Oct 7, 2016
from St. James Parish, Liberty, Missouri
Peru Sister Parish to Visit St. James – October 13-19
It’s finally going to happen, a visit from three people of La Capilla, our sister parish located in Peru! We will have the opportunity to meet Lorenza and Carlos, a married couple who are very involved in their church and Padre Hilton, a young Precious Blood missionary and pastor.
The roots for the St. James Sister Parish relation prompted when the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in 1997 on our international obligations as Catholics, challenging us to address the needs of people overseas. In their statement, they encouraged all Catholics to go beyond the parish’s boundaries to extend the Gospel, serve those in need, and work for global justice and peace.
In 1998 under the leadership of pastor Fr. Ron Will, many members of St. James participated in Project 2010, which challenged them to identify what was needed to accomplish as a parish within the first decade of the new millennium. One of the goals of Project 2010 was to establish a parish mission in another nation. The Precious Blood order has numerous missions in Latin America, and through correspondence with the Precious Blood missions office in 2003, a parish in the El Pinar district of Lima Peru known as Capilla de Preciosa Sangre was identified, to become our twinning or mission parish and began a twinning relationship with them that year.
During our first trip to Lima in November 2003, we found the La Capilla parish committee to be very warm and welcoming. They shared with us how they worship and how their faith helps their lives. They honored us for making the trip and gave us Peruvian gifts. We came away from that experience knowing that their faith is very strong. Our committees agreed to continue to learn about each other.
Since that time, St. James parishioners have made 6 mission trips to El Pinar. During the time they are there, they live with parishioners of the El Pinar parish, eat meals together, participate in their outreach program, work with them as they enhance their church and parish facilities, visit the sick, and much more. One of the highlights for our Peruvian family is cooking an American meal for them on each visit.
For several years we have been hoping to reciprocate their hospitality by having them visit our St. James Community. Unfortunately, government “red tape” has prevented that from happening.
Until now! It’s happening next week!
St James Church, Liberty, and Liberty Companions invite the Precious Blood community to join us for a dinner at Precious Blood Center on Tuesday, Oct 18 to honor our guest from our sister parish in Peru. We will gather at 5:30pm and dinner will begin around 6pm. Contact Fr. Timothy Armbruster to let him know that you’ll be attending.
Oct 7, 2016
Pope Francis reminds us that being involved in the political process “is one of the highest forms of love, because it is in the service of the common good.” For your reflection as you prepare to go to the polls we offer you some excerpts from A Revolution of Tenderness: A 2016 Election Pope Francis Voter Guide.
This voter guide was put together for your prayerful reflection by the following coalition of national Catholic organizations:
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good
Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach
Conference of Major Superiors of Men
Faith in Public Life: Catholic Program
Franciscan Action Network
Leadership Conference of Women Religious
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
Pax Christi USA
Pax Christi International
Sisters of Mercy of the Americas’ Extended Justice Team
The complete document can be accessed at https://franciscanaction.org/article/revolution-tenderness-2016-voter-election-guide.
Introduction
“The Gospel tells us constantly to risk a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness.”—Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium 72)
As we live out this Jubilee Year of Mercy and the United States enters into the 2016 election season, Americans face a myriad of choices between competing visions for our nation’s future. As Catholics, we are called by our faith to engage in this election. Pope Francis says that “a good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of one’s self so that those who govern can govern well.”
Politics, Francis says, “is one of the highest forms of love, because it is in the service of the common good.” He called on us to orient our politics based on the Christian models of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King Jr.
We engage in this political process not because we’re partisan, but because we’re Christian.
Our faith offers a specific vision for the common good. It isn’t theoretical or abstract. It’s rooted in the story and person of Jesus Christ. In short, the entire social vision of the Catholic Church is this: in Jesus, God became poor to save humanity from every form of oppression. We must do likewise.
The Catholic vision for the common good, then, is a radical invitation to what Pope Francis calls a “revolution of tenderness.”
The central claim of Christianity has always been that the rejected, crucified, and then resurrected Jesus is somehow Lord of the entire earth. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus had political and social consequences for the community he lived in and, by implication has political and social consequences for all communities everywhere, including the ones we live in.
The resurrection of Jesus marked the end of Caesar’s way of doing things. In fact, with God’s love in Jesus, Rome is no more, and a new community with new rules is established. In this community, hierarchies are subverted, concentrated power is decentralized, and prodigal children are welcomed home.
In this new place of mercy the last are first, the poor are blessed, and enemies are loved. Black lives matter here. LGBTQ lives matter here; and so too do the lives of refugees, the imprisoned, the unborn, and anyone else who suffers dehumanization, exclusion, and injustice.
Of course no candidate, and no party, completely adheres to this vision of the common good. Ours is a pluralistic society in which many do not share our faith or its social vision. It is our hope, however, that the essential truth of the Gospel, the beauty of Pope Francis’s vision, and the social mission of Catholic Church will appeal to the American people. We bring that vision and those values into the public square because they animate us in all we do, privately and publicly.
We invite our fellow Christians and all people to consider carefully how candidates do, and do not, embrace that vision and those values, and to make prudential judgments about which candidates best reflect Christian love.
We offer this guide to help inform our brothers and sisters about their specifically political vocation as Catholic Christians in the United States. Let us say at the outset: We do not in any way wish to claim for ourselves the right to speak for the Catholic Church, nor for all Catholics.
Instead we offer this guide to show how we apply the teachings of our Church to the problems of our day with a heart of mercy. We here seek to take up the call issued by the U.S. bishops in their document Faithful Citizenship to form our consciences, guided by the Gospel, examining the issues we face and reaching informed, conscientious decisions about the issues we hold dear as Catholics and as Americans.
It’s finally going to happen, a visit from three people of La Capilla, our sister parish located in Peru! We will have the opportunity to meet Lorenza and Carlos, a married couple who are very involved in their church and Padre Hilton, a young Precious Blood missionary and pastor.