World Day of the Poor

Welcome to another edition of our podcast for the parishes of St. Anthony of Padua in Cohasset. In St. Mary of the Assumption in Hull. It's hard to believe it's almost Thanksgiving and I wanted to share with you our Mass schedule. Okay, Wednesday, November 22nd, we're having a 4. 30 PM Mass at St. Anthony.

Then on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 23rd at 9 AM, um, Mass at St. Mary of the Assumption. And we're also participating in two Thanksgiving community interfaith services. The first one is Tuesday, November 21st. It's two days before Thanksgiving. That's going to be at 7 p. m. at First Parish Church in Cohasset.

On Wednesday the 22nd, another community interfaith service. We're participating in Hingham. That's at Old Ship Church at seven o'clock. Okay, so that's the Thanksgiving Masses that are coming up. Advent Family Bingo is coming on Friday, December 1st. This is going to be a lot of fun, 630 at the Parish Hall in Cohasset.

Finally, a Holy Day of Obligation is coming up on Friday, December 8th. The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary will be having Mass at 5 p. m. It's St. Anne in Hull. Now following Mass at 6 p. m. we'll be watching the movie The Star.

Well this Sunday is the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time and the church will be observing World Day of the Poor. This is actually the seventh year the church has designated this Sunday on the liturgical calendar to focus on the poor, to turn our hearts to the poor more closely. Um, uh, a verse from scripture is chosen, uh, to build on that theme this year. It comes from the book of Tobit and it's do not turn your face away from anyone that is poor.

Now, it's interesting that the, this particular weekend is chosen every year for this observance because it is one Sunday before. The Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, the last Sunday in the church's liturgical year. And in the show notes of our podcast, we're going to link to the document about this particular theme for the poor but I just wanted to quote a paragraph from it. It says, we're living in times that are not particularly sensitive to the needs of the poor. The pressure to adopt an affluent lifestyle increases. While the voices of those dwelling in poverty tend to go unheard, we're inclined to neglect anything that varies from the model of life set before the younger generation, those who are most vulnerable to the cultural change now taking place.

We disregard anything that is unpleasant or causes suffering and exalt physical qualities as if they were the primary goal in life. Virtual reality is taking over real life. Increasingly, the two worlds blend into one. The poor become a film clip that can affect us for a moment, yet when we encounter them in flesh and blood on our streets, we're annoyed and look the other way.

Haste, by now the daily companion of our lives, prevents us from stopping to help and care for others. The parable of the Good Samaritan is not simply a story from the past, it continues to challenge each of us in the here and now of our daily lives. It's easy to delegate charity to others, yet the calling of every Christian is to become personally involved.

So we know from our Catholic teaching when we went to, um, Catechism class as a child before First Communion and before Confirmation, or maybe in the, if we came into the fullness of the faith from a Protestant background, or perhaps we weren't baptized, we went through that process. We learned about Catholic social teaching.

Works of mercy. There are physical works of mercy. They call them corporal works of mercy, and there's also spiritual works of mercy. And so we remember the very first, um, corporal work of mercy is to feed the hungry. You know, it's hard for us living in the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in world history, to really imagine how bad the problem is in the developing world, that people go without food. There is malnutrition. We have so much of our food goes to waste, we throw it away if we've made too much or we go to a restaurant and we. They, they have the big servings and then nobody eats all of it and it gets thrown away. There's, there's not a sensitivity in our, um, secular materialistic culture of the needs of the poor.

As we approach Thanksgiving, as we approach Christmas, we want to remember that there's ways we can help feed the hungry. We can do that by, uh, donating to a food drive. We can support financially organizations that serve the hungry. We can reach out to the Catholic Charities of our diocese and ask how can we help, right?

And the other Corporal Works of Mercy are just as important. Give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the prisoners, bury the dead. and give alms to the poor. So as the church draws to the end of our liturgical year, and as we prepare for that final Sunday of Christ the King, let's reorient ourselves, um, to helping the poor.

Let's remember to keep them in our prayers. Let's remember to pray for ourselves that in advance. That when we see someone on the street, when we encounter them, like it said in the, in the World Day for the Poor message from the Vatican, we're not annoyed that they're here. Somebody else asking for something, but we have an open heart, the heart of Jesus.

We saw his compassion for the poor and in the Catholic church, we have the great lives of the saints, um, as, as examples to us in this area, St. Francis of Assisi, a model. Of caring for the poor so is this sunday world the seventh annual world day of the poor draws closer Take a moment. Maybe to go to the vatican website and read that document and spend more time in prayer for the poor and those three ways you can always help your time Your talent and your treasure you've been listening to the podcast for the christ by the sea catholic collaborative For the parishes of saint anthony of padua in cohasset and saint mary of the assumption in hall Be sure to follow our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and be notified every time we release a new episode.

This has been a production of the Parish Podcast Project.