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The Small Church with The Big Heart |
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As summer draws to a close, change is in the air. The days are getting shorter and the nighttime longer. Soon the weather will get cooler and our trees will begin to display the beautiful colors of autumn. The beauty of God’s creation is on full display.
Change of seasons is a time where I tend become more reflective and prayerful. I find myself tuning into the rhythm of change that God has put into motion around us and I sense my own need to evaluate my spiritual life and to tune up my relationship with God. Life has a beautiful routine that helps us refocus and to continue moving forward.
In the age of COVID, we are in unchartered territory. Unlike past years, many school hallways will not ring with the voices of children and a number of adults will continue to work from home. As a parish community, many are uncertain as to when to return to attending Mass in person. While we long to return to our normal routine of gathering with our families and friends, we want to do so safely.
As this pandemic continues, we have reimagine what it means to be Church, to be a parish family. This virus is not going to just disappear, and it may worsen as the flu season approaches. How can we preserve our identity as a parish as we continue to practice social distancing? I invite you to reflect upon ways you would like to connect as a parish community and to share them with me, or others in the parish, so that we can offer opportunities for us to come together in meaningful ways.
We have offered our Sunday liturgies online as a way for people to continue to connect and pray together. We have had a few social online events for people to connect and we continue to do so until we can all safely gather again. This fall, we will begin to offer several online religious formation programs. This is a time for all of us to be creative and to use our imaginations to find ways to move our parish forward. The old adage, “A family the prays together stays together” is also true of our parish. A parish that prays together stays together.
Together we will continue our journey as a beloved people of God, as a parish community. Each one of us is an integral part of this community and together we make up the fabric of Christ the Good Shepherd Old Catholic Church, the small church with a big heart.
Please know of my continued prayers for each and every one of you.
Blessings,
Fr. Harry
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How Do We Pray With
Our Imaginations?
We meet new friends and we want to get to know them better. How do we do it? We share our stories. We tell them about our childhood, how we met our spouse or how our great-grandparents moved here.
We live in a rational, left brain world with global technology at our fingertips. Yet as human beings, our soul is still fired by color and imagination. Our minds are storehouses of images and memories and through them God works in our hearts. Praying with our imaginations can create a deeper and more personal intimacy with Jesus, Mary, the disciples and others written about in scripture. We can take the familiar stories we know and let them flow through our own imagination and see where the Lord guides it.
Using the imagination in prayer has been a treasured tradition in prayer for centuries. It prompted St. Francis of Assisi to encourage people to create nativity scenes at Christmas, to imagine the Holy Family as people like we are. Four hundred years later, St. Ignatius of Loyola used imaginative prayer as a key part of his life-transforming Spiritual Exercises.
How do we start? First we get settled in a comfortable chair and in a quiet place where we won’t be distracted. Our first gesture might be to open our hands on our lap, and to ask God to open our hearts and imaginations.
Then pick a story out of scripture. Read through it once slowly and put it down. Now we begin to imagine the scene as if we are standing right there. What is around me? Who else is there? What do I hear in the scene? If I am in a house, what noises are in the house or in the street outside? What are the smells I can pick up?
Now we begin to imagine the scene we read about. Who is in it? What conversation takes place? What is the mood – tense? joyful? confused? angry?
Feel free to paint this picture in any way your imagination takes you. If we worry about historical accuracy, it can be a distraction that takes us away from prayer. This isn’t scripture – this is letting God take our imaginations and reveal to us something of the intimate life of Jesus or others. If, in our prayer, Mary pulls the toddler Jesus onto her lap to tie his shoes or zip his coat, we can let it happen that way. We don’t want to fret about the historically accurate kinds of food served at a dinner or what kind of carpenter tools Joseph might have really had in his workshop. Here is an experience of prayer that lets our imaginations free themselves from anything that limits them. This is God revealing himself to us.
It helps if we imagine Jesus and his disciples as the real people they were who walked the earth. St. Ignatius imagined that the first person Jesus appeared to after the Resurrection was his mother and he encourages us to picture Jesus appearing at home to Mary, watching the joy and emotion in the scene.
Obtained from: https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Imagination/Intro.html
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Prayer List
Cindy Knox
Bob Curtis
David Curtis
Anthony Armor
Lamont Monat
Jim Bachelor
Pat Moylan
Hannah Moylan
Fr. Charles Blanchard
Pete and Vera Cadotte
Jim Stokes
Patrick Keller
Jerry Aaron
Lois Spencer
Florie Mojica
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The Saint of The Month
By Fr. Mike Cadotte
Saint Cyprian
Cyprian is important in the development of Christian thought and practice in the third century, especially in northern Africa.
Highly educated, a famous orator, he became a Christian as an adult leaving a very wealthy lifestyle behind. He distributed his goods to the poor, and amazed his fellow citizens by making a vow of chastity before his baptism. Within two years he had been ordained a priest and was chosen, against his will, as Bishop of Carthage.
Cyprian complained that the peace the Church had enjoyed had weakened the spirit of many Christians and had opened the door to converts who did not have the true spirit of faith. When the Decian persecution began, many Christians easily abandoned the Church. It was their reinstatement that caused the great controversies of the third century, and helped the Church progress in its understanding of the Sacrament of Penance.
Novatus, a priest who had opposed Cyprian’s election, set himself up in Cyprian’s absence (he had fled to a hiding place from which to direct the Church—bringing criticism on himself) and received back all apostates without imposing any canonical penance. Ultimately he was condemned. Cyprian held a middle course, holding that those who had actually sacrificed to idols could receive Communion only at death, whereas those who had only bought certificates saying they had sacrificed could be admitted after a more or less lengthy period of penance. Even this was relaxed during a new persecution.
During a plague in Carthage, Cyprian urged Christians to help everyone, including their enemies and persecutors. Let us all follow his example here in helping all during COVID-19 and wear masks to protect the vulnerable and for the common good as we are called to do by Jesus.
A friend of Pope Cornelius, Cyprian opposed the following pope, Stephen. He and the other African bishops would not recognize the validity of baptism conferred by heretics and schismatics. This was not the universal view of the Church, but Cyprian was not intimidated even by Stephen’s threat of excommunication.
He was exiled by the emperor and then recalled for trial. He refused to leave the city, insisting that his people should have the witness of his martyrdom.
Cyprian was a mixture of kindness and courage, vigor and steadiness. He was cheerful and serious, so that people did not know whether to love or respect him more. He waxed warm during the baptismal controversy; his feelings must have concerned him, for it was at this time that he wrote his treatise on patience. Saint Augustine remarks that Cyprian atoned for his anger by his glorious martyrdom. His Liturgical Feast Day is September 16.
Reflection
The controversies about Baptism and Penance in the third century remind us that the early Church had no ready-made solutions from the Holy Spirit. The leaders and members of the Church of that day had to move painfully through the best series of judgments they could make in an attempt to follow the entire teaching of Christ and not be diverted by exaggerations to right or left.
Saint Cyprian is the Patron Saint of:
North Africa
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So, how is everyone doing? Even those of us who have not contracted COVID-19, have gotten our bottoms kicked by this disease. Shopping, eating, socializing, church-going; Everything has been affected. I miss church, church-family, mass in person - as great as watching from my home is - nothing is the same as being there, hugging, singing, treats, socializing, & on & on.
We, your parish leadership team, have been brainstorming ways to connect in this new reality. Please, give us any ideas & tips you may have!
A while ago, I came across a article about a Spiritual Communion. Here’s an explanation, followed by a prayer for one. Let me know what you think, about this, or anything.
“It has long been a Catholic understanding that when circumstances prevent one from receiving Holy Communion, it is possible to make an Act of Spiritual Communion which is a source of grace.
Spiritual Communion means uniting one’s self in prayer with Christ’s sacrifice and worshipping him in his Body and Blood. The most common reason for making an Act of Spiritual Communion is when a person cannot attend Mass.
Acts of Spiritual Communion increase our desire to receive sacramental Communion and help us avoid the sins that would make us unable to receive Holy Communion worthily.
A Prayer for Spiritual Communion
My Jesus, I believe that you are present
in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love you above all things and I desire to receive you in my soul. Since I cannot at this moment receive you sacramentally, Come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace you as if you were already there, a
nd unite myself wholly to you.
Never permit me to be separated from you.
Amen.”
Have a good & blessed September. I’m fervently praying for a return to safely connecting with people. See you in church, someday.
Peace & Love,
Cindy Knox
Parish Council President
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Thank you for your ongoing support and generosity. Your Sacrifical Giving allows
The Small Church With the Big Heart to continue to meet our monthly obligations.
We ask that, to the best of your ability, you continue to make your weekly
donations by any of the following methods:
- set up bill pay through your local bank
- USPS, regular mail
- the CGS Parish web site
- at Sunday Mass
As a reminder, sacrificial giving envelopes for this next year are being
mailed or personally delivered to you.
01/01/2020 through 08/31/2020
Report
Envelope & Cash: $28,995
E-Donations: $3,055
Year to Date Total: $32,050
Budgeted: $29,200
Over / (Under) Budget: $2,850
The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD’S face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD'S face turn toward you and give you peace.
- Numbers 6:24-26
Our sincere regards,
The CGS Finance Committee
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The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day. This was the name of the book we chose for our CGS Book Club just before COVID-19 shut down the world. I keep thinking about that title and how prophetic it really was. I never quite finished reading the book… and we never gathered to talk about it. But I’ll bet each one of us could write our
own chapter for such a book entitled, The Long Loneliness. Our lives have certainly changed; the coronavirus has forced us to live smaller and quieter lives and with added precautions like mask-wearing in public places that feels very strange.
And even though our church re-opened its doors in mid-June for Sunday Mass, not everyone can attend in person right now, and instead they choose to watch it “on-line.” And attending Mass is different, too, as everyone is spread apart, and no one can stay afterwards and chat over a donut and coffee anymore. So, the big question is,
how we do we stay connected as a parish?
I think this is the
perfect time to think “outside the box” and to “re-imagine church” as we know it. What CAN we do? With technology, we have seen that more is possible. For starters, we’ve already had several Saturday evening informal Zoom chats and even played virtual BINGO last week with some from our parish family! That was fun! It was great seeing familiar faces and hearing voices. But maybe we can offer more…
Here are three ideas already floating around: A virtual ZOOM Bible study, a virtual ZOOM prayer group, a virtual ZOOM study of the Mass. The sky is the limit! If you have yet another idea, please email me your idea by September 8. And if you would be interested in participating in any of the three ideas above, I’d like to know that too. We will be having a ZOOM Education Commission meeting very soon and would like to talk about possibilities and choose one or two of these ideas to offer to the parish at-large. Then maybe, just maybe, we can make The Long Loneliness a little less lonely.
Send me your vote on the three ideas above or other ideas you might have by September 8: alice.doppel@gmail.com
Alice Doppel 😊
Education Commission Chair
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Discernment Taskforce Update
In the fall of 2019, the Discernment Taskforce was entrusted with the task of deciding which direction our parish needs to proceed regarding the selection of a bishop or greater ecclesiastical community. We have met six times and feel compelled to share with you our progress to date as an effort to continue to encourage your thoughts, prayers, and knowledge of this process.
If you remember it was agreed that we would take at least a year to pray and dialogue to discern God’s plan for our faith community. During this time Bishop Michael has graciously agreed to extend his Episcopal coverage to our priests as Catholic tradition requires. He does this not desiring to be our long-term Bishop but rather an active member of our clergy and parish. As such, we appreciate his contributions to date and are so blessed to have him as part of our clergy team and to be on this journey with us. This process has gone longer than we initially thought but we do not want to rush this and with COVID-19 we also had to find new ways to meet to continue this important work.
The Questions of Discernment
As we prayed, meditated, and conversed on our options we came down to three possible paths our little parish could move towards:
- Continue as a ‘standalone’ parish with our own bishop and continue to be the small church with a big heart.
- Incorporate with an existing ecclesiastical jurisdiction (An existing federation of independent Old Catholic Churches). This would include becoming part of their structure, mission, along with their current bishop. This would allow us to belong to something greater than ourselves.
- Form our own diocese with the later intent of folding into an existing ecclesiastical jurisdiction as mentioned in 2 above.
With the Spirit leading us, below is the progress your Discernment Taskforce has achieved and continues to work on to date:
- The Spirit moved us to a unanimous consensus to join with an existing ecclesiastical jurisdiction (option 2 above).
- We then reviewed many jurisdictions and we have identified 8 possibilities out of hundreds.
- A detailed questionnaire / guide was developed to assist our team in our research, to keep us concise, accurate and true to our parish mission.
- We have begun soft research on these 8 jurisdictions that will lead us to a more formal communication with them following our already developed questionnaire.
It is our hope, with God’s help, that through all this work a vision of the best path for our parish will emerge. At that time we will present our findings to the Parish Council and further communication with the entire parish community will be had.
We have been very careful not to rush this process. There is a lot of work ahead of us and more information to come but in the meantime would you please pray for your Discernment Taskforce that the Holy Spirit will continue to guide them and deliver to us all a decision that secures for us a bright and faithful future.
Blessings,
Your Discernment Taskforce
Please feel free to reach out to any member of your discernment team if you have questions or comments.
Fr. Mike Cadotte, Chair Msgr. Harry Posner
Fr. Charles Blanchard Bishop Michael Goddard
Alice Doppel Tim Doppel
Joe Fedorczyk Chris Kitzman
Cindy Knox Jonathan Quirk
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My Faith Journey of 50 Years
I was asked to write about what lead me to join the Old Catholic Church and Christ the Good Shepherd. So, here we go…
I was born July 26, 1970 in Saginaw, Michigan to a single woman. From birth I was taken into foster care where I would be taken care of. On March 4, 1971 I was adopted by Orville and Joan Kitzman of Hemlock, Michigan. God’s hand was with me all the way as I started my faith journey. Let me explain.
Orville and Joan had four children of their own already but wanted to give a child a chance to have a loving home. They contacted the Saginaw adoption system but were told that, having children of their own, they would have to adopt an older child. They both prayed and had their children pray also for a baby. They received a call one day from the social worker that a baby was put into the system but was considered unadoptable. Joan who took the call said we want to see the baby and made arrangements for a meeting. The baby that they went to see and fell in love with, that baby was me. God’s hand.
I began my journey in my new home with parents, and four older siblings. I was baptized in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and had two sets of godparents. My oldest sister Orlene, my brother Joe and church friends, Nancy and Roland.
Let’s fast forward 13 years… after spending years in Sunday school, vacation bible school, devotions at home after dinner, and attending parochial school, I had a great start on my faith foundation. My mom was one of the organists at church and I would sit next to her as she played for church, then once home would play the service by memory on the piano.
This went on for years, at age 13 the head organist of the church had heard me play and thought I was ready for my first solo service. I had been playing the prelude or offertory or the postlude for about a year before this time. So, on Easter Sunday I played my first church service at age 13. I still have the recording of that service. God’s hand.
After high school I attended Concordia Lutheran Teachers College in Seward, Nebraska on a music scholarship, with all the challenges of college life my faith kept growing. Following my time in Nebraska, I returned to Michigan to work in the computer field and get married.
Jumping to September 11, 2001, a day we will never forget. A few weeks earlier I had just returned from seeing clients in New York City, World Trade Center, Tower 2. This was a day that I knew my life had to change drastically. I was married, had a son, was very involved in my church, but there was something that I was hiding and could no longer hide. In 2002 I filed for divorce and started my search for a church that would accept me for the man I was. A gay man.
Trying several different churches from MCC, United Methodist, Episcopal, ELCA Lutheran, they were welcoming and accepting but something was missing.
My search took over 15 years until, one day, I was working on funeral service of a friend that lost his partner of 50 years, and I had the privilege of helping the family. The funeral was to be held at a Methodist church but was being conducted by Catholic Priests. My first thought was well this is going to be different. Then I find out that this Catholic parish was open and accepting of ALL PEOPLE. How can this be I thought? God’s hand.
I met the two Priests at the visitation and talked for some time with one of the priests and we exchanged information. I thought well one day I will have to check out this church and see what it is all about. I went to visit Christ the Good Shepherd on a Wednesday night for mass, I was the main organist at a church, so attending Sunday was not possible. I found that I enjoyed attending on Wednesday evening and somehow, I started to play for those services. Being able to attend a few Sunday services gave me a better feel for the Priests, the congregation and how loving and welcoming of ALL PEOPLE. This little parish really was living what it was preaching.
In October of 2019, I want to Austin, Texas with a few others from the parish to a conference on the Old Catholic Church. I had been thinking about converting but I still had some questions. We arrived in Austin and drove to this little church out in what looked like the country. We walked in and as I walked down the aisle to a pew, I had this feeling come over me that is very hard to put into words. I had a huge feeling of being at peace; a warm and loving feeling.
The four days that we were in Austin I kept getting little signs that this was exactly what I needed. Hearing the history of the Old Catholic Church and the fact that I could go anywhere and attend an Old Catholic Mass and be totally accepted for who I am. This is what I had been searching for, a true ALL ARE WELCOME acceptance. On the flight home I had time to really pray and thank God for such a wonderful experience. I knew it was time to recommit my life with the Old Catholic Church.
Yes, a lot of things have happened from the time I started visiting Christ the Good Shepherd. I met my wonderful partner Jonathan, have become the Director of Music Ministries, and have been confirmed into the Old Catholic Church. I look forward to growing my faith more with all of you, as we are in this journey together. God’s hand is always there, we must reach out and take it.
Chris Kitzman
Director of Music Ministries
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September Birthdays
Tom Nelson 9/2
Susie Hawkins 9/3
Farzan Rafieyan 9/5
Joe Fedorczyk 9/5
Anne Marie McBrien 9/7
Paul Aska 9/12
Susan Posner 9/19
Joe Terrell 9/30
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Do you know someone who may enjoy reading this Newsletter? Why not forward it on to them with a little note explaining why you enjoy being a part of Christ the Good Shepherd. It might be just what they are looking for or waiting for. You might be God’s voice when they need it most.
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Did someone forward this email to you? We hope you enjoyed reading all that is going on at the Little Church With A Big Heart. Truly, all are welcome at Christ the Good Shepherd Old Catholic Church, without partiality. To learn more about our community, visit our web site or contact any of our clergy to discuss your needs and concerns.
(248) 439-0470
www.cgs-occ.org
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