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Today we begin the new church cycle with Advent. When we say the "advent of something", we refer to a "coming" or "arrival" of some "thing" so important that it radically changes a whole culture.
The holy mystics and our contemporary contemplatives tell us, Be still. Connect with the Divine within. Know God's presence living in you. Advent is an experiential time, a time to wonder about mystery and new life, a time to imagine living more fully, more deeply in God's presence, a time to become and to birth the Holy into our world. It represents the time in our expectant life, when we come to the awareness and awakening of our holiness, our Divine Self.
Patricia Livingston, in Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Advent and Christmas, tells us "the best preparation for celebrating God's coming at Christmas is to deepen our awareness of God's presence every day; to pause in the right-here-right-now to see evidence of the yet-to-come right now in each other".
When we light the Advent candles this season, let us hold steadfast in the face of all that suggests the contrary that God the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier is with-us NOW, and the Holy Spirit inspires the unfolding story of a new creation.
When we light the Advent candles this season, let us say with full confidence - God's got this! All is well! As it was in the beginning is NOW and ever shall be.
When we light the Advent candles this season, let us answer "Yes, Here I AM Lord", irrespective of the darkness of the condition, circumstance or situation around us.
When we light the Advent candles this season, let us promise to be the living presence of God's HOPE, PEACE, JOY, LOVE and the Christ LIGHT of radical change.
Let us be watchful and alert for that which is, and is to come; to live consciously and mindfully; to live with the attitude of expectancy and anticipation, wide-eyed to all possibilities and fulfillment of the promise that radically changes us and our world.
This is the essence of Advent.
Advent Blessings,
Rev Rosa
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MASS Sunday 5:00pm - All Are Welcome At The Table
Today we celebrate the FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT. Join us at 5:00pm in the chapel of the UU church. ALL ARE WELCOME.
Rev Rosa Buffone is presider, Br. Rick Klaich, OSB is homilist and Roberta Robinson is the liturgical facilitator. We ask all who are available to come and help set up.
"The Communion table especially, reminds us that when we eat together, we celebrate not only with those who are physically present with us. We celebrate too with all those around the world who gather at their own tables, and we celebrate with those no longer upon this earth but who continue to be part of our story and who linger close when we come to the table."-Jan Richardson
Craggy
mountains,
passages steep,
rugged paths, packed with
sinkholes,
or
at odd times,
cool trails, running streams.
Whether on easy streets or tough roads,
let us never stop watching
for you, O
God.
Call to us. Come to us as we walk together
down the path of time.
Show us your face in all humanity
in every person we meet
along the
way.
prayer by Anne Osdieck
Click here for the Lectionary readings along with stimulating reflections and commentaries provided by The Center for Liturgy Sunday Website at Saint Louis University.
The Prayerful Meditation for this week is an excerpt by
Oscar Romero, the bishop and martyr of El Salvador,
from a sermon in Dec of 1978:
Scroll to the end of bulletin to find.
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Advent: An Invitation To Wait On God
by Rev. Adele Ahlberg Calhoun is a founding board member of the Transforming Center and teaches regularly in our two-year Transforming Community� experience. She is currently co-pastor with her husband, Doug, of Redeemer Community in Wellesley, MA. A trained spiritual director and former missionary, she is the author of Spiritual Disciplines Handbook and Invitations from God-both of which are Transforming Resources published by InterVarsity Press.
Waiting is one of God's immensely sweeping invitations. To wait expectantly and with open hands requires a relinquishment of control that gets at the roots of our motivations, fears and idols. It is where we learn that God isn't a genie; and happiness is not a matter of God meeting our expectations. While we wait, we sense the naked vulnerability of trust. No matter how disciplined, organized and prayerful we get, we never outgrow God's invitation to wait. The learning curve is life long. Advent is the season to keep learning and practicing this discipline that is challenging for us all. It is an opportunity to see the good fruit waiting can produce in our lives.
Waiting unearths what is really in our heart. It exposes what happens when our expectations go unmet. When my husband, Doug, was out of work for a year, when our house didn't sell for a year, when we moved to Chicago leaving our sixteen year old son with a car and credit card to finish his junior year... each second seemed a life time of waiting. But the waiting did something. It exposed a control streak a mile wide as well as a begrudging heart. I rue all the good moments I morphed into bad ones as I clung to my demands of what God ought to do.
Waiting is a central, unchangeable, universal fact of life. The homeless are waiting for somewhere to go. Refugees are waiting to return home. Tracts of humanity wait for lasting peace or rain or medical resources or disaster relief teams. Children wait for birthdays. The elderly wait for their savings to run out. Commuters wait in traffic. Wait. Wait. Wait some more.
Many of us get so frustrated with waiting that we'd rather make a quick decision and pick up the pieces later than hang around in limbo and wait for clarity to come. Doing "something" feels so much better than doing nothing. But waiting is not doing "nothing." And doing something is not always better than waiting! Clarity comes through patient waiting in the now.
Patience is a characteristic of God and a fruit of His Spirit. You would think we would want it as much as we want love, joy, and peace, which are better known fruits of the Spirit. But I don't. I resist the particular conditions required to grow the fruit of patience. It's embarrassing how often I beg God to "do something" so I don't have to wait and let patience grow. As Henri Nouwen writes, "Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere."
It is some comfort that my all too human plea for God to "do something" is found in the mouths of countless others in Scripture, including those who speak in the passages from the first week of Advent. Isaiah cries out, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-as when fire kindles and brushwood and fire causes water to boil!" (Isaiah 64:1, 2) And the Psalmist pleads, "Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel... Stir up your might, and come to save us! Restore us, O God, let your face shine that we might be saved." (Psalm 80:1-3)
The Holy One could vindicate his presence. He could answer us at once and then we wouldn't have to wait. So why not? Perhaps because the growth and development of patience in our lives is more important to God than we realize!
One of the main reasons God doesn't always answer us immediately is that waiting is God's crucible of transformation. Waiting is how God gets at the idols of our heart. Waiting addresses the things we think we need besides God to be content: money, comfort, expedience, success or control. It creates space to learn more about who God is, to receive Gods purposes into our lives, to move past our resistance and say our deepest "yes" to God.
The season of Advent is full of people waiting everywhere. Elizabeth is waiting for a baby. Zechariah is waiting to speak. Simeon is waiting to see the salvation of Israel. Anna is waiting on God's promise. Israel is waiting for God's promised prophet to come. Mary is betrothed and waiting to get married.
And then in a moment human ears hear what the human soul has been longing to hear throughout the ages. God has kept God's promise. All that waiting had a purpose!
So, too, our waiting has a purpose. Every moment of every day is meant to lead us out of the darkness of self and into the light of LOVE. Waiting makes us look like Jesus. It can produce purification, character and the listening wisdom that brings discernment.
Waiting doesn't mean you are doing something wrong. It doesn't mean God hasn't heard you. It is not a waste of time. God is at work making you into a person with the character and integrity you need in order to participate in God's dream for this world. You are in a moment where you can develop a discerning heart, contemplating evidence of the unseen hand of God and growing in trust.
So speak to your heart this Advent season. Say as the Psalmist did, "Patiently wait for God alone, my soul! For he is the one who gives me confidence." (Ps. 62.5)
As we wait expectantly and with open hearts, the Holy Spirit gets at us and gives us grace-grace to wait and to see when God answers, not if.
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Faith In Action
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40
As has been our custom from the beginning, Holy Spirit donates 10% of our weekly collection to charity. Our members suggest local agencies or organizations that serve the poor and work for justice and equality. This past year we were delighted to send $100 to the following: WAGLY, Wellesley Food Pantry, Our Space, Inc., The Women's Lunch Place, and . FAMILY PROMISE Metrowest.
Holy Spirit members also volunteer at various programs throughout the year. FAMILY PROMISE Metrowest is one of the organizations that we have been involved with for several years.
FPM ia a community response initiative for families that are homeless and Holy Spirit is a support congregation to our host church, Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills. Through faith communities and countless community resources the organization is able to provide temporary shelter, meals, job networking, skills training, childcare and more throughout the year to help these families get back onto solid ground.
******* SPECIAL REQUEST******* Family Promise Metrowest hosting congregations are in need of the following: Baby wipes, pull ups, size 4T/5T, diapers size 6 and size 3, and one can of powdered Infant Enfamil Premium.
If you can contribute any of these item or a cash donation towards the cost of purchase, please bring to liturgy this week. Donna Bosco will be doing a sleepover at the hosting congregation on Monday night and can bring your contributions to the hosting congregation then. THANK YOU
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Intentional Eucharistic Communities Gathering 2015
It's getting around, there will be a gathering of Intentional Eucharistic Communities next year, and we hope you'll join us! We are excited to announce that three great speakers have put the gathering on their calendar! Get ready!
Jamie L. Manson received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her columns in NCR have won numerous awards, most recently second prize for Commentary of the Year from Religion Newswriters (RNA).
Robert McClory is professor emeritus of journalism at Northwestern University, and has contributed to NCR since 1974. He is the author of Radical Disciple: Father Pfleger, St. Sabina Church, and the Fight for Social Justice and As It Was in the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church.
Miriam Therese Winter is Professor of Liturgy, Worship, Spirituality and Feminist Studies and Director of the Women's Leadership Institute. She came to Hartford Seminary to establish a department of liturgy, worship, and spirituality. She introduced ecumenical and cross-cultural emphases in theory and in practice, then developed feminist and multi-faith approaches that have culminated in a quantum perspective.
What to expect?
- 250-500 people
- venue at a local university
- dorm, hotel, and homestay accommodations
- three days (Fri.-Sun.) numerous sessions
- three topic tracks: theology, liturgy, and organization
- special opportunities and incentives for youth
- product fair (religious books, media, advocacy groups, merchandise, etc.)
- preconference on social justice and action opportunities
IEC Gathering 2015 -- June 26-28, hosted by Spirit of St. Stephen's Catholic Community, Minneapolis MN
SAVE THE DATE and stay tuned for more information!
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Ecumenical Catholic Communion
HISTORY OF THE ECC, Article 1
written by Rev. Tom Altepeter
Let's begin at the beginning. Regardless of our denominational background, most who have been raised in our cultural time and place have come to believe several things: 1) there is only one Catholic church -- the Roman Catholic church; 2) other expressions of Catholicism are unacceptable, invalid, heretical, or schismatic. (Some Roman Catholics even believe that if they participate in these alternative expressions of Catholicism, they commit mortal sin, risk excommunication and eternal damnation. Some Roman Catholic priests have, erroneously, publicly stated as much); and 3) that the leader of the Roman Catholic church, the pope, speaks with infallible authority, as if he were speaking directly from and for God. (In the minds of many, this is traced back to the passage, Matthew 16:18, wherein Jesus says to Peter: "you are rock, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it").
Perhaps we might ask, then, is 'Catholic' synonymous with 'Roman Catholic'? An objective, cursory review of history clearly leads to the conclusion, NO! 'Catholic' is not synonymous with 'Roman Catholic.' Two brief points make this clear. First, the word 'Catholic' comes from the Greek, and means 'universal,' or 'of the whole.' The very word 'catholic' assumes and implies a meaning beyond the particular. Rather than identifying one particular group (e.g., Roman Catholics), it has historically been used to refer to the universal group, that is 'all of the Christians,' or 'all who believe.' To be identified as Catholic is to be connected with the universal body of Christ followers.
Second, although this may be somewhat of a surprise to those raised in our day and time as Roman Catholic, many other denominational groups currently consider themselves just as authentically catholic as do Roman Catholics. For example, the Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and some Methodists all believe that their churches are "Catholic" in the sense that they are in continuity with the original universal church founded by the Apostles. We might simply refer to this as the Church Universal.
The Ecumenical Catholic Communion is a contemporary, compassionate, inclusive, expression of Catholicism. We stand in the long tradition of the Church Universal; our core theology is essentially the same as the Roman Catholic church and other expressions of the Church Universal; we celebrate the same seven sacraments that have long been celebrated by the Roman Catholic church and other expressions of the Church Universal. Yet we differ from the Roman Catholic church in some of our 'disciplines' -- i.e., our structure, governance, and some of our practices. (Questions of whether one should eat meat on Fridays, whether the Liturgy should be celebrated in Latin or one's natural language, and whether priests should be celibate or married, are all 'disciplines.' These are all practical matters that can be changed, and have changed over the course of the time.)
In subsequent weeks we will delve into greater detail about the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, our history, our structure, our beliefs and our practices. We will try to highlight how we are similar and how we are different than other denominations which call themselves Catholic.
OPENING REMARKS AT SYNOD 2014 by Bp. Peter Elder Hickman, ECC Presiding Bishop
Called Together: The Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion of 2014 written by Bp. Peter Elder Hickman, ECC Presiding Bishop
PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND MARCH 2015 flyer details itinerary, cost and reservation information.
WOMEN PRIEST GATHER: Catholic Women Priests Exploring Our Common Roots & Call reflection by Rev. Denise Donato, co-organizer of the retreat.
The Ecumenical Catholic Communion at Ten Years: An Ancient Dream Realized written by Bp. Peter Elder Hickman, ECC Presiding Bishop
Chosen by All, A Pastoral Letter to the People of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion Concerning the Active Voice of All in the Selection of the Presiding Bishop
View ECC Documentary, recorded in 2003 (38 min.)
The Local Church, A Pastoral Letter from
Bp. Peter E. Hickman, April 4th, 2012
Directory of parishes in the United States
Directory of European Communities
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Holy Spirit
Catholic Community
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