The materials for the Christ Our Hope Capital Campaign have been mailed to everyone on the parishioner list. Please see here a video made by Fr. Tim Naples that will be helpful as you consider the request of bishop Coyne to support the Diocesan ministries and our parish life. At St. Jude’s Church we have numerous goals which would only happen with the generous and sacrificial support of our benefactors. We understand that not every goal may be possible in the next three years. But we must still take this moment to pray over, reflect on, and dialogue about the priorities to which the Lord may now be calling us. Is the Lord calling you to make a sacrificial contribution for the future ministry of St. Jude’s Church, and the Diocese and ministries of Catholic Charities? Please communicate with us with any further questions, or ideas about parish planning. May our Lord, with all his Apostles, and the Blessed Mother, be with us this day!
 

"My prayer is that this campaign will motivate every Catholic in Vermont to give themselves over completely to Christ. We know that when we give ourselves over entirely to Him – everything changes. When we lay our prayer, our time and our finances at his feet, we are transformed by his grace. This is what our Blessed Lord asked of the rich young man, what He saw in the widow’s mite and what He challenged the Pharisees to see. When we belong to Christ, our hope is assured, and a vibrant Church is built!"
 

'In the heart of the Church I shall be love.' These words of the Carmelite, St. Therese of Lisieux, capture our hopes for the Christ our Hope Capital Campaign in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish and St. Jude the Apostle Parish. We wish to put our generosity forward for the service of our brothers and sisters in society, showing the love of Christ from “the heart of the Church.” Our parishes have discerned the priorities of the 2019 synod directives from Bishop Christopher Coyne, for evangelization, communication, and vibrant parish life. In this time of the COIVD pandemic, our greatest priorities will be the dignified and prayerful proclamation of the Word of God through the Church’s liturgy, and loving service to our neighbor in society, especially the poor.

Sunday July 19, 2020
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I and Fr. Zuccaro are happy to enter into our ministry at St. Jude’s Parish. Over the past year I was blessed to meet a good number of parishioners doing a few weekend Masses each month. Starting next month, I will offer Mass occasionally at both St. Jude’s and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish.
As you are well aware, one of our biggest concerns right now is to guide the parish through this time of concern with the COVID-19 pandemic. As we work to promote both the physical and spiritual wellbeing of all the faithful in the parish, we will move forward with the Church’s liturgy as the source of our hope and our spiritual strength, and with the virtues of prudence and fortitude as the foundation for all our efforts. As we keep to the precautions given by the Roman Catholic Diocese for all events and gathering in our churches, we also wish to reach out beyond our church to the whole community, to those who need encouragement, or who need temporal help.
Let us continue to pray, at all times and in every place. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless us.
In Christ,
Fr. Tim Naples

Sunday, June 28, 2020                    A Message for the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
 
A term that has come into common usage in recent weeks is "systemic (not systematic) injustice."
 
An important thing to note about any defect in society that is "systemic"--such as injustice, racism, or whatever--is that it does not imply individual responsibility, immorality, culpability, or guilt.  It is just a part of the environment we live in, totally unaware of it, especially if we are not negatively but even positively affected by it.
 
Moral responsibility comes when we become conscious of something wrong or inequitable in our political and social systems and then do nothing about it.
 
"Systemic injustice" is not a new concept.  I first became aware of the concept in Pope John Paul II's 1987 encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis, published in English as The Social Concern of the Church.  He uses terms like "structural injustice", and "structures of sin" interchangeably to refer to systemic injustice in contexts like this one in paragraph 38:
 
When interdependence (of peoples) becomes recognized in this way, the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a "virtue," is solidarity. This then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. This determination is based on the solid conviction that what is hindering full development is that desire for profit and that thirst for power already mentioned. These attitudes and "structures of sin" are only conquered - presupposing the help of divine grace - by a diametrically opposed attitude: a commitment to the good of one's neighbor with the readiness, in the gospel sense, to "lose oneself" for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to "serve him" instead of oppressing him for one's own advantage (cf. Mt 10:40-42; 20:25; Mk 10:42-45; Lk 22:25-27).
 
In Thursday's New York Times the columnist David Brooks named what he called "5 Epic Crises" confronting America, one of which he calls "a quasi-religion (that) is seeking control of America’s cultural institutions":
 
"The acolytes of this quasi-religion, Social Justice, hew to a simplifying ideology: History is essentially a power struggle between groups, some of which are oppressors and others of which are oppressed. Viewpoints are not explorations of truth; they are weapons that dominant groups use to maintain their place in the power structure. Words can thus be a form of violence that has to be regulated."
 
Clearly this is not the Catholic Church's definition of social justice, the lack of which is the real social crisis in our country and world!
 



June 21, 2020                        A Message for the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
 
Forty-four years have passed since the publication of Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley.
 
In the book, Haley traces his family history from the birth of his ancestor Kunta Kinte in the Gambia, in West Africa, to the present.  Kunta Kinte was captured as a young man in 1767, transported to Maryland, and sold into slavery in Virginia.
 
One detail of Kunta Kinte's story that I remember was his rage at the "slave name" he was given and that he refused to use, which was "Toby".  After all, your name is expressive of who you are, of your very identity.
 
To have someone purport to take "ownership" of you and then to assert that by renaming you like a pet, or like a beast of burden, would be the highest disrespect and a denial of your human dignity.  Toby was not the only enslaved African who chafed under that insult.
 
All the more remarkable, then, is the Negro Spiritual Changed Mah Name, an illustration of the rich spiritual imagery that the African American community has developed even out of adversity.
 
I tol' Jesus it would be all right
If He changed mah name.
Jesus tol' me I would have to live humble
If He changed mah name.
Jesus tol' me that the world would be 'gainst me
If He changed mah name.
But I tol' Jesus it would be all right
If He changed mah name.
 
As we go through life we are inevitably changed by other people.  We cannot get away from that, but we do have some freedom to choose by whom we will allow ourselves to be changed.
 
Jeremiah does not sound like an entirely happy camper in today's first reading (Jeremiah 20:10-13), but he accepts his situation with joy!  Why?
 
In context, just three verses earlier, he has said, "You duped me Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you prevailed (20:7).
 
If you are going to be duped and have your name changed anyway, be duped and have your name changed by someone who loves you!  Be duped and have your name changed by Jesus!



Sunday, June 14, 2020                     A Message for the Week of Corpus Christi
                                             (The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ)
 
Many of you probably have heard and seen what I call simply "No, Corona," a YouTube video with the actual title "Nessun Dorma...alla Corona," by America's Got Talent star Daniel Emmet.  If you have not, it is well worth a search.
 
Basing his piece on the melody of Nessun Dorma, from Puccini's opera Turandot, Emmet does nine singing parts simultaneously--Zoom-gallery-style.  First, he bemoans his deepening cabin fever resulting from lockdown isolation.  Then he/they moves/move into a joyful and victorious mode (Vinceremo!) looking forward to the day "when the quarantine is done, when we can gather all again, as one."
 
It is an old idea that we do not really appreciate what we have until we do not, or cannot, have it.  Right now, we miss the simple "gathering as one" to socialize, eat, and drink together unguardedly.  We miss "conviviality," from the Latin word "convivium", for "banquet".
 
Are you hungry for conviviality?  It is available to us every time we gather at Mass.
 
The antiphon for the Magnificat on Corpus Christi is attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas--"O Sacrum Convivium"--"O Sacred Banquet".
 
Conviviality is also the theme of the Feast Day's second reading, 1 Corinthians 10:16-17:
 
Brothers and sisters:  The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
 
We gather on the Feast of Corpus Christi to celebrate the great gift of the Eucharist apart from the other more somber aspects of Holy Thursday.
 
We gather also to celebrate our community in the Lord.
 
As Saint Paul wrote in Romans 8, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ--not death, not life, not angels, not principalities, not present things, not future things, not powers, not heights, not depths.  Not Covid-19.  (Saint Paul did not say that, of course.  I added it.)
 
Nor can we ever be separated from one another in time or in eternity, just as long as we live in his love.



Sunday, June 7, 2020                          A Message for the Week of Trinity Sunday
 
     A parishioner sent me a text last Friday: "How do you feel about flowers for both Masses at OLMC on Sunday? We have large blue and white irises.  A few red and a few white peonies.  Could be a patriotic theme?  Or not...."
     The idea of a patriotic theme made me wonder.  Memorial Day had passed, and we have nearly a month to go before the Fourth of July.  As it turned out, the donor of the flowers was really making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the red, white, and blue color scheme.
     But it is a time--in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and all the social upheavals around the country--for a truly healthy patriotism.  A time for Americans first to pull ourselves together, and then to pull together to create a better future.
     On Trinity Sunday we celebrate with a special feast the inner life of God as it has been revealed to us, "One God, one Lord: not in the unity of a single person, but in a Trinity of one substance" (Preface of the Mass).
     God is a community of love.  Made in God's image that is what all we humans are called to be: one community of love.
     The late Bishop Moses Anderson, S.S.E., who died on New Year's Day in 2013, expressed this idea in his episcopal motto, which was "Unity in Diversity".
     Moses was an African American Edmundite, born in Selma, Alabama, who had traced his roots to Ghana in West Africa.  On his episcopal coat of arms appear a cross made of Kente cloth, which is a Ghanaian material; an image of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, which is a symbol of racist division and violence during the Voting Rights struggles, in the first attempt at a Selma to Montgomery march on March 7, 1965; but also a bridge to freedom, when the march was allowed to proceed on March 21.
     Most prominent are three large, interlocking rings taken from the coat of arms of Saint Edmund, when he was archbishop of Canterbury, and from the official seal of the Society of Saint Edmund.  They represent the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: unity in diversity.
      Finally, in my process of free association, I come to "E pluribus unum" one of the two mottos on the Great Seal of the United States, dating from 1776 and approved by Congress in 1782.  In Latin this means "Out of many, one."  It referred most immediately to one nation evolving out of thirteen separate colonies or states, but today it applies to all fifty states.
      May it not also be applied by extension to all approximately 327.17 million Americans, called by God to be, in the image of our Creator, Redeemer, and  Advocate, one community of love; the embodiment of unity in diversity; and one people made from many!



Sunday, May 31, 2020                        A Message for the Week of Pentecost
 
Ruach is a Hebrew word with several related meanings.  According to Strong's Concordance it can mean: 1. breath of mouth or nostrils; 2. wind; 3. spirit, as that which breathes quickly in animation or agitation; 4. spirit of the living, breathing being.
 
In Genesis 1:2 it denotes the Spirit of God: "a mighty wind sweeping over the waters" at the beginning of creation. In Exodus it is the "strong east wind" holding back the waters of the sea for Israel to pass through to freedom.  In Isaiah 61 (quoted by Jesus and applied to himself in Luke 4) the prophet says "The Ruach (the Spirit of the Lord God) is upon me because the Lord has anointed me...."  In John 3, Jesus says to Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it wills....  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  And so on.
 
For ten weeks, give or take a few days, we have all been holding our breath in shutdown.  Oppressed by the Covid-19 pandemic, compressed in our homes, depressed at the same time by the horrible breakdowns in civil society in our own country and around the world, it is time for a breath of fresh air.
 
Pentecost arrived just on time this year, reminding us of the Holy Spirit coming like a strong, driving wind to shake everything up and blow the sin away; coming to inaugurate a new creation at the beginning of our Church's life; coming to empower people of every race and nationality and language to come together in praise of the mighty works of God; coming as Jesus' gentle breath of peace and reconciliation upon his disciples (that is upon you and me): "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (John 20:22-23).  We have a job to do!
 
As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.  For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks (or whatever), slaves or free persons (or whoever), and we were all given to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:12-13).
 
Let us offer a toast to Pentecost!


Sunday, May 24, 2020                                     Message for the Seventh Week of Easter
 
God does not send plagues to teach us things, though we can learn from them (Father Richard Leonard, SJ, in The Tablet, April 25, 2020).
 
For me it has been disturbing to learn how many Christians, even Roman Catholic Christians, have interpreted the Covid-19 pandemic as a message deliberately visited on the human race by God as a punishment for--for what?--or at least as an attention grabber to teach us a lesson.
 
Really, God sent his own Son into the world to get our attention once and for all, and that is enough: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son....  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:16-17).
 
God is love (1 John 4:16).  God is chesed, loving kindness.  God is mercy.  And one who is loving- kindness-and-mercy does not arbitrarily inflict pain and suffering and death on his children.
 
God is life, life-with-us, as in the Collect for the Vigil Mass of the Ascension: "O God, whose Son today ascended to the heavens, we pray that in accordance with his promise, we may be worthy for him to live with us always on earth, and we with him in heaven."  A deep mystery!
 
Plagues and pandemics originate not in God, but in "not-God".  "Through one person (Adam) sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned" (Romans 5:13).  Another deep mystery.  But sin, not God, is the source of suffering and death!
 
God does permit evil in our world, and through accepting and managing suffering we can learn and grow to be better people.  That does not mean that God "creates" evil.
 
To quote Father Leonard again, "Spiritual sanity in these difficult days rests in seeing that every  moment of every day God does what he did on Good Friday: not intervening to prevent humanity killing Jesus, but not allowing evil and despair to have the last word."
 
In this last week of Easter let us hold fast to that Easter faith and to that Easter hope.



Sunday, May 17, 2020                A Message for the Sixth Week of Easter
 
During the Covid-19 shutdown, while quite isolated on the one hand, I have been more in touch with the outside world than ever through electronic communications: from the humble telephone call and teleconferences to Skype and Zoom.
 
When all the classes at Saint Michael's College went to Zoom, it occurred to me how revealing it was going to be for students to encounter their friends and classmates and professors calling in from their home environments.
 
The leveling effect of dormitory and dining hall life would be displaced as students checked in from various kinds of homes--for what it would be worth--ranging from the grandest and most elegant to the simplest and most humble.  How would this new knowledge of "where they come from" affect their mutual perceptions and ongoing relationships, if at all?
 
It has turned out that a lot of commentators have been thinking, reporting, and writing about this.  A recent short piece in The New Yorker (May 18), titled "Dept. of Scrutiny: Glass Houses," puts it this way: If [media personalities] want to remain on our screens, they must invite us, and our judgments, into their living rooms, bedrooms, and, in some cases, bathrooms."  That last one, I suppose, is the last redoubt of a broadcaster in an apartment filled with boisterous children.
 
This reminds me of something called the Johari Window, a tool for understanding interpersonal relationships that was developed by two men named--yes--Joseph (Joe) Luft and Harrington (Harry) Ingham in 1955.  Picture a square window with four panes of glass, or quadrants: One quadrant contains adjectives describing what you and others perceive about you.  A second contains adjectives describing what you but nobody else knows about you.  The third contains what everyone else, but not you, knows about you.  (Whoops!)  The fourth contains what no one at all knows about you, neither yourself nor anyone else.  You can move the "muntins", the strips separating the panes, to shrink or expand one quadrant or another as your personalities and relationships grow or shrink.  Mind you, this is a totally non-professional and inexpert description.
 
The religious point is that it is God alone who sees and knows all that there is to see and know about each one and all of us, all the time.  No surprises.
 
LORD, you have probed me, you know me: you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. You sift through my travels and my rest; with all my ways you are familiar.  Even before a word is on my tongue, LORD, you know it all (Psalm 139: 1-4).
 
And he loves us, regardless!



Sunday, May 10, 2020                Message for the Fifth Week of Easter
 
Do you remember the story about "the woman at the well" in John, Chapter 4?  Passing through Samaria, in a town called Sychar, Jesus sits down to rest beside a well, where he strikes up a conversation with a Samaritan woman who comes to draw water.  One topic the woman brings up is the question of the proper place to worship God--on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, or on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.  Jesus says to her, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem....  True worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth."
 
I have thought about that conversation in this time when we are prevented by the Covid-19 pandemic from worshiping God in our usual church buildings.  Without Sunday Mass, have you just given yourself a pass on any worship?  Or have you discovered new ways to worship the Father "in Spirit and in truth" wherever you are?
 
This Sunday's second reading, from 1 Peter, began with these words:
 
"Beloved, come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and, like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
 
You see, you--we--are the Church, the priestly people, the spiritual temple, where spiritual sacrifices are prepared in our lives and offered to God.
 
And this Sunday's first reading from Acts (6:1-7), on the proper roles of the Apostles and the first deacons in the Church, suggested that there are at least two kinds of worship.  There is cult and preaching (prayer and the ministry of the word), and then there is direct service in charity to the poor.  Both are essential.
 
In this time when your liturgical worship is constrained, perhaps you can put a little more spiritual and mental and physical energy into service.



May 3, 2020                       Message for the Fourth Week of Easter
 
"'Tis the month of our Mother, the blessed and beautiful days."  As we enter into the month of May in 2020, you may have heard that Pope Francis has written a special letter encouraging the faithful to pray the Rosary during the month of May, "when the People of God express with particular intensity their love and devotion for the Blessed Virgin Mary."
 
In A Letter for the Month of May, published on April 25, the Pope notes the long tradition of praying the Rosary at home with the family during this month. But this year, he observes, "the restrictions of the pandemic have made us come to appreciate all the more this 'family' aspect, also from a spiritual point of view."
 
He writes in full, Dear Brothers and Sisters, the month of May is approaching, a time when the People of God express with particular intensity their love and devotion for the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It is traditional in this month to pray the Rosary at home within the family.  The restrictions of the pandemic have made us come to appreciate all the more this “family” aspect, also from a spiritual point of view.
 
For this reason, I want to encourage everyone to rediscover the beauty of praying the Rosary at home in the month of May.  This can be done either as a group or individually; you can decide according to your own situations, making the most of both opportunities.  The key to doing this is always simplicity, and it is easy also on the internet to find good models of prayers to follow.
 
I am also providing two prayers to Our Lady that you can recite at the end of the Rosary, and that I myself will pray in the month of May, in spiritual union with all of you.  I include them with this letter so that they are available to everyone.
 
Dear brothers and sisters, contemplating the face of Christ with the heart of Mary our Mother will make us even more united as a spiritual family and will help us overcome this time of trial.  I keep all of you in my prayers, especially those suffering most greatly, and I ask you, please, to pray for me.  I thank you, and with great affection I send you my blessing.
 
His letter and the new prayers that he has composed can be found on the internet by searching for Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Faithful for the Month of May 2020.
 
In this time of so much fear, suffering, anguish, and death, do remember Mary's titles, among them Health of the Sick, Comfort of the Afflicted, and Help of Christians.
 
And do not neglect the Memorare.


Sunday, April 26, 2020               A Message for the Third Week of Easter
 
If you have not had a chance to hear or to read the Gospel from the Mass of the Third Sunday of Easter, read it now: Luke 24:13-35. It tells the wonderful story of the risen Christ's "stealth" appearance to two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. One of them was named Cleopas. As for the other, we do not even know his name. The story always reminds me of our experience of the Mass. First, they greet each other, as we do at the church door, making a little small talk about current events--in this case the crucifixion of Jesus. They say that they had been hoping that Jesus would be Israel's redeemer, but whatever! Now there are only some rumors of his resurrection. Jesus leads them through a kind of Liturgy of the Word, explaining current events in the light of Old Testament prophecies. But it is only in the breaking of the bread--in Holy Communion--that they recognize him: and then he is gone! They are driven forth by the Spirit to make the long trek back to Jerusalem--in the darkness and dangers of the night--to bring their good news to the other disciples. On this day, Jesus is walking with you. And, while you may not have the opportunity right now to receive Christ physically in Communion, you are spiritually united to him; you have the Word of God at your fingertips, in your heart, and on your lips; you have the faith fellowship of family and close friends to share it with.  Above all you have the message of Easter Hope to bring into the dark of the Covid 19 induced night around us. "Lord Jesus, open the Scriptures to us; make our hearts burn while you speak to us. Alleluia!"


Sunday, March 12, 2020                                                  Easter, 2020
                                   
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
            I am writing this letter on March 29, the Fifth Sunday of Lent.  It is now clear that we will not be able to see and greet each other at Sunday Mass until at least three weeks after Easter.
            Today's dark and rainy weather, the somberness of the Lenten season itself, and the steady feed of mostly bad news about the Covid-19 pandemic all seem to be reinforcing each other.      But....  We have the words of Ezekiel in today's Liturgy of the Word:
            Thus says the Lord GOD: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the Land of Israel.  Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people!
            We are God's own people of faith in the Resurrection, and it is our faith that motivates us and carries us along in any and all "death" experiences, whether a bad moment, a bad day, a bad season, or in the face of death itself.  In the Gospel today (John 11) both Martha and Mary say to Jesus about the death of their brother Lazarus, "If you had been here, my brother would not have died."  If he had been there!  The Lord is present always and everywhere.
            I am the resurrection and the life, answers Jesus.  Whoever believes in me, even if they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?
            Do we truly believe?
            We pray for all the victims of the pandemic--those who have died or will die especially among our families, friends, and associates and those who mourn them--as well as those who have suffered; and for the direct and indirect victims of the pandemic all over the world.
            We pray for those, including members of our own parish communities, who are out there offering their own lives to care for the sick, and to seek solutions.
            But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of Glory passes on his way.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!
 
                                                                                    Easter Blessings!
 
                                                                                    Father David Cray, SSE
                                                                                    Pastor