If Only You Knew (Homily Starter) by Kathy Worotny, Heart of Compassion International Faith Community, Windsor, ON, Canada, March 23, 2017

Karen Worotny, with stole sharing homily starter with Heart of Compassion Community,Windsor, ON,Canada

I see the woman standing near the well,

she's hardened, she is filled with fear, she's not happy with her life.

She longs for inner peace and freedom

to move her towards the grace of new life.

If only you knew what God is offering.

Jesus has asked her for a drink of water.

She responded harshly, as if He has no business interrupting

her moments of pondering the misery of her life.

Her fear of being alone has been projected as anger

towards Jesus.

If only you knew what God is offering.

Jesus speaks so gently to this woman at the well,

If only you knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying Give me a drink, and I would give living water.

This living water is a gift that will soften her soul,

a gift that will warm her heart

a gift that will enlighten her existence.

This living water is an invitation to let Jesus come into her soul.

If only you knew what God is offering.

She has a longing to know the Messiah

and to have a relationship with Him.

Fear inhibits her, she has given her all in her relationships in the past

and she has been left alone to start again.

Can she dare to trust again.  Can she let go of the pain and emptiness

to begin a relationship with this man at the well.

If only you knew what God is offering.

When this man tells her that if she drinks from this water

she will never thirst again.

She pictures herself as a fragile vessel. cracked

yet still able to hold water from the well.

It is revealed to her that her life is an earthen vessel

longing to be filled

Give me a drink of that water Sir

so I may never thirst

let me see the treasure that is within me being filled by this water.

Make me cherish the tender beginnings of this life with You as my Saviour.

Help me to recognize the stirrings that are invitations

to become one with you.

Help me transform myself to become whole again

that I may once again love life and live life

without being perfect in everyone's eyes except yours.

If only you knew what God is offering.

Article in Spain About Christine Moreira ARCWP: "Holy Orders, An Ill Closed Door", by Manuel Regal, Supporting Women Priests

http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/opinion/2017/03/22/religion-iglesia-opinion-manuel-regal-la-gracia-o-no-de-ser-mujer-christina-moreira-mujer-sacerdote-ordenacion-mujeres-ordinatio-sacerdotalis.shtml

Women celebrating a Eucharist

"'Ordinatio sacerdotalis', an ill-closed door"

The grace (or not) of being a woman

"Machismo has a letter of citizenship in certain sectors of the Church"

Manuel Regal, March 22, 2017 at 08:57

• "Jesus did not order women, but he did not order men either"
• The archbishopric of Santiago, against women priests

Who will best represent Christ will be the person, man or woman, who lives most in the attitude of serving to the point of giving life

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Women in the Church

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Return to the women's diaconate?

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( Manuel Regal ) .- A few days ago Christina Moreira made public through the media her status as a woman ordained as a priest and her pastoral practice as such in the community "Home Novo" of A Coruña.

The first Galician woman, the first Spaniard to take this step, is among the 240 women in the world, including a dozen female bishops, that is, without any structure of power. She did so knowing that with all this she and the community that accompanied her broke with the prevailing ecclesiastical norms, but from the conviction that it responded to a highly discernible personal vocation, based on the equality that man and woman have for Nature as members of the Christian family through baptism.

We have already transmitted in these same pages our opinion on the question of the ordination of women as caregivers of the community. When, after Vatican II, Pope Paul VI had to respond to the ecclesial demand of a debate on the question, he requested the opinion of a team of experts on biblical subjects; They unanimously stated that from an exegetical point of view there was no impediment for women to be ordained as caregivers of the community.

However, at the suggestion of this Pope, the Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith, presided over by Cardinal Seper, in 1976, published the statement " Inter insigniores" , which closed this possibility by basically using two arguments: Christ , Designating the Twelve Apostles created the priestly service only for men, and the sacramental action in persona Christi demands that it be man who can represent it.

We think, with many believing people, with many theologians too, that these two arguments are very debatable ; The first because there is no certainty that the designation of the Twelve would have had for Jesus the scope of creating a priestly body as it later appeared in the Church; And the second, for the same reason and also because conditioning the representative capacity of Christ with sex, today seems simply aberrant. Who best represents Christ will be the person, man or woman, who lives most in the attitude of serving to the point of giving life .

But those were also the arguments that Pope John Paul II used to close the debate in his short letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis of the year 1994. And he has no hesitation in stating that it is "a provision that must be attributed to the Wisdom of the Lord of the Universe "(No. 3). Permit me the vulgarity, but it is a lot to say of God to be able to affirm such thing very Pope that one is , maximum when there is no evidences that justify it and the consequences are so serious for the whole ecclesial group and for the specific women, in a moment Historical in which feminism presents itself as a sign of the times that demands faithful listening, attentive discernment and carefully maturing practices.

Without doubting his intentions, many people in the Church have come to us as a way of avoiding the debate of a truly thorny subject, passing on to the very God the hot potato.

The archbishopric of Santiago, in his schematic and aseptic statement, only uses these same arguments to declare illicit and invalid the ordination as a priest of Christina Moreira and, therefore, also the sacraments that she and her community perform and live.

But, things are like this. The desire of Pope John Paul II that the matter was definitively closed has not been fulfilled, because the society is there tightening and because a very considerable part of the Church we continue to think that it was a badly closed door .

We run the risk of becoming an anachronistic institution , perhaps we are already being to a great extent, and not precisely because we attach ourselves in body and soul to the lifestyle of Jesus, which would be worth the isolation, but to link artificially to some models Which could change precisely by seeking to be more faithful to the spirit of Christ.

Something that our neighbor, a village woman, with no theological knowledge, but with a fine Christian sensibility, solved in her own way with this simple argument at a time when a small group was talking about these things: "I do not care Doctor is a man or a woman, that the teacher of our children is male or female, that the veterinarian is male or female, what I want is for him to be a good person and to fulfill his job well. The simplest is almost always the truest .

The response in the digital media to the performance of Christina Moreira demonstrates to what extent the disregard for women, machismo, has a letter of citizenship in certain sectors of the Church, as it also has unfortunately in the society of which we are part .

We suppose that Christina Moreira makes public her condition and practice of cure because she sees it as normal because she understands that it can be a prophetic sign for the good of the Church and women, because she thinks it can help keep the debate alive Despite everything. We assume that she will be willing to put her back under the blows that are going to fall on her, as do those who risk such things. We hope that all this can live without any desire of Christian anachronistic merits and prestige. On our part receive respect, a certain admiration and gratitude and prayer : that the blows do not sink it, that the applause do not confuse it. And God will say.

Homily for Holy Spirit Catholic Community, Fourth Sunday of Lent A, Beverly Bingle, RCWP

Still another transfiguration this week,

the third of four in this Lenten season.

Two weeks ago the disciples gained insight

into Jesus’ closeness to God

through the law and the prophets.

Last week Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well

both gained insight through their theological discussion.

This week the man-born-blind gains both eyesight and insight.

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The Greek word for this man is “anthropos,”

the generic word for a human being

without telling gender, ethnicity, or historical context.

The man-born-blind—the one-who-saw—is everyone.

It’s us.

So when we hear this Gospel,

we are challenged to figure out the part we have been playing

AND

the part we want to play.

We may be bound by our unshakeable convictions.

We may be the ones who wonder what God is up to.

We may choose to let authorities give us the answers.

No matter what our role has been,

we are invited to be anthropos,

people who realize we have been blind

BUT who are now ready to see.

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Last month Pope Francis said

that Christians don’t live outside the world;

we live in the world.

Francis said that Christians have to know

how to recognize the signs of evil, selfishness, and sin

in their own life

and in what surrounds them.

Part of the transformation for the man-born-blind

is recognizing the politics of the Pharisees

who blind themselves to the truth

so they can keep their power and wealth and control

over the people.

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We don’t have to look far to see

how this story speaks to the signs of our times.

The big picture for us is that America is being transformed.

Programs that support the principles of Catholic Social Teaching

are threatened by that budget sent to Congress this month.

It ignores the rights and dignity of the human person.

It is blind to the preferential option for the poor.

It is blind to the command to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,

shelter the homeless, and welcome the stranger.

It is deaf to the call for peace and justice.

It would cut 62 agencies and programs

to fund expansion of our military,

already 1,000 times more lethal

than all the other militaries in the world together.

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Here in Toledo we would see drastic cuts

to programs to shelter the homeless, like Family House;

Meals on Wheels for seniors and people with disabilities;

weatherization assistance;

low-income home energy assistance;

UStogether and its support for refugee families;

school breakfasts and lunches;

PBS and NPR.

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And there’s more than the budget

to threaten our Christian values.

Already we see Muslims vilified

and immigrants and refugees turned away.

Environmental protections are being wiped out,

allowing unrestrained dumping of pollutants.

The proposed health insurance proposal

would make health care unaffordable or unavailable

to millions of people.

Truth and civility and respect have been replaced

with unfounded accusations, insults, and crude language.

In short, our country is abandoning its commitment

to the common good.

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One good thing is

that it’s not only our country that’s being transformed.

We—each of us individually, and all of us together—are changing.

How blind we have been!

We were stumbling along in the dark.

Like the man-born-blind,

we didn’t see the damage that could be done.

We thought it couldn’t happen here.

Now, thanks to Donald Trump, our eyes are opened.

We are being transformed.

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The transfiguration is everywhere we look.

Across the country

ordinary citizens are showing up at their senators’ offices.

We’re asking for town hall meetings.

We’re making phone calls and sending emails

about the issues we care about.

We’re writing postcards to Congress and letters to the editor.

We are following the political news

on TV and radio and in the paper.

We’re talking about it, and we’re taking action.

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This is the “faithful citizenship” that the U.S. Bishops called us to

10 years ago when they said

that responsible citizenship is a virtue;

when they said participation in political life

is a moral obligation

rooted in our baptismal commitment to follow Jesus;

when they said that all of us

must actively participate in promoting the common good.

So we continue to work for the change

that will transform each and every one of us

to be able to read the signs of our times

and put our faith into action.

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We’re halfway through Lent, symbolized in the pink around us.

Light is dawning.

With the man-born-blind,

with all who follow Jesus,

we are called to live as children of the light.

Amen!

Public Domain

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Holy Spirit Catholic Community

Saturdays at 4:30 p.m./Sundays at 5:30 p.m.

at 3925 West Central Avenue

Toledo, OH 43606

(Washington Church)

www.holyspirittoledo.org

Rev. Dr. Bev Bingle, Pastor

Mailing address: 3156 Doyle Street, Toledo, OH 43608-2006