Friends,
We have some glad news this Christmas week: our little church has a name! After Mass this past Sunday, we came to consensus, and we are now Oscar Romero Inclusive Catholic Church…. St. Romero’s, for short.
Because we only have the use of the dining room at St Joe’s on Sunday mornings, we will not have Christmas services this year, but will meet on Sunday, December 26 at 11 am to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family.
I wonder if Mary and Joseph knew they had a holy family. Do you know that you do? Of what holy family are you a part? Maybe your birth family – maybe a family you’ve created with someone else as an adult – maybe the family of a community. Last night the St Joe’s community met for a Christmas gathering, and there was plenty of holiness in with the joy. We had the presence of three-month-old Anyela Foos – we had people who work hard every day, serving the poor of our city – and people who have stuck together through the ups and downs of community life for decades. Holiness doesn’t have haloes around it. It’s there in our everyday interactions, in someone trying to make a baby laugh, in honestly expressed feelings, in loving each other just the way we are.
Holy families come in all different forms. Some have a mom and a dad and kids… some have two moms or two dads, or one parent or grandparent… some have kids, some don’t… some have legal recognition, and some don’t. Celebrate the love in your life, in whatever form it takes!
Blessings and peace to all. There won’t be a St. Romero’s bulletin next week, because I will be in El Salvador, but deacon Patti LaRosa will be leading a communion service on January 2, the feast of Epiphany. Have a Merry Christmas, and lots of joy and peace and growth to you in 2011!
Love to all,
Chava
Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.
Thomas Merton
Oscar Romero Church
An Inclusive Church in the Catholic Tradition
Rev. Chava Redonnet
Mass: Sundays, 11 am
St Joseph’s House of Hospitality 402 South Ave, Rochester NY 14603