An elderly parishioner who can no longer drive is looking for a ride to church on Sundays. She typically attends the 7:30am Sunday Mass. If you are able to help out please contact Deirdre Heilbron at dgheilbron@yahoo.com. Hopefully we will have a few volunteers so we can share the driving.
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Posted in Service Commission, Visitation & Outreach, Volunteers Needed
Since 1995, our parish has helped serve the homeless by providing sandwiches on the 4th and 5th (when there is one) Sunday of each month for the Bristol Lodge in Waltham. The sandwiches are distributed to the clients of the Bristol’s various programs for the needy and provide a nourishing mid-day meal for the residents of shelters which are closed during the daytime hours. We need your help to provide hundreds of sandwiches on Sunday February 26. Please bring sandwiches (wrapped and without condiments) to the church kitchen refrigerator. For more information please contact Liz Phillips at (781) 237-4430 or Liz.phillips@comcast.net
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Posted in Homeless & Feed the Hungry, Service Commission, Volunteers Needed
A refuge for poor and homeless women since 1974, Rosie’s Place offers emergency and long term assistance to women who have nowhere else to turn. For many years, St. John’s Parish has taken a turn providing evening dinner for the women. Our next opportunity to share in this gift is Saturday, March 3rd and we need your help again to provide meals for approximately 150 women. In order to plan appropriately it would be extremely helpful if offers to provide food were made by February 27th.
If you are interested in supporting this event and for specific needs, please contact Barbara Tully at btully87@comcast.net, (781)235-6182 or Pam McCourt at mccourtpam@comcast.net, (781)235-0612.
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Posted in Homeless & Feed the Hungry, Important Announcements, Volunteers Needed
Seeking Actors/Actresses in Grade 3 and older to help “perform” the Passion Play at the 8:45am Family Mass on Palm Sunday, April 1. Attendance at one rehearsal on Saturday, March 31 from 9am to 12pm is required/mandatory. Confirmation candidates earn 5 hours of community service credit. Please contact Maria Wardwell,781-237-2148, mariawardwell@stjohnwellesley.org, for information and registration.
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Posted in Family Mass, Music
This is time of great change in the Archdiocese of Boston and there are men and women in all parishes endeavoring to learn about the options and techniques of organizing the work of their faith communities. We thought it would be helpful to pass on some information about parish planning, a field of study and research that has grown tremendously in the last twenty years as parishes throughout the United States have had to make serious decisions about accomplishing their missions in a different way. St. John’s, fortunately, has had a small group of dedicated people working on pastoral planning for several years. They have accumulated a lot of knowledge (and a number of books) about the process which should be valuable as we embark on the next phase of the journey.
Five major national Catholic organizations have come together to create one large “umbrella” agency, Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership, which has a terrific website and regularly publishes an assortment of small reports and booklets. The five organizations are: National Association for Lay Ministry, The Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development, National Association of Church Personnel Administrators, National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association and National Federation of Priest Councils. Each of them have a good website and they all publish reports and papers filled with recommendations, ideas and the experiences of parishes.
On the book shelves on the lower level of the church there are several dozen items of interest to those seeking a better understanding of how people throughout the country are responding to the challenges of Catholic parish life in the 21st century. A sampling of the titles includes: “Pastoring Multiple Parishes”, “The Next Generation of Pastoral Leaders: What the Church Needs to Know”, “The Changing Face of the Church”, “Keeping the Covenant: Taking Parish to the Next Level”, “From Maintenance to Mission: Evangelization and the Revitalization of the Parish” and “Dreams and Visions: Pastoral Planning for Lifelong Faith Formation”.
Finally, everyone involved in parish life should be familiar with what remains the basic “charge” for lay people in the Catholic Church, a small booklet published five years ago by the Conference of Catholic Bishops: Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord; A Resource for Guiding the Development of Lay Ecclesial Ministry.
St. John’s Faith Formation Commission: Patrick Blomberg, Linda Colozzi, Marcia Grondin, Pat Kelleher (chair), John Salvati, John Stewart, Anne Wachtmeister, Sister Evelyn Ronan (advisor)
Email: AFFC@stjohnwellesley.org
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Posted in Adult Faith Formation Commission
Compassionate God, You bless us with the abundance of Your love and grace us with the gift of Your eternal presence. In this Lenten time give us the wisdom to recognize our poverty and the compassion to share it’s treasure with our brothers and sisters. We ask this through Your Son Jesus Christ, who gave our life for us.
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Posted in Important Announcements
Let’s Make This A Slam Dunk For Our School! Our auction will be held on Friday March 30th at the Wellesley Country Club. All alumni parents and parishioners are welcome and encouraged to attend. Sponsorship opportunities are available. There will be silent and live auctions, hors d’oeuvres, buffet dinner, and much more! Please contact susan_calcio@yahoo.com for more information. Thank you for your support.
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Posted in Special Events, St. John School
A flyer with the schedule of activities for Lent (Ash Wednesday is February 22!) will be mailed in the next few days. For most of us the six weeks of Lent fly by quickly; perhaps because of the end of winter and the suddenness with which spring arrives. So we should try hard to get ready, to think seriously of some special things we might do to enhance our lives as faith-filled Christians and prepare for celebrating Easter. Each week we have tried to provide information in this space on readily available faith formation resources – books, periodicals, lectures, websites, conferences, retreats, discussions and study groups. But we should add to this list one extremely important “resource” all of us have for expanding our awareness of who we are and why a solid relationship with God and the Church is so critical for our happiness and success: the talent we all have to just sit and think!
In this busy, busy age, filled as it is with constant messages, images, noise and pressures to do this or that, to buy this product or accept that opinion, we have to devote more time, to serious, honest, relaxed thought about the direction of our lives and what we might do to bring ourselves closer to God, especially in the days between our participation in Mass. Lent is obviously a good time for all of this. While it is appealing to simply read another book or browse another website, we should not overlook the value of some “quality time” alone with our thoughts.
St. John’s Book Discussion Group – Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas on Thursday, March 15 at 7:30 in the Parish Center.
This relatively new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has won wide acclaim. Reverend Bonhoeffer was a theologian and leading critic of the Nazi regime in the 1930s. During the war he was associated with the group trying to overthrow Hitler. A profound and prolific thinker, his sense of duty as a pastor remained strong till the moment of his execution, as suggested by this quotation written from his prison cell in 1944:
I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.
St. John’s Adult Faith Formation Commission: Patrick Blomberg, Linda Colozzi, Marcia Grondin, Pat Kelleher (chair), John Salvati, John Stewart, Anne Wachtmeister, Sister Evelyn Ronan (advisor)
Email: AFFC@stjohnwellesley.org
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Posted in Adult Faith Formation Commission, Important Announcements
Information about the proposed pastoral plan for churches in our Archdiocese has been publicized over the past several weeks. Click here for easy access to more information and for links to all RCAB material: www.stjohnwellesley.org/proposed-pastoral-collaborative
The Archdiocese has stressed that this is a proposed draft, with consultation rounds for input from all members. Every parishioner is encouraged to reflect on the challenges and possibilities of this proposal. Now is the time to voice your opinions, concerns, support and/or constructive criticism.
The APPC (Archdiocesan Pastoral Planning Commission) has provided “Consultation Homework,” seven questions to help us prepare our response to the proposed pastoral plan. Your answers to these questions and others you may have are critical to preparing feedback to the Commission:
1. Does the combination we are proposing for the Parish you are associated with seem to meet this goal of improving evangelization? (Why or Why Not?)
2. Remembering that our objectives are to be more welcoming, nourishing, thriving and evangelizing communities than we already are. What are the advantages of this combination, not only for your parish but for the parishes included in your collaborative.
3. What are the possible problems with the parishes we are proposing collaborating/sharing a pastoral staff together? Please share any real pitfalls you could identify. (Please share any historical, social, or cultural information that should be taken into consideration.) Is there any kind of information you would need to be supplied to you, to help you provide a fuller answer to this question?
4. Remembering the general criteria set out in order to achieve the ideas of Fairness, Partnership, Financial Viability, and Pastoral Effectiveness, do you have comments on the criteria used or ways to improve the 6 measurements discussed during our session?
5. Keeping the criteria used and the overall goals in mind, do you have a better idea about parish combinations with your parish that seem more workable to you and why?
6. Are there other criteria that should be taken into account specific to your parish and geography?
7. We would be receptive to any general suggestions about multi-parish pastoring that you feel would help APPC in making it’s ultimate recommendation to Cardinal Sean and the Diocese.
Please let us hear from you! This can be done through the St. John Pastoral Planning Group (PPG) email or individual members, or written and placed in a “Comments Box” placed at both entrances to the church.
Current PPG Members: Carolyn Anderson, John Calcio, Rose Mary Donahue, Svea Fraser, Gerald J. Kehoe (Chair), Dan Kenslea, Mike Nilles, Sister Evelyn Ronan and Fr. Tom Powers.
Pastoral Planning Group Email: PPG@stjohnwellesley.org
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Posted in Important Announcements, Pastoral Planning Group
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Due to your most generous response to the request for food, St. John’s Parish provided a hot meal on February 4th for 150 women in need at Rosie’s Place. Our next opportunity to share in this gift is Saturday, March 3rd and we need your help again.
If you are interested in supporting this event and for specific needs, please contact Barbara Tully at btully87@comcast.net, (781)235-6182 or Pam McCourt at mccourtpam@comcast.net, (781)235-0612.
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Posted in Homeless & Feed the Hungry, Important Announcements, Service Commission, Volunteers Needed
