Parish Bulletin
September 5, 2010
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Stewardship
Jesus tells the crowd that only those who renounce all of their possessions can be His disciples, Is he truly asking us to give up everything? Perhaps instead he is trying to help us see that everything we think we own is really a gift from God.
Last weeks collection : $4,482.00
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Pray For Our Military
PFC Scott Scutari– Army
Gregory Azzara - Navy
Gunnery Sgt. John Scott Dowdell - USMC
SSgt Matthew Pica - Army
Capt. Michael Quinn - Navy
John Paul Redmond - Army
PFC Robert Temple—Army
SSgt. Shawn Weismiller - Airforce
Sgt. Jason Ramos-Army
CPO Andrew Darrow, -USN
Pvt Jonathan Salvestrini– Army
PFC Shane Gibney– USMC
Cpl Mark Anthony Barone-USMC
LC Benjamin Johnson– USMC
Lt. Philip J. Granati– U.S. Coast Guard
LC Daniel Kusa- USMC
WO1 Nalita Sellers-Army
LC Amanda Knepper-USMC
PFC Amanda Litcher– USMC
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Parish Council
Stephanie Barry 631-627-6373
slbarry@optonline.net
Nicole Cavaliere 631-286-9659
Dilligafx9@aol.com
Johanna DiGiovanni 631-776-9038
jmdigiovanni@aol.com
Frank Dupointe 631-831-2571
Frank@Dewpointenergy.com
Felix J. Grucci Jr. 631-207-0903
FGruccijr@aol.com
Kathie Hawkins 631-286-2559
kkins620@hotmail.com
Doug Kerr 516-805-1997
wrdkiii@optonline.net
Gary Lombardi 631-241-1435
glombardi@ftub.com
Doris Noehren 631-286-9659
hpndln@aol.com
Michael Simon 201-965-3365
consultmike73@yahoo.com
We encourage you to reach out to any member of the council, as we are your representatives in framing the future of Mary Immaculate.
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Our devotional Statue of the Blessed Mother is available to all of our parish families
for personal adoration at home.
If you are interested in having this statue in your home for a week,
please contact the Rectory at 286-0154 to reserve a date.
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Please Pray for Priests
Dear Lord,
We pray that the Blessed Mother wrap her mantle around your priests and through her intercession strengthen them for their ministry.
We pray that Mary will guide your priests to follow her own words, “Do whatever He tells you” (Jn 2:5) May your priests have the heart of St. Joseph, Mary’s most chaste spouse. May the Blessed Mother’s own pierced heart inspire them to embrace all who suffer at the foot of the cross. May your priests be holy, filled with the fire of your love seeking nothing but your greater glory and the salvation of souls.
Amen.
Saint John Vianney, pray for us.
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RCIA
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults
Catechumens are people who have never been baptized and are now preparing to be baptized, confirmed and welcomed to the Lord’s table at the Easter Vigil through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults commonly called the RCIA. Often there are others who have already been baptized and who now desire to become fully initiated members of the Catholic church. They, too, undergo a period of formation based on the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adult: they are called candidates because they are discerning a call to complete their initiation.
If interested please contact Deacon Bob at 286-0154
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Parish Finance Committee
Dr. Joseph Graskemper
Felix Grucci
Tara Turnow
Parish Trustees
Charlie Meinhold
Johanna DiGiovanni
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MASS INTENTIONS
Saturday Sept 4
5:00pm Clare F. Rose by The Grucci family
Helen & Byron Stevens by Geraldine & Bobby Green
Sunday Sept 5
9:00 am Courtney Blakeslee Cush by Frank & Mariae Trotta
Peggy Tucker by Sal & Lia Bruno
11:00am William Florio by wife
John F. Derby by family
Kanwal Gupta by Fiore family
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The Liturgy of the Word for Children is a special ministry at Mary Immaculate that meets during the 9 a.m. Mass on most Sundays. Children ages 4 to 8 are invited to accompany teachers to the upstairs classroom during the readings and homily of the Mass to hear a brief summary of the Gospel message at their level. They then do an activity that is somehow related to the reading, or some other spiritual theme.
If a parishioner would like to help out with this ministry they can contact the Religious Education office at Mary Immaculate, or call Paulette Brinka at 631-929-8549 (pbbrinka@aol.com).
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This Week - Readings
Monday 1 Cor 5:1-8, Lk 6:6-11
Tuesday 1 Cor 6:1-11 Lk 6:12-19
Wednesday Mt 5:1-4a Mt 1:1-16 18-23
Thursday 1 Cor 8 1b-7 11-13 Lk 6:27-38
Friday 1 Cor 9:16-19 Lk 6:39-42
Saturday 1 Cor 10:14-22 Lk 6:43-49
Sunday Ex :7-11 13-14 1 Tm 1:12-17 Lk 15:1-32
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A Special Thank You to those families
who have given to Catholic Ministries Appeal
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Mass Intentions
Monday Sept 6
9:00am Labor day Holiday no Mass
Tuesday Sept 7
9:00am Robert Ernst by Linda Bufalo
Wednesday Sept 8
9:00am Marion DiDonato by Joann & Joe Brandi
Thursday Sept 9
9:00am Charles M. Parry by family
Friday Sept 10
9:00am no Mass
Sept 11/12
5:00pm
Servers: C. Daconto, C. Rose, N. Nazzaro
Lector: D. Kerr
Host Usher: J. Garcia, P. Grucci, T. Derby
Eucharistic Minister: Please refer to schedule
9:00am
Servers:I. Holker, D. Onorato, Z. Rikimoto
Lector : J. Panarello
Host Usher: C. Miller, D. Roberts
Eucharistic Minister: Please refer to schedule
11:00am
Servers M. Kavanagh, L. Ford, S. Kavanagh
Lector: T. & T. Ford
Host Usher: G. MoriartyM. Fella, B. Mele
Eucharistic Minister: Please refer to schedule
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In today's Gospel, Jesus lays out the demands of following him, the great cost of discipleship. The Mission statement of The Society of St. Vincent de Paul states “Vincentians witness God’s love by embracing all works of charity and justice… the Society makes no distinction in those served because, in them, Vincentians see the face of Christ.”
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The Rosary Altar Society will be having a cake sale
Labor Day Weekend September 4th & 5th after all Masses.
Please help us by baking a cake. Plates will be at the front
and back of church. All proceeds go to enhance our alter.
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Please remember our food pantry, needs your support...
Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.
He is a community-builder, lecturer and writer. His books are popular throughout the English-speaking world and his weekly column is carried by more than ninety newspapers worldwide.
And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at street corners for people to see them. ... But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place." (Matthew 6, 5-6)
For whatever reason, as churches and as individuals, we have been slow to take seriously Jesus' warnings against displaying our piety in public.Yet Jesus is very clear, and very strong, in warning us not to do intimate private acts of prayer, devotion, and asceticism in public.Moreover, in this warning, he doesn't distinguish as to whether these acts come from a sincere heart or a false one. Sincerity or insincerity is not the only issue that concerns him. Public display of piety, however sincere, is also the problem.
Why? What's wrong with public displays of piety? Don't they serve as an inspiration to others?
What's wrong with putting our private hearts on display in public might be answered in one word: aesthetics. It's bad art, art that irritates more than it inspires. It's unhealthy exhibitionism. Why?
Because piety is a form of intimacy and intimacy needs propriety. Intimacy is a deep private bond between persons and that private bond demands that deep intimate expressions of affection should be done in private.
This isn't abstract. We all know that love should be made behind closed doors. Intimacy, in its very structure, demands discretion, privacy, propriety, a shielding from public gaze, something which the early church called the discipline arcane. That's why we find ourselves uncomfortable when we see people who are too openly affectionate in public. Our spontaneous reaction, to avert our eyes, to feel uncomfortable, to wish this wasn't happening in front of us, is a healthy one because what we are seeing is an unhealthy exhibitionism, even if the affection between the two persons is healthy. It's not the love that's wrong; it's the public display that's unhealthy. Intimate affection needs to be more sacred in guarding itself with privacy and propriety.
The same is true for private prayer, private devotions, and private acts of penance. Whether sincere or not, public display of them is unhealthily exhibitionistic. When Jesus warns us to do our private prayers and our private penances behind closed doors he is, admittedly, warning against hypocrisy, against being seen as good as opposed to actually being good. But he is also warning against the public display of private devotion itself, no matter how sincere.
For example, the early church practiced something it called the discipline arcane. This was a practice within which any Christian who had been baptized and was participating in the Eucharist was forbidden to bring a non-baptized friend to the Eucharist or even describe to another person what happens at a Eucharist. The instinct here was not to create some kind of secret cult around the Eucharist, but to guard its intimacy. For them, the Eucharist was like making love, something done behind closed doors.
I was lucky enough to see this healthily enacted in my own parents, both in their prayer lives and in their relationship to each other. My mother and father had a deep affection for each other and clearly made love a lot behind closed doors. But they never put that affection on public display. Indeed, and the family smiles about this now, we would sometimes catch them holding hands and sitting together when they thought nobody was around. Their prayer lives were the same. Both had a deep faith marked by piety, but both were also careful to keep their more intimate acts of prayer and devotion private. Both too tended to cringe when they saw too overt a display of either affection or piety in public. Perhaps that's why I have a certain genetic resistance to overt displays of piety.
But, for the most part, we have been reluctant to take Jesus' warning on this seriously.Sometimes in fact the reverse is true and public display of private devotion is held up as an ideal. To cite an example: Several years ago, I was at a Sunday mass which was being presided over by an Auxiliary Bishop. Just before he was to receive communion, in front of a congregation of more than 500 people, he, in all sincerity and reverence, put his arms on the altar, placed his face down inside his arms, and stayed in that posture of adoration for over a minute, while the entire congregation had nothing to do but to watch him make that private act of reverence. At the time, I was only irritated by something that I considered out of place, bad timing, bad art, but I was more taken aback afterwards by comments outside the church: "Wasn't that wonderful!" "What a deep faith!"
Deep faith, probably.Wonderful, no. There's a good reason why we spontaneously squirm in the face of overt gestures of intimacy that are meant really to express private emotion.
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There will be a 2nd collection for Catholic Universities September 12th.
The Catholic University of America, located in Washington, DC is the national university of the Catholic Church in the US. CUA offers students an excellent education in a faith filled atmosphere that is grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Every dollar given directly supports financial aid for students from dioceses across the country, including our diocese.
Please give generous.
Golden Wedding Jubilee
On Sunday, October 17,2010, couples married 50 years or more are invited to a special mass to be celebrated by Bishop Peter Libasci at Christ the King in Commack at 2:30pm. Please pick up your registration card at the rectory, fill it out and return it to the rectory in time to reach the Diocese of Rockville Centre no later than October 1st.
One week before the ceremony information regarding the day will be mailed to you.
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Please pray for the Deceased of our parish
Jan Ramirez and Jennie Palermo
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