October 26, 2003
Blessed Mother Teresa
We're
Ready to LIsten
This evening (Sunday Oct 26th) we’re hosting a Diocesan
listening session after the 6pm mass in the school. If you haven’t
had the chance to attend one of our earlier ones, please come over for
this one. We want to hear the hopes you have for the future of the church.
Future direction of our diocese will be developed based on what people
say. (You don’t have to speak in public at this session. ) This
is a chance to be heard. Please be part of it.
(There will be one more opportunity in English on Sunday Nov 9th after
the 10pam Family Mass.)
Something
New Next Week
When
you pick up next week’s bulletin you’ll notice something
different. Our bulletin will have a new look thanks to one of our parishioners
John Chiaramonte who has vollunteered his services as a graphic designer.
We’ll be also using the services of a different bulletin printing
company so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the staff
of the Church Chronicle who has printed our bulletin faithfully for
the past five years. (No change in this online version!)
At College?
At St. Brigid’s we like to stay in touch through
e-mail “letters from home.”
Once a person has an e-mail address at school (or if he/she uses a personal
address), please let us know what it is so we can include them when
we write.
Here's a handy college link so you
can send this info online.
e-mail Father Ralph:
Past Columns:
Oct 12: In Hot Water
Oct 5: Fruits of the
Millennium
Sept 28: Jesus Comes
To St. Brigid's
Sept 21: The children
will lead us
Sept 14: Triumph of
the Cross
Sept 7: Nine-eleven: Two
Years Later
August 31: Where the
Summer went
August 24: Lessons from
the Blackout
August 17: Here and
There
August 10: Surrender
August 3: Reaping Rewards
July 27: What's your
mission?
July 20: From a Deserted
Place
July 13: Nothing for the
Journey
July 6: God at Home
June 29: Going in Stages
June 22: Sommer in the Summer
June 15: Our Newest Priest
Ordained
June 8: The Feast of Pentecost
June 1: Beyond First Communion
May 24: Felicidades Manuel
May 18: Twenty Years Later
May 11: Bows for Peace
May 4: Upcoming Ordinations
April 27: One Heart One
Mind
April 20: Amazingly Graced
Days
April 13: Ashes to Palms
April 6:
God Embedded
March 30:
Pastoral Visits
March 23:
Turning Tables
March
16: Transfiguring Imagination
March
9: Beasts and Angels
March 2:
Lent and Imagination
Feb 23: Sorrow
Far and Wide
Feb 16: Saints
Feb 9: Columbia Lessons
Feb2: Giving At A Difficult
Time
Jan 26: Penny Power
& Catholic Schools
Jan19: Yet Another
Year
Jan 12: Stealing Jesus
Jan5: The Wise Still Come
From Afar
Columns from 2002
Mother
Teresa of Calcutta was beatified last Sunday by Pope John Paul II. No
surprise here. We believe she’s a saint long before the church gets
around to declaring it!
I was reflecting on her life and found some quotes that were both affirming
and challenging. I’d like to share some with you....
"God does not call us to do
great things,
but to do small things with great love.
There is a terrible hunger for
love. We all experience that in our lives - the pain, the loneliness.
We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right
in your own family. Find them. Love them.
Before you speak, it is necessary
for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart.
Give yourself fully to God. He
will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe
much more in His love than in your own weakness.
Little things are indeed little,
but to be faithful in little things is a great thing.
A sacrifice to be real must cost,
must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit
of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service,
the fruit of service is peace.
Keep the joy of loving God in your
heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family.
I once picked up a woman from a
garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days
and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged
her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not
himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It
took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just
before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness.
She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was
that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand.
When a poor person dies of hunger,
it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her.
It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what
he or she needed.
You and I, we are the Church, no?
We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are
hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever
you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water,
you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me.
The more you have, the more you
are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you
are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance.
It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no
that. But we are perfectly happy.
Everybody today seems to be in
such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches
and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents
have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption
of peace of the world.
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has
not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
You are Person
