+ Parish Schedule for the Week of May 26, 2019 +
Sunday, May 26 [Sixth Sunday of Easter]:
8:00 am – Health & Blessings for Mark LaCroix – int. Holy Rosary Society
10:30 am – Living & Deceased members of the Hughes Family – int. Claire Hughes
Monday, May 27 [St. Augustine of Canterbury]: *Memorial Day Mass at Cemetery*
9:00 am + Veterans & deceased members of our Parish
Tuesday, May 28 [St. Camillus and St. Peregrine Novena]:
5:30 pm – Grace & Blessings for Michael William Ahearn – int. Fritz Family
Wednesday, May 29 [St. Jude Novena]:
5:30 pm – Grace & Blessings for Joy Pelc – int. Pelc Family
Thursday, May 30 [Ascension of the Lord]:
8:00 am + Alicia Keller-Guedez – int. Elizabeth Guedez
5:30 pm – Birthday Blessings for Anna Zak – int. Granddaughter, Debra Adamski, Great- Grandsons, Jonathan & Christopher, Great-great-Grandchildren, Page, Jack, & Kitty
Friday, May 31 [Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary]:
5:30 pm – Grace & Blessings for the Marian Sister of Santa Rosa
– int. Ron & Monica Scherman
First Saturday, June 1 [St. Justin, Martyr]:
8:00 am – Grace & Blessings for Sr. Maria Faustina Scherman, MSSR
– int. Ron & Monica Scherman
4:00 pm – Grace & Blessings for Michael Willian Ahearn – int. Geraldine & Dick Ahearn
6:00 pm (Spanish) – For our Parish and Parishioners
Sunday, June 2 [Seventh Sunday of Easter]:
8:00 am – Anniversary Blessings for Ken & Sarah Garrepy – int. Pelc Family
10:30 am – Health & Blessings for Fr. Charles DiMascola – int. Joan Richotte
+ KRóLOWO POLSKI MóDL SIĘ ZA NAMI +
THE ANNUAL MASS FOR VETERANS and the departed of the parish will take place at our Cemetery at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, Memorial Day, May 27th. All are invited to honor the veterans and our departed friends and relatives. Everyone is encouraged to bring lawn chairs. In the event of inclement weather the Mass will be held in the church.
MONDAY, MAY 27th is the Feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury, a Roman monk who was sent to England to convert that nation. He established the See of Canterbury and is called the Apostle of England. He will be remembered in the Mass at 8:00 a.m.
THE NOVENA TO ST. JUDE is celebrated every Wednesday at the 5:30 p.m. Mass and all are welcome to attend.
THURSDAY, MAY 30th is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord and a Holy Day of Obligation. Masses will take place on Wednesday, May 29th at 5:30 p.m. and Thursday, May 30th at 8:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.
FRIDAY, MAY 31st is the Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady focusing on the charity of Mary and the recognition by St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist of Mary as the Mother of God.
SATURDAY, JUNE 1st is the Feast of St. Justin the Martyr. St. Justin was a layman and a philosopher who gives us one of the earliest descriptions of the Mass following Apostolic times. St. Justin is the patron of philosophers and will be remembered at the 8:00 a.m. Mass.
OUR LADY’S HOLY ICON will visit the home of Carolle Conway for a week of prayer and petition for the needs of our Parish. We thank you for this holy work of power and love.
Baby Bottle Collection Next Weekend! We will be collecting the baby bottles next weekend (June 1 & 2) from all who have participated in ALTERNATIVES Pregnancy Center’s Change for Babies program this Eastertide. Please bring your bottles to any of the weekend Masses to hand in as you come into the church. Thank you for helping ALTERNATIVES and for sharing the joy of Easter with these little ones and their mothers.
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FOR THE GLORY OF GOD, and in memory of Lawrence Krejmas, a donation has been made to our Parish Renovation Fund by Bev Milewski. Bóg zapłać!
GROCERIES ARE PROVIDED by our parish for those who often come to the Rectory for help and we are running a little low on some essentials. Please help us to help the poor by leaving some of the following in the church vestibule: stew, soup, ravioli, crackers, baked beans, cereal, canned vegetables, spaghetti sauce, peanut butter, and jam. All donated goods must be such as requiring no refrigeration and can be stored for a period of time. Please help those who cannot help themselves! Bóg wam wielki zapłać!
THE NEXT COMMUNITY MEAL will take place on WEDNESDAY, MAY 29th at 5:30 pm at the Second Congregational Church, Court Square, Greenfield. All parishioners are welcome to participate! There is a sign-up sheet in the front vestibule. Please contact Cathy Becklo with any questions, (863-2267; acbecklo@comcast.net)
Did you know there is a local Catholic youth group? The St. John Paul II Youth Group serves the high school youth of the local Catholic community—all are welcome. Our monthly gatherings are on the 3rd Sunday of the month, from 6:30-8:30 p.m., with other activities throughout the month. To learn more about what God is doing in the life of the teens and for a more complete schedule, email stjpiiyouthgroup@gmail.com or call Suzi & Ed Cottrill, 413-772-6062. “Love God, Love Others, Love Life.”
OLC ORGAN PROJECT: We have raised over $16,600 of the total amount of $20,000 needed. Please consider making a small contribution—and please keep us in your prayers!
OFFICE OF VOCATIONS: If we love, we know the presence of God. Take time to be aware of God’s loving presence. Are you open to the Holy Spirit? (John 14:23-29) If you think God is calling you, please email: vocations@diospringfield.org and/or visit our website: http://www.myvocation.com
PRAY FOR VOCATIONS to the Priesthood from our Parish and for our Parish so that we might always have a Priest here to celebrate the Mass and administer the Holy Sacraments! Please join in the Divine Mercy Chaplet to pray for vocations to the priesthood every Friday beginning at 4:45 p.m.
Alternatives Pregnancy Center – Pregnancy Tests, Counseling, Support Services, and Post Abortion Support, All Services Free and Confidential, 466 Main Street, P.O. Box 344, Greenfield, MA 01302-0344 — (413) 774-6010
Ongoing Ascension
Fr. Robert P. Imbelli
There are books that you read with profit and then put aside. If some years later you happen to return to them, they often seem less substantial than you remember. Others, of course, like the proverbial good wine, only grow richer with age. Or perhaps it is the reader who has matured and now measures more closely to the stature of the book.
I recently returned, through the providential suggestion of a friend, to Jean Corbon’s The Wellspring of Worship. Since I inscribe the date and place of my readings on a book’s title page, I see that I had read the book in November 1988. (There’s a more recent edition available from Ignatius Press.) Re-reading it during this year’s Paschal Triduum was nothing less than a revelatory experience. It was as though much of what I had struggled to express, theologically and pastorally, in the ensuing years was already graciously present in Corbon’s splendid volume.
Corbon, a French Dominican, spent much of his life in Lebanon, where he became a priest of the Greek Catholic eparchy and taught liturgy in Beirut. He greatly influenced the presentation of the liturgy in the Second Part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The Celebration of the Christian Mystery.” He was also the main author of the Fourth Part of the Catechism: “Christian Prayer,” which he wrote in strife-torn Beirut, working sometimes in the midst of bombardments.
The “Wellspring of Worship” (the French title is Liturgie de Source) is the very life of the Triune God, that fecund life of communion, flowing eternally among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is this supremely interpersonal life that receives sacramental embodiment in the Church’s liturgy, in particular the Eucharist. Here heaven and earth meet, constellated around the ascended Christ who brings humanity into the very heart of the Godhead.
By his Incarnation, Jesus Christ weds divinity to humanity. By his Ascension, he leads humanity home to God. “The Ascension,” Corbon writes, “is the decisive turning point. . .the beginning of a new time: the liturgy of the last times.” This eschatological liturgy is celebrated in its fullness by the ascended Christ “seated at the right hand” of the Father. But it is celebrated on earth in via, yet truly, in that sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur: the holy banquet in which Christ is received. An earthly liturgy that is, inseparably, memoria passionis ejus and pignus futurae gloriae: remembrance of Christ’s passion and pledge of future glory.
Here past, present, and future converge and find their ultimate orientation and fulfillment in the ascended Christ. For he himself is the “eschatos”: the “last” Adam, the humanity intended by God and finally realized in Christ: beloved Son.
Commenting upon the great mosaics of the ascended Lord in the apses of ancient basilicas Corbon says: “When the faithful gathered to manifest and become the body of Christ, they saw their Lord as both present and as coming. He is the head and draws his body toward the Father while giving it life through his Spirit.”
If the earthly liturgies we celebrate seem dispirited, it may have less to do with sentimental hymns or prosaic translations (though these are doubtless lamentable), than with a dearth of real awareness and appreciation of what is actually transpiring through Christ in the Spirit.
For the movement of the Ascension is ongoing and will only be complete when the members of the body are fully united with their head. Hence, it is perilous, if not perfidious, to separate in catechesis and theology (much less in our minds and hearts) Pentecost from Ascension. For the Spirit’s work is precisely to configure us to Christ. The Spirit’s energies are directed to furthering the ongoing event of Christification, transfiguring humanity and the cosmos in Christ, in the full Pauline sense of en Christoi. The Wellspring of liturgy has no other end.
“The Ascension,” Corbon insists, “is the ever-new ‘moment’ of Christ’s coming.” Perhaps nowhere is that coming of “the true and faithful witness” more powerfully evoked than in the Book of Revelation. It is the ascended Jesus who comes to speak words of encouragement, exhortation, and judgment to the churches. He is no absentee Lord; he is present as the One who is ever coming.
Pope Francis recently issued an Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, whose theme and urgency derive from chapter five of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium. Both the chapter and the exhortation concern “the universal call to holiness” of all God’s people.
I suggest that what we most desperately need is a recovery of and recommitment to an even more neglected chapter of Lumen gentium: chapter seven on “The eschatological character of the pilgrim church and its union with the heavenly church.” We need to rekindle the Catholic eschatological imagination: to realize anew Jesus Christ’s Ascension as inaugurating the transfiguration of humanity and to envision boldly the cosmic scope and implications of that decisive and ongoing event.
If Jesus Christ lives by virtue of his Resurrection, he reigns by virtue of his Ascension. Thus professing and celebrating Ascension inevitably carries a political charge, however deftly we camouflage that challenge behind flimsy missalettes and spineless hymnals. In the midst of the debased discourse and the mean-spirited actions of our contemporary society and “culture,” Ascension proclaims an integral word of promise and spurs to contemplative commitment and generous action.
The eschatological longing and imagination of the early Christians found poignant expression in the prayer placed at the very end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” In whatever place we lift up our hearts to the Lord, whether ancient Laodicea or contemporary Los Angeles, we discover, with Corbon, that “the true space of the praying heart is the ongoing event of the Ascension.”
Sursum corda— Upward, hearts!
The Teresians – Please consider becoming a Teresian. As we have said there is NO commitment. We will notify everyone on the ministry list (via email) when someone is sick and in need of prayer or a visit OR dying and in need of prayer or a visit OR died and the funeral details. It will be up to each individual/family to decide how they can minister. No one is expected to respond to each need. If any parishioner knows of someone in need, please email Nancy Faller (nafaller@aol.com), so we can get the word out.
39th ANNUAL POLISH-AMERICAN DOZYNKI FESTIVAL at Immaculate Conception Church, 25 Parker Street, Indian Orchard, will be held on Saturday, July 20 from 12 noon to 11 p.m., and Sunday, July 21 from 12 noon to 10 p.m. Free parking and admission.
CHRIST THE KING CHURCH, located at 41 Warsaw Ave. in Ludlow, will hold its 34th Annual Picnic on Sunday, June 23rd from noon until 8:00 p.m. The picnic will feature Homemade Polish Food, an American Kitchen, a Bake Sale (takeout orders available on all food), Games, Music, and More. The picnic is open to the public with free admission and free parking. Bring your chairs and enjoy.
Catholic Night 2019 with the Boston Red Sox! You are invited to join St. Michael Parish (and the St. John Paul II Youth Group) for our 6th annual trip to Catholic Night at Fenway Park! The game is at 7:10PM on Monday, June 24th against the White Sox. The cost is $65, which includes one bleacher seat ticket and the roundtrip coach ride to Boston. The bus will depart from the St. Michael Parking lot at 2:00 p.m. It is first-come, first served, so if you are interested, sign-up on the sheet in the back of the church as soon as possible or call the rectory at St. Michael Parish at 257-5101, since there are a limited number of tickets available.
SUMMER FEST AT HOLY FAMILY PARISH – 29 Sugarloaf Street, South Deerfield, MA: Sunday, June 30th, 11:30 – 3:00 p.m. Tickets: $10; Children 12 & Under, FREE (price includes 1 hot dog & 1 hamburger, chips, coleslaw, pickles, soda or water). Entertainment: T.J. & The Peepers. Kid Games. Event Open to the Public.
VISIT http://diospringfield.org/Ministries/child-youth-protection/ for resources for child abuse prevention and reporting.
FATHERS DAY CARDS for our annual Novena of Masses for our living and departed fathers are available in the front vestibule. The novena of Masses will begin on Saturday, June 20th and continue through the week. Be sure to return the enrollment envelope before Fathers’ Day by placing them in the offering box in the front vestibule.
THE FOLLOWING MASS INTENTIONS have been sent to various Missionaries. They will be offered as follows and you may attend the Masses here in our church as the Missionaries offer the Masses in their churches:
Sunday, May 26: 8:00 +
Sunday, May 26: 10:30 +
Mon., May 27: – Health & Blessings for Jim & Evelyn Dunne – int. The Shaughnessys
Tues., May 28: + Joseph & Anna Galvis – int. Family
Wed., May 29: + Carol Demers (1st Anniversary) – int. James & Jean Koldis
Thurs., May 30: –
Friday, May 31: +
Saturday June 1: 8:00 –
Saturday, June 1: 4:00 – Health & Blessings for Robert, Stacey, Mackenzie, & John Schwab – int. The Shaughnessys
PLEASE NOTE: The above Masses not only assist the souls for whom they are offered, but they also help the Missionaries who often times receive very little help. It also helps the people where the Masses are offered. Bóg wam zapłać!
WALK IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. PAUL: A Pilgrimage to Greece, Patmos and Ephesus: Oct. 11-21, 2019. Join us on a spiritual journey to many towns of the New Testament where St. Paul first spread the Good News. Also visit Patmos where St. John wrote Revelations and Mary’s House in Ephesus. Included is a three-day cruise to the Greek Isles. Fr. Timothy Campoli and Msgr. Ronald Yargeau are our Spiritual Directors. Daily Mass will take place. The cost is $4199 but if you register before January 31, 2019 you will receive a $200 Early Bird Discount. A bus to Logan will be arranged if there is interest. For a flyer and more information, please contact Helen Shea Murphy at 413-824-8733 or helensheamurphy@verizon.net. View the website at http://www.pilgrimages.com/helensheamurphy.
SAVE THE DATE Find Your Greatness with Catholic speaker, Jonathan Fanning, is coming to Springfield, MA on Saturday, September 14, 2019! Come join Holy Name Church for a great morning of listening, learning, scripture, and prayer. Find Your Greatness is based on Matthew Kelly’s best-seller The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic. Don’t worry, this is not your typical Church event! Reach your full potential, create a personal life plan, and develop a vibrant spiritual life. September 14, 2019, Holy Family Church, 323 Dickinson St., Springfield, MA 01108. 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM Get your tickets today! Call us at 859.980.7900 to reserve your tickets!
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING ‘ROE ACT’: Do you know that the state is changing laws that will affect you and your children? You are encouraged to attend an important information session on a proposed legislation called the “Roe Act” which would expand abortion right up to and even after birth, while at the same time removing current and important protections and safe guards. As a parent, grandparent or Massachusetts resident you need to know how troubling this proposed law is especially to minors. Find out why even abortion supporters like Gov. Charlie Baker agree this proposed legislation would go too far! Come get the facts, and decide for yourself. Attend an information night sponsored by the Diocesan Pro-Life Commission. Date & Time: Tuesday, June 4th at 7pm; Location: (Father Casey Hall, Holy Trinity Church, Greenfield). Additional information available including Mass. Catholic Bishops letter online at www.diospringfield.org
Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them O Lord,
And Let Your Perpetual Light Shine Upon Them.
Mary Zak 5/26/1938
John Hilro 5/26/1942
Anna Stewart 5/26/1973
Frederick Kallins 5/26/1992
Genowefa Chenelewski 5/27/1929
Andrew Grunkowski 5/27/1942
Sebastian Ptak 5/27/19947
Mary C. Ptak 5/27/1990
Jacob Pawlarzek 5/28/1937
Frand Zebert 5/28/1984
Arthur E. Petrin 5/28/1991
Joseph H. Lapinski 5/28/2003
Stephany Putala 5/29/1937
Joseph Zadroga 5/29/1952
Victoria Golec 5/29/1980
Anna B. Okula 5/29/1981
Phyllis J. Hannon 5/30/1996
Joseph P. Zangri 5/30/2018
Paul Cygan 5/31/1952
Myron M. Strysko 5/31/1989
Frank M. Osciak 5/31/2009
Janet Whellehan Sivik 5/31/2015
Josephine Koscinski 6/1/1980
John M. Dunican 6/1/2013
Aniela Mlecko 6/2/1965
Remember the Holy Souls in Your Prayers
PLEASE NOTE that every day of the month is set aside to pray for a specific priest or deacon of the Franklin County Deanery. Please join in dedicating every day to one of the clergymen designated in our calendar. The intentions for this week are:
Sunday Monday Tuesday
Fr. Roux Clergy in Purgatory Deacon Leary
Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
Deacon Ratté Our Retired Priests Clergy who are sick Bishop McDonnell
THIS BULLETIN is sponsored by the St. Stanislaus and St. Kazimierz Societies.