“but they are in the world…”
Jn 17:11
Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
In recent homilies Bishop Patrick J. Zurek has put forth the Encyclical of Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, as the standard for love and unity in our diocese. Today, let’s reflect upon paragraph #215 in that regard:
CHAPTER SIX
A NEW CULTURE
215. “Life, for all its confrontations, is the art of encounter”.[204]
“Do you know how a bridge works? A bridge must be stepped over by people, so that it can bring people to the other side.”
I have frequently called for the growth of a culture of encounter capable of transcending our differences and divisions.
’Their (children) death is a sign that one does not want to build the future, but wants to destroy it,”
This means working to create a many-faceted polyhedron whose different sides form a variegated unity, in which “the whole is greater than the part”.[205]
“It’s been a sequence of crying, hollering, yelling, in the room just getting it out. But these kids and the school have embraced me like I am an integral part of a family,”
The image of a polyhedron can represent a society where differences coexist, complementing, enriching and reciprocally illuminating one another, even amid disagreements and reservations.
“In communion with the Holy Father following the example of the first Christian communities in this time of great trial, we lift up to the Lord through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, unceasing supplications for the end of the pandemic,”
Each of us can learn something from others. No one is useless and no one is expendable.
As the dispensation to attend Mass in the Diocese of Amarillo is being lifted by Bishop Patrick J. Zurek (see the tab, Lifting of Dispensation by Bishop Zurek, on the homepage of the diocesan website, amarillodiocese.org), here is the list of Mass Schedules for parishes in the Diocese of Amarillo.
This also means finding ways to include those on the peripheries of life.
Valedictorian is Andrew Robert Wilhelm and the Salutatorian is Luke Thomas Rickwartz.
For they have another way of looking at things; they see aspects of reality that are invisible to the centres of power where weighty decisions are made.
Welcome back home!
From a Memo from Bishop Patrick J. Zurek Sent to All Diocese of Amarillo Priests in the Matters of Lifting the Covid-19 Dispensation
Today this “restless” and formally unrecognized catechist, is asking those “under the dome”: Why can’t we have a Cathedral parish where, “differences coexist, complementing, enriching and reciprocally illuminating one another, even amid disagreements and reservations”, instead of denouncing it as, “a
lot of unrest… for the last few months; actually, in
reality, for some decades?”
Today my prayer is that, “the dome” understands that, “Each of us can learn something from others”, even “the world” or ” ‘a few’, emphasis on a few, souls that appear to be quite
restless” , and lives in “the world” in such a way that it creates “a many-faceted polyhedron whose different sides form a variegated unity, in which “the whole is greater than the part”.
