Our Parish Update - Tuesday, June 23, 2020

                         

Provincial Health authorities are meeting with religious leaders including our Archbishop today to discuss required protocols to allow safe secure church openings. A formal public announcement on this topic is scheduled for Thursday.  Meanwhile, your parish staff and helpful parishioners are quietly planning for the eventual re-opening of our church. Parish based planning will necessarily reflect Archdiocesan protocols which reflect that of our province.  That our church will reopen for Mass is assured (Alleluia) -  although the timing of it, is to be determined.  How could it be different when we don’t yet know what, and who,  is required to implement COVID-19 safe protocols  determined?  Parishioners who are not yet ready to return to St. Pius X Church, are strongly encouraged to continue their worshipping  as they have in recent months.  
Thanks,
Fr. Earl Smith, SJ
Pastor



              HOLY CROSS CHURCH IN WIIKWEMKOONG VANDALIZED,
                                FORCED TO CLOSE TEMPORARILY
                                                   June 22, 2020

The Holy Cross Church in Wiikwemkoong, Ontario, founded and still run by Jesuits, was vandalized between Saturday, June 13 and the early hours of Sunday, June 14.The perpetrator(s) broke windows and set fires inside the church, causing significant damage. The damage is substantial to the point of forcing the temporary closure of the building, the oldest Catholic church in Northern Ontario.

As soon as Fr. Paul Robson, SJ, pastor of the church, discovered what had happened, he called the local police. The local fire department was also contacted, and members of Chief and Council came to the church. The insurance company was also contacted. A police investigation is underway.

"We are grateful that flames did not consume the building”,  stated Fr. Gerry McDougall, SJ, superior of the region and former pastor in Wiikwemkoong. "We pray for the people of Wiikwemkoong, who cherish their church of Holy Cross, and also for the unknown perpetrator(s), and for the restoration of the church building."

Despite this violent episode and the temporary closure, Fr. Robson said he is hopeful and feels consoled by the reaction of many in the community: "I was feeling quite shocked for the first day or so. The next few days, I was encouraged by many expressions of concern and support, and by a meeting with some Parish Council Elders whereby it was determined that we wanted to to carry on and to begin gathering again (after the pandemic-related church closures) as much as possible, as soon as possible. We will not be able to use the Holy Cross Church for a while, but are blessed with having three other churches here on the Wiikwemkoong Territory where we can gather and pray."

 
When I was middle school religion teacher, a student once asked me why she didn’t feel God close to her. “Where did God go? Is God mad at me?”

I replied, “God never moves away. God is constant and always present. In my experience, it is because we fear God won’t love us in our sinfulness and closed hearts that we move away from Him. Once you realize what’s happening, you just need to take one small step in God’s direction. God’s arms will find you and bridge the gap.”

Would that I had remembered those words myself these past few months I might have experienced a lot more peace and rest, a lot less weariness and anxiety. Before I realized what happened, I found myself asking the same question – why didn’t I feel God close to me anymore? His peaceful, quieting presence had been replaced by an unnerving silence broken only by my own voice, seeking not God’s will but the world’s. I had moved away both physically and spiritually from God, . . . the space in my heart that once held loveliness now filled with nothing.

When COVID hit, regular opportunities to attend Mass, receive the Eucharist, and go to confession taken away, the shift came hard and fast. My daily prayers started to become more like occasional prayer, then once a week and finally no regular prayer at all My Bible, got closed and put on the shelf. By the time the world awoke to the news of the death of George Floyd, what was my usual optimistic and encouraging disposition became sarcastic and jaded. The jagged edges of my soul, softened over the years by the myriad of graces received through regular prayer and the sacraments, returned. I was raw and too tightly wound. I became untouchable. With no voice to listen to except my own, the question of why I was so numb, so tired, so weary, went unanswered. I shut down but no one noticed. Well, no one except me.

I don’t really know what prompted me to pick up my June copy of Magnificat the other day. But I did. Reading the prayers and readings that had gone unprayed and unread this past month, I remembered that conversation with my student all those years ago. I began searching for words that would help me take that one small step back to God. There in the middle of page 71, I found this simple yet profound reminder of my way home in Psalm 116:7, “Turn back, my soul, to your rest.”

In all the tumult and turmoil, rawness and numbness, I had wanted someone to tell me what to do and that I was going to be okay. It was somehow easier to turn outward to find that solace and direction, not inward where God resides. The idea of turning my soul back towards him then, meant a willful surrender of the screen in my hand, replacing it with that Bible sitting closed on my shelf. For I realized that the only place to find true solace is in the Word. It is there that I find true rest, comfort, a clear call to actions and practical next steps. It is here that I am reminded that I am His beloved

It was somehow easier to turn outward to find solace and direction, not inward where God resides. Inspired to read the rest of Psalm 116, I realized the psalmist wrote it as a prayer of thanksgiving for being spared from death. That is what I had been feeling then – a kind of death. The world will do that to you; God does not.

Turning back, seeing God’s arms stretched out for me, time and time again is proof of that. I realized today that I am truly a prodigal daughter, longing to return my soul to Him to rest.
Laura K. Roland

 
“When you love you should not say, 'God is in my heart,' but rather, 'I am in the heart of God.' And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
 
(Let love direct your path this day. Ask yourself what the loving thing to do is, and follow the guidance you receive.)
  
                    

Esther Buckley, sister of Jeannie  Buckley, passed away peacefully but suddenly early Friday morning, June 19. Esther was a reader, both on weekends and weekdays, for many years, a faithful member of the,CWL, a leader in  the Children's Liturgy Program when it first began, a strong supporter of all parish events, to which she often donated her freshly baked blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies and many other sweets,  and a lover of all animals, especially dogs.  She preferred to work behind the scenes, but she made a great impact on everyone she met. Her funeral was held on Monday, June 22. We will miss her gentle and loving ways.
      

                      

       

    
-    Louis XIV asked Count Mahoney if he understood Italian.
    “Yes, please, Your Majesty, if it’s spoken in Irish.”

-    An Irish recruit being rebuked by the sergeant for striking one of his companions       apologized:
    “I thought there was no harm in it, sergeant, all I had in me hand was me fist.”

-    An Irish priest being introduced to his audience:
    “…is known all over the world and other places besides.”

-    The Hon Denis O’Connor went into a draper’s shop, and asked the price of gloves which took his fancy.  Thinking the price too high he exclaimed:
    “I’d sooner let my hand go barefoot for the rest of my life.”

    Compiled by Sean McCann, The Wit of the Irish, pages 11-13        

 
June 22 was  the Feast of Thomas More, who was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to put loyalty to the king above commitment to his conscience. Institutions still make the same demands on us and call it obedience or holiness or loyalty. We need the hot spirit of Thomas More when we are asked to do violence in the name of the state, in the name of God.”
SOURCE:   Joan Chittister:   A Monastery Almanac

   
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“The triumph can't be had without the struggle,” said Wilma Rudolph, the Olympian who was born on this date, June 23,  in 1940. Born premature, the 20th  of 22 children in her family, she was a sickly child who had to wear leg braces after surviving polio. Because the local hospitals refused to treat Black people, her mother rode the bus with her every week to Nashville, which was fifty miles away, so that she could receive therapy for her weakened leg and foot. She was eventually able to play sports and excelled in basketball as well as in track. At the age of twenty, having represented the U.S. in the Olympics and won three gold medals, she returned to her home town to find that they were planning to celebrate her achievements with a racially segregated parade. She refused to attend unless the event was integrated. This became the first integrated event in the city’s history. She went on to become a teacher and worked for nonprofit organizations and government-sponsored projects that supported athletic development in children.            SOURCE:   www.wilmarudolph.com