“They will receive a very severe condemnation.”
MK12:40
Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
Let us be neither dogs that do not bark nor silent onlookers nor paid servants who run away before the wolf. Instead let us be careful shepherds watching over Christ’s flock. Let us preach the whole of God’s plan to the powerful and to the humble, to rich and to poor, to men of every rank and age,…
A letter by St Boniface
Our culture has entered
Bishop Patrick J. Zurek, A Reflection on Christian Life
into a new, damaging darkness.
In his Holy Week homilies Bishop Patrick J. Zurek 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 #231 and current events in that regard:
CHAPTER SEVEN
PATHS OF RENEWED ENCOUNTER
THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF PEACE
231. Negotiation often becomes necessary for shaping concrete paths to peace.
Most Mar Qardakh students come from low-income households and many of them attend school tuition-free.
Doing the same for low-income households in our diocese would begin “shaping concrete paths to peace” in the Diocese of Amarillo.
Yet the processes of change that lead to lasting peace are crafted above all by peoples; each individual can act as an effective leaven by the way he or she lives each day.
“One of the first decisions a person makes is how they’re going to capitalize on the gift and the opportunity that the Mass and the Eucharist are. Everything else kind of fits around it,”
By attending Mass and writing this blog I “can act as an effective leaven”.
Great changes are not produced behind desks or in offices.
“I think, really, what’s especially important is for us to look at how important she felt that people on the margins were and how we need to love them.”
Mother Seton did not make “Great changes” by sitting “behind desks”, “under a dome” and mandating a “quota”.
This means that “everyone has a fundamental role to play in a single great creative project: to write a new page of history, a page full of hope, peace and reconciliation”.[216]
The real-life judge before whom Arne was tried dismissed his plea of supernatural extenuating circumstances. Discerning movie fans may be inclined to do the same with this fictionalized version of his ordeal.
Instead of claiming that, “The devil made them do it.”, Bishop Zurek may consider, “that ‘everyone, even ‘the few’, have a fundamental role to play in the Diocese of Amarillo.
There is an “architecture” of peace, to which different institutions of society contribute, each according to its own area of expertise, but there is also an “art” of peace that involves us all.
Or, if vintage film is more your thing, Sister Pacatte recommends classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), “A Man for All Seasons” (1966) and “Life Is Beautiful” (1997) to find more examples of upstanding fathers.
I am a vintage film person and strongly believe that the movie industry is one of the “different institutions of society” that contribute to the “architecture” of peace. That’s probably why the Franciscan Sisters of Panhandle offer a Worship Prayer Movie Night (537-3182)
From the various peace processes that have taken place in different parts of the world, “we have learned that these ways of making peace, of placing reason above revenge, of the delicate harmony between politics and law, cannot ignore the involvement of ordinary people.
Mother of nine, Nola Drum, makes no secret of the fact that she has prayed for more priests, brothers and sisters, but that she had no idea her prayers would be answered quite so close to home.
Since marriage is the vocation of the “ordinary people”, it has become the forgotten vocation in the Diocese of Amarillo. Bishop Zurek dictates that we pray for more priests, somehow expecting them to appear out of thin air.
Peace is not achieved by normative frameworks and institutional arrangements between well-meaning political or economic groups…
As soon as we read that Moses took calves’ blood and “sprinkled it on the people,” Nancy immediately said, “There’d be flies!”
The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
It is always helpful to incorporate into our peace processes the experience of those sectors that have often been overlooked, so that communities themselves can influence the development of a collective memory”.[217]
“The Glenn” in conjunction with the Laudato Si’ Action Platform has pledged to develop a Laudato Si’ Plan, which we can use to discern and implement our response to Laudato Si’. This part of the blog will update readers on this journey.
Amarillo—Singers of all backgrounds from all parishes in the Diocese of Amarillo are invited to help lead the assembly in song at a number of diocesan events in the near future, according to Dr. Greg Onofrio, Music Director at St. Mary’s Cathedral. To learn more about participation in the diocesan choir, please contact Dr. Onofrio at 806-376-7204.
Today this “restless” and formally unrecognized catechist is asking our shepherd “under the dome, “Do you think you ‘will receive a very severe condemnation‘ for not being a “careful” shepherd who watches over Christ’s flock during this, ‘time of change and conversion of mind and heart‘, by not incorporating into our peace processes the experience of those sectors that have often been overlooked, such as ‘the few‘.
I ask St. Boniface to pray that those of us in the Diocese of Amarillo, but especially those at St. Mary’s Cathedral and “the few” , who have received, “a very severe condemnation” from Bishop Zurek, do not become “dogs that do not bark nor silent onlookers nor paid servants who run away before the wolf”, but continue to, “influence the development of a collective memory“.
