Join us on Sunday, November 18th from 9 AM to Noon in O'Connell Hall. Make an Advent Wreath for $10, shop for holiday gifts at the Ethical Trade Shop, partake in children's crafts and activities, and enjoy coffee and cookies. 

Thursday, November 22nd at 9 AM

For any one who works in any way with the youth in our parish a one time training class is required. We will be offering this class on Tuesday, November 20th from 6:30 to 9 PM in The Bullock Center. Anyone is welcome. If you have an questions or would like to sign up for the class please contact Lynn Jacobs at ljacobs@olossharon.org or call 781-784-2265.

We will be having our annual Memorial Mass on Sunday November 25th at 11 AM. If you have had a loved one die in the last year and would like them remembered in the bulletin and during this mass, please contact the Parish Office at 781-784-2265 or parish@olossharon.org by Monday, November 19th. 

The annual Sharon Interfaith Thanksgiving observance will be held this year on Sunday evening, November 18 at Temple Sinai. The theme this year is “Civility and Differences.” It is scheduled to begin at 7:30 pm. The keynote this year will be given by Rev. Francis Balla, Pastor of HOPE Church. If you would like to be part of the “pick-up choir” at the service, come at 6:00 pm and learn the songs. This is a very worthwhile community gathering and I hope that many of you will be able take part. 

The OLOS Book Group will meet on Sunday, December 9th from 2-3:00 PM in the Bullock Center. All are welcome. We will be discussing The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris. Please come ready to discuss the book. If you have any questions, be in touch with Teresa Coda (tcoda@olossharon.org) Monica LaFond. Our January meeting will be on Sunday, January 6th and we’ll be discussing My Mother’s Secret, by J. L. Witterick.

Evelyn House is a a transitional shelter in Stoughton that services displaced families in our area. There are 16+ families, mostly women and children, that will spend their holiday season at Evelyn House. OLOS and the Christian Services Commission (CSC) host an annual Christmas activity for the Evelyn House residents. This year it will be on December 13. Santa will arrive with your gifts for the residents; there will be refreshments and EH will take family pictures with Santa! On the weekend of November 17-18, the Giving Tree will be in the alcove with tags for gifts, activities and supplies. Please take a tag with a set of gift guidelines and return the items wrapped to the Giving Tree before December 2. Members of CSC will be at each Mass to answer questions. Thank you in advance for your generosity! If you have any questions, please contact Kate Mason at 781-784-6163

On August 19, instead of preaching on the daily readings at Mass, Fr. Daly read excerpts of Cardinal Sean’s statement regarding the most recent exposure of clergy abuse through the PA Grand Jury report released on Tuesday, August 14 and spoke about it in the context of OLOS.  Following the Mass, parishioners gathered to share in fruitful discussion about the statement, the trifecta of abuse current scandals in the church (McCarrick, St. John’s Seminary, PA Grand Jury Report) and the appropriate response of the laity.  Click here for notes from the homily and the conversation.

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Join us at Our Lady of Sorrows for a special Mass with the Children's Choir on sunday, November 18 at 8:45 AM. 

 BISHOP’S MEETING

By now, you may have read in the media that the meeting of the bishops of the United States this past week in Baltimore was prepared to address their own accountability for the “Crisis in the Church.” At literally the last minute, the Vatican asked them to hold off until the meeting with the Pope and the Presidents of all the National Conferences of bishops in the world planned for February in Rome.
 
I know this tests your patience again and frankly it tests mine and that of not a few bishops. I ask myself; “What keeps me?” Let me share a few thoughts.
 
Being here with you so that together we can share our faith and bring our cares to the Lord in the Eucharist we celebrate enlivens me. My every-day cares seem mundane and on the back burner when here. Even though those cares are not insignificant as I know yours aren’t, in the light of God’s care for us and ours for each other we are strengthened to bear them. Here     together we raise each other up and take some time however brief to remind ourselves that we are in fact God’s people both in joy and in sorrow.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Risen Lord makes more sense of everything to me than anything else.  God gave us life and once given it doesn’t end in some eternal darkness. Physical death is not spiritual death. So what happens? I’m not sure of the details but I am sure that the goodness and meaning and love that we have shared is not a bucket of facts but a dynamic, a dynamic that creates its own energy which is joined to that of Christ because he experienced what we do. In fact, he did not consider equality with God something to be held on to but gave it up to share our plight and elevate us to the nobility of being daughters and sons of the Father.
 
Our Catholic Tradition includes centuries of thinking, teaching, praying and insights on the mysteries of faith in a way that I find persuasive. For example, a Catholic theological mantra, if you will, is “Grace builds on nature.” For me this means that Christ by his coming among us has graced all of creation and human endeavor and called it to resurrection. Even the basics of nature like the death of plant life in winter will inevitably come back or rise again in spring.
The beauty of the goodness in the lives of so many, of the inspiration that leads to great art and music speaks to the higher purpose of life and the ability of the best of the human to rise and make us be our best selves. The great Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin learned the same thing from his knowledge and science that he also learned on a different track from his faith, that God is inviting us to a point of union with him that Chardin called the “Omega” point.

I know how serious these difficult times are for so many of you. Please feel free to share your concerns with me. We can help each other.
 
~Fr. Frank