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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Mk/6-7-13 |
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| Background: Scholars now agree that Jesus had a plan of action to win people over to his Good News. Some (such as N. T. Grant in his monumental "Jesus: the Victory of God" even suggests that Jesus had begun the first steps in organizing a community of his followers. Certainly the instructions in today’s story suggest that he was not working in a hit or miss fashion. The mission was temporary and the specific instructions do not necessarily apply to later ages, but they do warn the follower of Jesus to be restrained as they pile up institutional paraphernalia, commitments, and structures which all too readily become ends in themselves. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time, a parish was planning its 25th anniversary. The found pastor was still the head of the parish. Some of the old timers remembered how much fun they had back at the beginning with amateur theatricals. So they decided that they’d do the same thing for the 25th anniversary. It was nostalgia city. On the Sunday after Easter they would bring back to life the fun of the past. Everything else had to take a back seat: there was no parish mission, religious instruction classes were suspended, parish council and committee meetings were cancelled, the choir did not practice for the Holy Liturgy because it was busy getting ready for the anniversary celebration, there was no Lenten sermon series, teenagers were banned from the parish hall lest they interfere with rehearsals (ever notice how often teenagers are banned for the slightest pretext?), no one under forty had a major part in the production, wedding rehearsals were hasty (which made brides and brides’ mothers very unhappy). The parish ground to a halt. The young priest looked on the whole situation dyspeptically. But he was smart enough to keep his big mouth shut when on the Sunday after Easter a foot of snow was dumped on the parish. |
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