+ RIP + Fr. Peter MacLean
We Can still use your Photos Photos Photos!
This is a call for any photos you all may have tucked away in albums or boxes that will help us tell the story of St. Mary's in our journal for the 150th Anniversary. If you can scan them and email them to the office that's great, or bring them into the office during office hours, (Mon-Fri 9-2), and we'll scan them. It could be a family event or a parish event, that shows something of St. Mary's story. If there are people in your photos, be sure to tell us who they are.

Also would anyone be willing to work on gathering ads for the journal?
We Pray for the Healing & Support:
For those who have lost loved ones in the Pandemic, for those who are ill, for all those who serve, for all those who are anxious or fearful, and for...
Barbara Brigham, Sara Mundy, Jean Adams, Kathy Cogan, Jim Fancher, Diane & Nancy Fickett, Bob Fisher, Sharon Gibbs, Kathryn James, Gillian Johnson, Halle Kneeland, Toni Landry, Jesse Marshall, Ruth McAlonen, Elizabeth Mooney, Madeline Moran, Dick Petry, Virginia Springsteen, Vita Stellke, Linda VanArdale, Beth Wagner, Georgia and Rod Griffis, Betianne Morritt's great grandaughter Eliana, Jean Brechter , Susan Bopp daughter of Jean Brechter's friend Bob Edwards, for Louie Cicero, Barbara Allen Lieblein' s grandsons, Kristopher and Alexander, and Bill Lieblein's grand daughter's husband, Matt Grzesik, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, Hermance Canning, Dr. Barbara Phillips-Cole and her son Matthew Cole, who has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer, Sr. Joy Wright, repose of the soul of Wade Badgett, for Margaret MacLean and family, and all our parishioners living with cancer, known or undetected & for all those who participate in a 12 step group here at St. Mary’s
Call in any requests or corrections to the office. (631-749-0770)
Jesus Calms the Storm Laura James


A Biblical Study
Fr. Geoffrey Plant is an RC pastor in the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia. Just about every week he produces a sermon or homily on the Sunday's readings. They are actually more of a Bible study than a sermon, with excellent information on the settings, word meanings etc. He includes illustrations and quotes from scripture scholars, (mostly Anglicans or Protestants), in the videos. Since our lectionaries are, for the most part, the same I am going to include a link to his videos here in the e-mail each week for you to access if you want another way to get into the readings.


O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving­kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
 
 
Old Testament
Job 38:1-11
The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
 
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
 
"Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped'?"
 
The Epistle
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
As we work together with Christ, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return-- I speak as to children-- open wide your hearts also.
 
 

Jesus Calms the Storm Daniel Bonnell


The Gospel
Mark 4:35-41
When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
 

Jesus calms the storm Echternach Gospel book


Some Reflections


  “Don’t you care?
We’re all going to drown!”
His face of love and concern
Looks me right in the eye
Knowing my fear
Seeing the tempest inside
He speaks
“Peace! Be still!”
In an instant, everything changed
His eyes met mine again
A greater fear arose
“Why are you so afraid?
Do you still have no faith?”
-    Jason Muckley
 
 
THE STORM
 

Although they had said
He was a carpenter,
I could tell by his talk
That he knew all about water.
With words he could turn
The agitated crushing sea
Into a motionless solid beam
Of undressed timber ;
Or with words again, conjure,
From the winding grain of wood
The uneasy movement of a river.

There had been that time,
Very early on,
When he had come in our boat,
And we were overtaken
By a storm.
The waves beat about the craft,
until we thought we were gone,
And all the while
he was asleep in the stern.
One of us had awoken him
and angrily said,
“Do you care if we drown?”
and he had stood up
in the middle of the boat,
and unfurling his robes
like a sail,
gave an enormous shout.
And he screamed and screamed
until nothing existed
but the noise
coming from his mouth;
and the boat seemed to turn
not to the tumult of the storm,
but on the axle of his throat.
and when he finally stopped,
it was as if the wind and rain
had been sucked into his gullet,
for the lake and sky were subdued.
And he turned around, and smiled,
and said,”Brothers,you lack faith.”
Then he lay down once more
with his head on the pillow,
and fell asleep.
And soon he was as still
as the dark waters
that surrounded us.

Up until then the sea
had been my master.
But now I had a new master,
his wet head resting unconcerned,
as we drifted on.
-    John W. Sexton
 
 
Wild Nature and Experience
 
 
Healed Ere We Are Aware
 
No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frost bitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day’s exposure to mountains is better than carloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographer’s plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul. All that is required is exposure, and purity of material. The pure in heart shall see God! … Come to the woods, for here is rest. … The galling harness of civilization drops off, and we are healed ere we are aware.
–John Muir 1838-1914
 
 
 
 
 
But if you wish to know how these things come about,
ask grace not instruction,
desire not understanding,
the groaning of prayer not diligent reading,
the Spouse not the teacher,
God not man,
darkness not clarity,
not light but the fire
that totally inflames and carries us into God
by ecstatic unctions and burning affections.
– Bonaventure 1221-1274
 The Soul’s Journey Into God
 
 
The goal is not to read a book;
  the goal is to read the story
  taking place all around us.
-Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme
 
Thou mastering me
     God! Giver of breath and bread;
   World’s strand, sway of the sea;
     Lord of living and dead;
  Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
    Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
 
-Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland (first verse)
 
 
 
 
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
 It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
 It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
 And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
 And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
 
And for all this, nature is never spent;
 There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
 Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
 World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.
 
-Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-1889
 God’s Grandeur
 
 
 Jesus Calms the Storm Rembrandt
P.O Box 1660, 26 St. Mary's Road , Shelter Island, NY 11964
(631) 749-0770
stmarys11964@optonline.net