What Is Your Heart Condition?

Dear Parishioners,

What is our heart condition? The readings this week speak about our heart condition. Jesus sees what is in the heart of people. (Dt 4:1-2, 6-8; Ps 15:2-5 [1a]/Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

The heart is the center of our spiritual life just as it is the center of our biological life. Our thinking comes from the heart. Also, our desires and fears arise from our heart. That is why Jesus is perfectly clear when He says that from the heart come evil thoughts, lust, and many other undesirable behaviors. Thus, we sin from within, not from outside.

Although washing hands is a good practice to maintain good physical health, it has nothing to do with our spiritual health. To avoid sin and thus maintain purity, we need to follow God’s commandments; the greatest of them is to love Him and to love others as we love ourselves. Indeed, it is important that we make our body clean, but it is far more important to keep our mind and heart free from evil thoughts and sinful desires.

God Bless,
Deacon Howard

Making The Right Choice

Dear Parishioners,

One of the things we all need to do is be more grateful and thankful for the blessings we have and the people around us. I want to thank everybody for their prayers and support for one another and the parish during the pandemic. I was particularly impressed by the good stewards who helped clean the pews after each Mass week after week, the ushers who helped seat the people with distance spacing, the many who signed up for electronic fund transfers (EFTs) when they couldn’t bring their envelopes to Mass, the gentleman who recently refinished the pews damaged by the cleaning solutions, and you, so many of whom have come back to Mass. Somebody jokingly said, “They might just get used to watching the Mass on TV in their pajamas with a latte in their hand and the newspaper by their side.” But if there’s anything we learned in the past month from the Gospel of John, if we want to share in the life of Jesus, we must eat the “Bread of Life,” Jesus in Holy Communion. And we can’t do that through television.

Today’s readings call for us to make a choice (Jos 24:1 2a, 15-17, 18b; Ps 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Eph 5:21-32 or 5:2a, 25-32; Jn 6:60-69). At Shechem, Joshua invites the Israelites to make a choice. It’s either the God who liberated them from Egypt or the gods of the Amorites. The people and Joshua made the right choice. The gospel shows Jesus offering Peter a choice as well. He could stay with Jesus or go with the many who left because the teaching of Jesus was “hard to endure.” Peter made the right choice. May we always do the same even when we find His teachings through the Church “hard to endure.”

Please pray for Haiti and Afghanistan.
Fr. Carl

Feast of the Assumption

Dear Parishioners,

This Sunday we celebrate the Assumption of Mary. Have you ever wondered why the church uses the word “assumption” instead of “ascension” for this dogma of faith? The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was Assumed body and soul into heaven, but artistic representations throughout the centuries have portrayed our Blessed Mother as Ascending into heaven in a similar fashion as Christ, perhaps carried on the wings of Angels. The reality is assumption is a deeply biblical concept, but is brought about by God’s action. In contrast, an ascension is only recorded once in Sacred Scripture, and it implies that the one who ascends does so by their own power. Therefore, “No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man.” It is only Jesus, the Son of God, who can ascend and descend from heaven by His own power.  Truly the Feast of the Assumption is good news for all of us who believe in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. We see the Easter promise of our salvation realized in the Assumption of Mary. Mary is the first to receive the fullness of the redemption that her son has won for all of humanity.

God Bless,
Deacon Howard

The Bread of Life

Dear Parishioners,

Again we pause and take a break from Mark’s gospel and listen to John’s. John is the only gospel writer to leave out Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Instead, John gives us 45 verses of Jesus referring to himself as the Bread of Life and what it means for our lives—namely that it is Jesus who give us real life.

The opening verse of today’s gospel uses an unusual word “murmur”. “The Jews started to murmur in protest because Jesus claimed ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven’.” Murmur means rumble or complain and was first used in the Book of Exodus. The Israelites in the desert without water grumble and complain to Moses. Life is hard and they aren’t happy with it. As always, God comes through and leads them to a place with 12 springs and 70 palm trees. So, their murmuring stops until they run out of food and complain to Moses again. So God provides quail to quench their hunger and grumbling.

Human nature often leads to complaining when difficulties or hardships occur. It was that way with both the Jews of Moses’ time and those of Jesus’ time. For the latter, it was hard to believe that a man could actually have come down from heaven and be the bread of life and that eating this bread would lead to eternal life.

Hopefully, we have learned that grumbling, complaining, or murmuring is not the way to go when we encounter any kind of hardship. God loves us and is with us. Let us turn to him for support to help us weather whatever hardships come our way.

Fr. Carl

The Gift of Life

Dear Parishioners,

Over the past few weeks, I’ve celebrated a few birthdays and graduations with family, and I began to think about the whole ritual of giving and receiving gifts.

We are usually quite open to giving gifts, but most of us are reluctant to receive them. Do we readily accept and receive the precious gifts from God—specifically the gift of life? Life is a gift. Life, our very existence, does not originate with us, nor do we will ourselves into being. Creation, itself, is a gift. It is the overflow of love from the eternal love of the Trinity. We cannot demand to exist. All is a free gift. Have we received the gift of life this day? Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here, all we have is today. Are we receiving this day as a gift from God? Father, thank you for the gift of life. Help me to receive your gift of life today with joy and celebrate it in every circumstance.

God Bless,
Deacon Howard

75th Anniversary Events

My Brothers and Sisters of St. Jane Frances,

It has been nice to see many of you returning to Church since the Archdiocese began to open back up. This year, the Archdiocese of Baltimore is celebrating the “Year of the Eucharist.” The Year of the Eucharist was developed by Archbishop William Lori to help us as we move along our path of life and offer us concrete ways to connect with the Lord and experience his never ending light. As a matter of fact, every time we come to church and participate in Mass, we are joined to the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb through Holy Communion. Furthermore, we are even more deeply connected to Jesus as we practice the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. And the more we grow in those virtues, the greater our sharing now in the prize of heaven despite our earthly problems.

As we are planning our 75th Anniversary events, I would invite you to take part of the celebrations in the coming months. On November 14th, Archbishop Lori will be here to celebrate our Anniversary Mass. Following the 11:30am Mass, we will have a luncheon at Kurtz’s Beach. Please consider joining us this day to celebrate our Parish.

Fr. Carl Cummings

Year of the Eucharist

Dear Parishioners,

Many years ago, I had to go to summer school to catch up on math. It was warm with no air conditioning and involved a bit of hard work. It wasn’t much fun. This past week, we had school at St. Jane’s, and it was fun for all involved. It was Vacation Bible School. I attended just two of the sessions but couldn’t get over how enjoyable it was for the 31 children enrolled, our teen aged mentors, and adult supervisors. The final evening was full of life, enthusiasm, and joy. Many thanks to Melissa and all who helped make it the highlight of our summer.

Over the past few months, we had the sad duty to announce the closing of St. Jane Frances Preschool. Since then, people have inquired about the future of the school building. Immediate plans call for it to be used for Parish meetings, Religious Education classes, and Youth Ministry meetings, etc. In addition to parish functions, there will be an Independent Catholic school that will rent some of the classrooms for just one year. In addition to the changes in the school building, a daycare center will rent half of the Parish Center during the current year.

The parish itself remains strong and vibrant. Even though attendance was down as was the offertory, our cost cutting measures and the generosity of so many parishioners signing up for Electronic Fund Transfer donations have left us in a good financial position which will be disclosed in the bulletin when the financials are completed in the next few weeks. Thank you ever so much.

Each year at Mass, our gospel readings concentrate on one of the three synoptic (seen in a similar way) gospels. One year it’s Matthew; another year it’s Luke; and this year it’s Mark. So what happened to John’s gospel? Since Mark’s gospel is the shortest, during his year, there are a number of weeks that we hear from John. As a matter of fact, this week and the following 4 weeks will center on John’s gospel and concentrate on Jesus’ “Bread of Life” discourse. As the Catholic Church embarks on this Year of the Eucharist, there is no better way to begin than chapter 6 of John’s gospel.

Fr. Carl