View the Sunday Mass with Fr. Clooney by clicking the link below:

The 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time Mass

This Sunday, we ask you to donate to the CHRT. The fund supports the health, housing and retirement needs of priests who serve and have served parishes in Boston such as ours and who are in good standing. Close to home, it includes priests affiliated with OLOS like Fr Vinnie Doolin and  Fr Gerry who are retired and myself when I was on extended health leave last year. Please click the link below to watch a brief video and be as generous as you can. Thank you.
~ Fr Frank

Clergy Health and Retirement Trust 

Greetings,
Below is the link to my homily for this Sunday, September 20. St Paul opens his Letter to the Philippians with some poignant reflections from prison, such as may resonate with our own experience six months into our Covid 19 seclusion: when you are forced to stop and pull back, what questions come to the fore, what choices arise for us?
Have a good weekend, and let us keep our Jewish sisters and brothers in our prayers on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the year 5081.

~ Fr. Frank Clooney

Six Months Into Our Confinement: Taking Stock, Beginning Anew

We will be having the Sunday vigil Mass in O'Connell Hall at 4:00 pm on Saturday September 26th.

In keeping with social distancing guidelines to ensure the best safety practices we are limiting the number people who can attend. You must register online by clicking HERE OR by calling the parish office at 781-784-2265.

Please bring your own chair and mask. With the cold weather upon us, you will want to be sure to be warmly dressed. Some windows will have to be open because of the need for adequate ventilation. We also add the public health advice of caution for those 65 or older or who have other compromising conditions.

All are welcome to join our Zoom Bible Study on Wednesday from 10am to 11am. 
The group, which meets weekly, includes and welcomes sisters and brothers of other faiths. Our examination of the biblical text honors the bible in both the Hebrew and Christian traditions.We are currently reading Exodus.

For more information email Lynn Jacobs at the parish office at ljacobs@olossharon.org.

9-22-2020

Hello OLOS parishioners,
We’re looking for a few good green thumbs in our parish for a spruce up of the property. We can use approximately 12 to 15 volunteers to help Brenda Minihan and Sue Molinda shape up the lawn and gardens around OLOS on Saturday, October 3rd from Noon to 2pm. If you are able to help in any way please contact Lynn Jacobs at ljacobs@olossharon.org.
We’re looking for adult helpers. Children are welcome to help as well as long as they are supervised by their parents.
Please bring along any of the following garden tools that you might have:

Wheel barrow, Rake, broom, tarp, loppers,
hand pruners, spade, hand trowel,
garden gloves for you only, masks,
(long pants and long sleeves suggested)

Thanks in advance for your help as we help prep our church grounds for the change of seasons.

~ Lynn, Brenda and Sue

9-22-2020

Continental Breakfast Item Donations Needed for Mainspring House
We are collecting continental breakfast items for donation to the MainSpring House in Brockton, which provides shelter and meals to homeless men, women and children. We need muffins, bagels, cereal in individual serving containers, yogurt in single servings, bread and juice. Donations should be dropped off in the Bullock Center anytime Tuesday, September 22 or before noon on Wednesday, September 23. Please click here to sign up.

9/3/2020

I have found it difficult to put thoughts together to comment on the trauma that our world and especially our country and society are going through. While I have been musing, the moment of intense attention has passed but the problems certainly linger. As if extraordinary divisions in our national community and an illness that has killed more than 150,000 of our brothers and sisters were not enough, the stark and chilling murder of George Floyd in front of our eyes on the streets of one of our major cities reminds us that there is something wrong in our national psyche.

Statements have been made from all quarters, including a very forceful one from our own Archbishop, Cardinal Sean and one wonders what there is left to say. Let me share some of the thoughts I have had in this struggle. 

As a baptized Christian and a priest, my first reference is Jesus of Nazareth. The scriptures present not only what he said. His words are compelling. They also present who he is. Time and time again, Jesus challenged the attitudes, the culture, the institutions and the societal structures of his day. He stood up for the powerless they were designed to oppress and it led to his death. We might imagine that “take your knee off their neck” was his cry. He was an inspiration to Ghandi who stood up to an Empire, to Archbishop Romero and Fr. Rutilio Grande SJ who challenged evil power and paid with their lives as well as to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr who confronted racism without a sword and like his savior also paid with his life. 

Despite the variety of depictions of Jesus over many centuries, the fact remains that he was a middle-eastern male with more color in his skin than I have in mine. In his public life, he was homeless, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58). Not only that but he reminded us of the importance of that perspective in each of our lives: “For we have here no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

Notwithstanding that stark reality, I sometimes think we have managed to domesticate Jesus into a middle class religious leader guiding us comfortably to salvation. In fact, he was in the streets, in the plazas, in the temple courtyard, in the dwellings of the outcasts challenging the customs, structures, institutions and attitudes of his day that stacked the deck against the powerless, the marginal, and the vulnerable. Where do you think he would be today?

It brings to mind the TV ad “Banks don’t do that,” “Yes, they do.”  

You don’t challenge the law of the Sabbath and cure the man born blind. Yes he did. 

You don’t disrupt the established custom and economics of the temple courtyard in defense of poor people who are being extorted. Yes he did.

You don’t defy custom by sitting in the middle-eastern noon-day sun listening and responding to an outspoken woman from an outcast people. Yes he did.

He is the Word of God, a word which speaks and acts. Undeterred by the power structures of the day and the drive to protect the status quo, He is concerned only with doing the will of his father. 

We too should adopt that posture undeterred by the distractions and the politics and listen to the marginalized who demand to be heard and the thousands who have marched in our streets in support of them.

Pope Francis’ first visit outside of Rome after his election was to the island of Lampedusa off the coast of Sicily, the destination of refugees from Africa many thousands of whom perished crossing in less than seaworthy vessels risking all to seek freedom. In his speech, Francis denounced the “globalization of indifference.” He challenged the structures and attitudes designed to keep them out even if it cost them their lives. Refugees are not entitled to less rights, less dignity and less loving care. Francis listened and his response was in word and deed. He followed the pattern of the savior and became a model for us.

Like him, we are called to do no less and follow in word and deed the road travelled by the savior in the world in which we find ourselves.

~Fr. Frank

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