ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

 

A Reflection for Wednesday in the Octave of Easter By Kevin Clarke Link to todays reading below  https://api-esp.piano.io/-c/197/30749/503409/2778670/550869/1fff37ead80eee111c5750f0cf3d74c1/-1/-1?attrs=0&order=0   Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. (Lk 24:35)   The days after the worrying events outside the empty tomb must have been a time of confusion and deep anxiety. The hopes of many of the disciples dashed at the crucifixion, they only began to grasp how little they understood about this Messiah they followed and the meaning of that miraculous Passover celebration—their own expectations and ambitions thrown into a heap of frustration and fear.   What kind of messiah was this? What had become of the power he had demonstrated through the miracles he worked? Where was his authority over life and death, surrendered so passively on the cross?   Some thought they followed a Messiah who would come into his reign in their time, a counterforce of shock and awe that would end their humiliation and liberate them from their oppressor. How could they accept this Messiah who meekly accepted his fate?   These disciples on the road to Emmaus loudly pondered the astounding events in Jerusalem. What did it all mean?    Were they on the road to Emmaus to abandon this rabbi and his teaching, to get back to their old lives, casting aside everything they had seen and struggled to understand?   Starting down that road, they did not yet perceive the radical message in the miraculous works and mercy of Jesus. This reign would be ushered into power by revolutions within the heart of each person, not struck into being at the end of a sword.   We are all on a road to Emmaus, following a path that is at points lonely or diverted by apprehension and sorrow. Do we really see the people who travel with us? Do we recognize the miracle of their humanity and a mystical connection that binds us all?   In the simplest acts of hospitality, at a table of fellowship, so much obscured by apprehension and sorrow can be restored in empathy and affection. Jesus walks beside us, waiting for an invitation to break bread and, in mercy and love, to reveal himself.

 

SPRING THEME ARTICLE COMPLIMENTS OF IGNATIAN SPIRITUALITY

 

TIME TO PLANT A NEW HABIT

Back when so many of us in this country were farmers, when more of us lived in the country than in cities, we understood in our very bones that spring was the season for planting. Some of us still sense this when the weather warms and the days grow longer. We plant vegetable gardens or create container gardens in our small city spaces. Spring breezes inspire us to dig in the dirt and begin our own little kingdoms of beauty.

Might we apply more broadly this metaphor of planting? Can we allow spring to inspire us to plant habits that can produce good work and well-being later on?

What seeds would you like to plant?

·         More intentional physical activity

·         More cooking from scratch

·         More time with people who are important to you

·         More quiet time for prayers of gratitude

·         More energy on your gifts than on daily trivia

·         More of your talent going outward to help others

·         More giving up what is not important

 

******** Two words that are BLUE highlighted are links that lead to other articles from the archives that are similar themes

DEATH OF AN ARCHBISHOP

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago de María, and finally as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. As archbishop, Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government and left-wing insurgents that led to the Salvadoran Civil War. On March 24, 1980, Romero was shot by an assassin while celebrating Mass.

Below is a link to an article from America Magazine written in 2015 on the 35th  anniversary of his assassination

   https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2015/03/11/death-comes-archbishop-martyrdom-oscar-romero-217454?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2928&pnespid=uOE8GHlFO6oE1.XQuSjpFpHQshiqXYZ4JO2lnvZk.x9mcJhaRPOhtd2_l5EGEmc8Q2W2Fiph

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE WAR

                                                                  

 And when they bombed other people houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them, but not enough.  I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling : invisible house by invisible house by invisible house--  I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

Poem by Ilya Kaminsky.  Published by Padraig OTuama in Poetry Unbound. 

Ilya is a deaf man , a refugee from Odessa who sought asylum in the US after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine .  Padraig describes this as a "Devastating poem about complicity" 

                                       < Excerpted from the Catholic Worker April 2023>

                                                                            

PLACE TO DONATE AND BUY BOOKS B.I.G. BOOKS INTERNATIONAL GOODWILL

WE ARE ACCEPTING DONATIONS AT THIS TIME 451 DEFENSE HWY ANNAPOLIS, MD 21401

                             B.I.G.'S PURPOSE  and vision                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                B.I.G. Provides services for recycling books discarded by current owners and puts them in the hands of new users                                                                                                       B.I.G. will be the provider of choice in the Annapolis area for:

· Receiving books being discarded by current owners

· identifying requirements for books by groups both domestic & international who have limited resources for acquiring books

· Sorting & building shipments based on requirements

· Shipping to needy groups for delivery to end users

Conducting book sales to provide revenue to meet expenses as well as putting books in the hands of new users on an individual basis

The link to their site with all the information you need is below

                                                      How Can I Help? (big-books.org)

WEEKEND BACKPACKS OF BALTIMORE TITHING RECIPIENT FOR FEBRUARY 2023

                                                           

                                                     

Our Mission:

The mission of Weekend Backpacks is to provide food to vulnerable, food-insecure Baltimore City youth to facilitate academic success and improve their lives both physically and emotionally.

Our Approach:

All Baltimore City schoolchildren are provided breakfast and lunch at school each day. However, many of the students suffer from food insecurity, lacking sufficient funds to provide them with food when school is not in session.

We provide child-friendly, nutritious food directly to children in need over the weekends.

We believe that a child does not live in isolation; therefore, each backpack contains enough food to feed three to four people for the weekend.

All food is packaged in four set menus, including milk, proteins, vegetables, cereal and fruit. The amount of food in the bags increases weekly throughout the month to compensate for the fact that a family’s funds decrease as the month progresses.

Fresh fruit is included in every backpack of food.

Additional food is added when there is a three- or four-day weekend. These extended weekends can mean that the students would have little or no access to food for more than 100 hours.

The Schools We Serve

As of May 2022

• Abbottston Elementary School
• Arlington Elementary/Middle School
• Armistead Gardens Elementary/Middle School
• Arundel Elementary School
• Ashburton Elementary/Middle School
• Barclay Elementary/Middle School
• Calvin Rodwell Elementary/Middle School
• Career Academy
• Cecil Elementary School
• Cecil-Kirk Recreation Center
• Charm City Virtual
• Collington Square Elementary/Middle School
• Creative City Elementary School
• Cross Country Elementary/Middle School
• Dorothy Height Elementary School
• Edgewood Elementary School
• Fallstaff Elementary/Middle School
• Furley Elementary School
• Gwynns Falls Elementary School
• Govans Elementary School
• Hazelwood Elementary/Middle School
• Hilton Elementary School
• John Ruhrah Elementary/Middle School
• Joseph C. Briscoe Academy
• Lakeland Elementary/Middle School
• Liberty Elementary School
• Lois T. Murray School
• Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle School
• Mary E. Rodman Elementary School
• Mount Royal Elementary/Middle School
• New Song Academy
• Patterson High School
• Pimlico Elementary/Middle School
• Rosemont Elementary/Middle School
• Sandtown-Winchester Achievement Academy
• Southwest Baltimore Charter School
• Steuart Hill Academy
• Tench Tilghman Elementary/Middle School
• The Historic Cherry Hill Academy
• Thomas Jefferson Elementary/Middle School
• Vanguard Collegiate Middle School
• William S. Baer School
• Windsor Hills Elementary/Middle School
• Winfield Elementary
• Yorkwood Elementary
• Youth Opportunity School

RICHARD ROHR CAC REFLECTION JESUS AS PROPHET

 

The Prophetic Path

	Jesus as Prophet

	Sunday Jesus’ aim was to open up the spirit of prophecy to everyone.… Then too we can all become courageous enough to speak out like prophets. —Albert Nolan Monday Prophecy comes to life as love. Jesus the prophet is love manifested. We also can be love manifested in the world. —Barbara A. Holmes Tuesday The genius of Jesus is that he wastes no time on repressing or denying the shadow. In that, he is a classic prophet, one of those who does not merely expose the denied shadow of Israel, but instead attacks the real problem, which is the ego. —Richard Rohr Wednesday Jesus knew that he could not be a chaplain of the empire but was sent to be a prophet of God—one anointed by God and the people to do the work of love, justice, and liberation. —Erica N. Williams Thursday If we have the priest and the prophet, we have a system constantly refining itself and correcting itself from within. —Richard Rohr Friday Although Jesus himself may be perceived as heir to the legacy of Amos and Jeremiah, the Gospels present him as more than a prophet. He is, according to the Evangelists, the Son of God, who adds something new to the prophetic concern for justice. —Amy-Jill Levine     Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation     From the Center for Action and Contemplation

A REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL

 

THE STORY OF PAULS CONVERSION STORY FROM THE BOOK OF ACTS

“On that journey as I drew near to Damascus,  about noon a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me.

I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me,  ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’

I replied, ‘Who are you, sir?’ And he said to me,  ‘I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.’

My companions saw the light  but did not hear the voice of the one who spoke to me.

I asked, ‘What shall I do, sir?’  The Lord answered me, ‘Get up and go into Damascus,

and there you will be told about everything appointed for you to do.’

Since I could see nothing because of the brightness of that light, I was led by hand by my companions and entered Damascus. (Acts 22:6-11)

There is an old parlor trick played by good teachers when it comes to this passage in Acts (or the earlier account of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9:1-22). It is to ask one’s students a simple question: What is the name of Paul’s horse?  The answer: There is no horse. We’ve been so conditioned by famous paintings of the biblical scene of Paul’s conversion from Michelangelo to Caravaggio to Peter Paul Rubens that show him toppling from his steed that we don’t notice the scriptural accounts never mention Paul on horseback. We’ve included the horse into the scene as a kind of religious Mandela Effect, where we remember something that was never there in the telling.   There’s another group in the telling of this story, though, that isn’t often remembered but should be present to our imaginations: the early Christian community that Paul had been persecuting until the day of his conversion. Where are they in this story? It is Paul alone who hears Jesus speaking in both accounts in Acts; when he arrives in Damascus and meets the Christian community there, they have to take his word for it that Jesus appeared to him and called him to conversion.  We learn in Acts that Paul has a reputation for “breathing murderous threats” against Christians, imprisoning them and delivering them to Jerusalem to be punished or killed. We can imagine what the Christian community’s first impulse must have been when their greatest persecutor came before them, blind and weak, to claim that their Lord has chosen him, too, to be an apostle.   Yet the community in Damascus does not exact revenge on Paul. They believe what they have not seen—that somehow Jesus the Lord has chosen the least likely of all people as his instrument. And something more must have happened, something not mentioned in the scriptural text but surely necessary for the future of Paul’s ministry and of the Christian community: At some point they had to forgive him.  We know from elsewhere in Scripture that Paul and his new community did not choose to “go along to get along,” because Paul later argues with Peter (“opposed him to his face,” Paul claims in the Letter to the Galatians) over unclean foods. And we know from Paul’s elevated place among the early communities that he was accepted as a leader and a teacher. That process, as we all know from our own lives, is not an uncomplicated one. Was the greatest moment of God’s grace in the story of Paul’s conversion not Jesus’ appearance to Paul? Maybe instead it is the moment not mentioned—when those whom Paul treated the worst said “we forgive you” and accepted him into the fold. Hard to imagine; harder to do. But look at the great works that came after.

RICHARD ROHR REFLECTION WEEK OF 1-15-23 TO 1-20-23/ PROPHETIC TRUTH

 

	Prophetic Truth
	January 15–January 20, 2023

 

Sunday Prophets always talk about the untalkable and open a huge new area of “talkability.” It helps us see what we didn’t know how to see until they helped us to see it. That's how we begin to recognize a prophet—there is this widening of seeing, this deepening of a truth that was always there. —Richard Rohr Monday What is a prophet? One who names the situation truthfully and in its largest context. —Richard Rohr Tuesday However prophets may prophesy, their integrity is shown by the way in which they give up their very lives as testimony and witness as they side with the forgotten and the lost ones and loudly proclaim that God, who is aware of their pain and feels their suffering as [God’s] own, will not allow that pain and suffering to continue. —Megan McKenna Wednesday Anger is a source of my creativity. It’s a vaccination against apathy and complacency. It’s a gift that can be abused—or wisely used. Yes, it’s a temptation, but it’s also a resource and an opportunity, as unavoidable and necessary as pain. It’s part of the gift of being human and being alive. —Brian McLaren Thursday I believe truth is revolutionary; it’s part of the work of fierce love. Truth makes a personal, spiritual, ethical, and moral demand upon us. It wants to be said, known, told. It hurts and it’s inconvenient, but it’s essential to our well-being.  —Jacqui Lewis Friday Prophets believe that they have somehow entered into the experience of God. They have entered into the heart of God. So when the prophet sees non-compassion, when they see a hard heart in the hearts of the people, the prophet says: “I know for certain that you do not know God, because the heart of God is compassion.” —Richard Rohr

ST CHARLES OF BRAZIL FACEBOOK /WEEKLY LIVE STREAM AND OTHER STUFF

Hello to all,

Every week the link for the Live Stream, the readings and the music selections are delivered to your in box (THANK YOU JOE BIDDLE). The link takes you to our Facebook page where you can view the current service for that week.  You can also scroll down and see all of our past services. 

Our facebook page also has much more information about our Parish Community.  If you do not visit our Facebook page perhaps you may want to take the time and visit.  Below you will see the link . 

ENJOY !!

(20+) St. Charles of Brazil Independent Catholic Church | Facebook