September 17, 2021

VERY IMPORTANT:
Religious Education classes have begun!  Please reach out to our families with children to inform them about registration.  Classes for both First Communion and Confirmation are mandatory and require two years of preparation to receive these sacraments.  We want to have our children in class and registered by the next two weeks.  Thank you for helping us to promote and encourage registration.

The 2020 Saint Joseph Parish Pictorial Directories have finally arrived!  If you or members of your family participated in the photo sessions, you will receive a free parish directory (even if you did not purchase a photo package). The new directories have been labeled with each family’s name and can be received at the Masses next weekend or at the parish offices during the week.  If you did not participate in the photo sessions but would like to have a pictorial directory, you can purchase one at the parish offices for $10; this also applies to individuals who may desire an extra directory.  Thank you! 

September 26, 2021
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
 
What are the little ones? They are the poor, the marginalized, the women and men at the well, the Zacchaeus’ looking for Jesus from a tree, those mired in sin, the blind who want to see, and the lame who want to walk. They are the lepers and the different ones who have been told that they are unclean, and the ones who suffer from abuse and grave injustices and oppression. They are children who want nothing more than to be loved and enjoy celebrating their innocence. These are all the little ones and they are all vulnerable. Life already brings them burdens, we don’t need to add to them.
 
St. Oscar Romero said, “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” Why are so many people still so gravely hurting? We have the resources and the means to make things better. We choose not to. There are still those things called greed, pride, lust, apathy, jealously, gluttony, and anger that prevent us from seeing each other and people to be loved and not objects to be used. Is this how God intended things to be?
 
God loves what is good and upright. It doesn’t matter who did it or where it came from. In God’s eyes, the end result is always faith, hope, and love. Those will always unite a person with God. We fill our lives with many things that are not good either for ourselves or for others. All of us have to work to discover what it is, exactly, that leads to the world’s brokenness. There are people, systems, and ideologies in place that foster oppression and injustice rather than equity and fairness. Sadly, our complacency can be the greatest evil. Turning a blind eye, ignoring the truth, and believing that we are helpless to fix so great a problem, does little to move us closer to the kingdom of God. As members of the Body of Christ, we cannot condone anything that keeps people in misery.
 
As it is said, charity begins at home. Perhaps a good place to start is with our own households and making sure their foundations are properly laid.
 


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