 2:6-11, 2nd reading). Those sufferings were made all the more burdensome by the incomprehension of sleeping friends, by the denial of a chosen disciple, by the betrayal of another, by rejection of authorities and the mockery of the crowds (Lk 22:14 - 23:56, Gospel). Our interest in the sufferings of Jesus must never be primarily intellectual and speculative; they should always be practical. It should become a way of life for us. It should renew our sensitivity to the sufferings of others.

Jesus walked the way of the cross in Jerusalem “once and for all”. But the way of the cross continues to be walked by more than 150 million street children throughout the world (United Nations statistics, 2002). A good number of them are forced into the streets to eke out a meagre living for their families. School is out of question for these young labourers who invariably become victims of violence, sexual exploitation and abject neglect. Thousands of them live in sewers or under bridges.

According to the administrators of Human Rights Watch, Brazil’s street children are victimized by the nation’s Police force, which in one day alone, executed 27 children in a church in Rio. In Colombia, the HRW estimates that at least six innocent children die per day at the hands of law enforcement officials. As long as these situations persist, the way of the cross continues for Jesus’ least ones.

In today’s gospel we find women being moved to tears at the sight of Jesus carrying the cross. Jesus’ words to them continue to speak their challenge to us: “Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and your children”. Today, this gracious gift of Jesus, “once-for-all” sacrifice prompts us to move beyond mere weeping to devoted work for the relief and well-being of his least ones. Let us be their companions, care takers and defenders along the way.

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion - March 28, 2010 Blessed are they who come in the Name of the Lord! Am I being called to proclaim Jesus as a priest, deacon, religious brother or sister If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca