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Breaking News
The Bishop has announced the restarting of public masses with limitations. Weekday masses can resume Monday, June 29 and Sunday masses July 4th weekend. There will be a limitation of 25% capacity and of course social distancing and proper hygiene procedures.
We will make a fuller announcement soon.
Dear Friends,
Recent events have shown once again the great divides in American society. At times it can feel as if the differences are insurmountable. Do we give up trying to heal the wounds of division? Is the only solution to retire to our respective corners and live in our own little worlds?
Faith impels us to be people of hope. We rely on a God who turns death into life, sin into grace, alienation into solidarity. The possibility of transformation is at the heart of the Gospel... Over and again God in the person of Jesus shows that with mercy and love enemies become friends, the outcasts are welcomed, sinners are reconciled...
If you are looking for examples of the power of love and mercy in contemporary American culture, then two recent books provide reasons for hope.
Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” and Greg Boyle’s “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.”
Stevenson’s book has recently been made into a movie, available on Netflix. The title plays off the ambiguity of the word “just,” as in “justice” and “exactly what is needed.” The movie emphasizes justice and does a heart wrenchingly powerful job of leading us through the human drama of injustice and the exhilaration of its overthrow. The book, with more pages to fill out the story, delves into the transformative power of mercy as the radical path to abiding justice. Stevenson depicts through powerful stories the way mercy draws us into compassion, understanding and solidarity. Judgment, punishment and exclusion only perpetuate the divides. Greg Boyle’s challenging book draws on the life stories of the people whom he has come to know through his work as a Jesuit priest in LA. Responding to the needs of a population many would have considered lost, Father Boyle started Homeboy Industries because his parishioners could not find work. Poverty, drugs, gangs and incarceration are not the realities most might turn to for lessons about grace, but Boyle again and again shocks us out of complacency and arrogance as clearly as Jesus did in his own day by befriending a similarly disenfranchised population.
Mother Teresa diagnosed the cause of the world’s primary illness as the fact that we have “forgotten that we belong to one another.” The cure Boyle says is kinship: tying our lives together. Kinship is the vision of God that Jesus preaches with his life (and death), imagining a circle of compassion where no one is left out; where we locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. Not just for their transformation but for ours.
Boyle and Stevenson challenge us not just to recognize what is charitable and just but to recognize none of us, not least ourselves, will ever really experience the possibilities of grace without that mercy which refuses to throw anyone away, that refuses to give up, that never abandons hope.
God did not stay up in heaven but came to earth, and lived among us as one of us, to remind us of the truth that each and every person is a child of God, that we are all sisters and brothers, and that each of us is exactly the person God has created us to be. When we can inhabit
that truth, we have a power for transformation that no judgment, condemnation or exclusion can overcome.
If we really want to make a difference for anyone (including ourselves), we really must get involved with everyone.
Fr. Mark Lane, c.o. and Fr. Michael Callaghan, c.o.
Father’s Day Mass Remembrance
In Memoriam
Dominic Andreassi, Michael Antonucci, Anglisano Family, Sabino Antonucci, Edward M. Bacon, Jr., Oliver J. Blaber, Salvador B. Conde, Francisco Cruz, Mark Basil Donlin, William Fissinger, Joseph Fioravanti, Alexander Gallardo, William Kotapish, Donald Angus MacLellan, John J. McKeown, Anthony P. Meehan, Sr., Jerry Shey, Juan Rios, Frank Macchiarola, John Martini, Gerard Slattery.
Best Wishes
Richard J. Adams, Richard Carlson, James Dirks, Jim Fantaci, Leo Callaghan, Arnold Mascoli, Sr., Arnold Mascoli, Jr., Joseph Picciano, Marc Shey.
Please continue to send in your mass remembrance intentions (Living or Deceased) for Father’s Day. Email names to: [email protected]
For Heaven’s Sake We Pray From Home As One
Submitted by Patrick Turner
A Prayer for Patience and Restraint By Rabbi Naomi Levy
We miss our sanctuary
The comfort of community
Our voices joined together in prayer,
But for Heaven’s sake
We pray from home
As one
For grandmothers and grandfathers
For mothers and fathers
For aunts and uncles
For the vulnerable and the frail
For this is God’s prayer:
Be safe my children
Your touch
Your hug
Your breath
Your song
Can cost lives right now.
It’s tragic and heartbreaking
But we keep our sanctuaries closed for now
To stem this pandemic
Your patience is praise
Your restraint is glory
So reach out with all your heart
Join soul to soul
With a mighty love that transcends all distance
Take it in
Waves of blessings
Hands to heaven
We pray from home
As One
And God says
Amen.
The prayer is by Rabbi Naomi Levy, originally from Borough Park, Brooklyn. She founded Nashuva, a Jewish Spiritual community in Southern California. Nashuva holds Shabbat services the first Friday of each month. The term means "we will return" in Hebrew. Nashuva also leads monthly social service and social action projects in the Los Angeles area.”
Private Prayer Hours for the Oratory Parishes
Assumption
Weekday hours Monday to Friday 10:00am-12:00pm and Sundays 10:00am-12:00pm. Everyone must wear a mask at all times and stay socially distanced. Closed on Saturdays. Confession available Tuesday and Friday during 10:00am - 12:00pm.
Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at Assumption
On Sunday along with live music, we will have Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament from 10:00am-12:00pm.
St. Boniface
Weekday hours Monday-Friday 12:00-2:00pm and Sundays from 10:00am-12:00 noon. Closed on Saturdays. We can only host 10 individuals at once during this time. Everyone must wear a mask at all times and stay socially distanced.
Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Boniface
On Wednesday we will have Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament from 12:00pm -2:00pm and opportunity for Confession.
Please keep the sick of the community in your prayers:
Robert Varvi, Michael Erez, Lyn Montgomery, Mary-Fred Bausman-Watkins, John Nerjes, Fred Goodwin, Michele Key, Dominic Lauricella, Patty Evers, Anthony DeLuca, Kyle McCluskey, Estelle Miller, Dolores Leon, Phyllis Condon, Ed Acerra, Marie Smith.
Rest In Peace:
Sister Shawn Carruth, Jim Sherwood, Captain David Dorn, John Ng, Julie Redmond, Francis Lau, Patricia Hoffman, Adrienne Trackey, Bill Lennon, George Floyd, Msgr. John Tosi, Peter Kasuba, Michele Grant, Dick and Nancy Schiup, Suzanne Redda.
If you would like add someone to the prayer list email the parish office at [email protected] or go to the website https://oratorychurch.org/contact-us and complete the information there.
Mass intentions available.
If you would like to request a mass for someone living or deceased, mass intentions are available for the weeks or months ahead. Email [email protected]. Cards can also be mailed out.
New Address for the Parish Office of the Brooklyn Oratory Parishes
Please direct all letters, checks, and inquiries by postal mail to:
The Brooklyn Oratory Parishes of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary & St. Boniface
64 Middagh St.
Brooklyn NY 11201