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Parish Office Hours:
MONDAY-FRIDAY
9AM TO NOON & 1PM TO 4PM
Phone: 781-784-2265
Email: parish@olossharon.org
 

PASTOR’S DESK
The seventeen year old Swedish “climate change” activist Greta Thunberg has certainly had a large public effect especially among her peers. Young people in large numbers are beginning to recognize the stark fact that they are going to have to live in a damaged planet.
 
In fact they will find an ally in a place that might surprise them, namely, in the writing and heart not of a young person like them but in an eighty-two year old Argentinian man who happens to be Pope Francis.
 
In 2015, Francis wrote an encyclical letter on this exact subject. An encyclical is a communication when the Pope wants to say something important originally to the church. Pope John XXIII, however expanded this and         addressed his encyclical: “Pacem in Terris” “Peace on Earth” written in the aftermath of the “Cuban Missile    Crisis to all of humanity. Francis has indicated the importance he attaches to this issue by addressing it to “every person living on this planet.” He called his letter: “On Care For Our Common Home.” For short it is called “Laudato Si…” or “Praised be…” These are the first words of the canticle of St Francis in which he set forth his prayerful and thankful embrace of the great gift that God has given us in the sun and the moon and all the gifts of created nature. His reverence for them led him to bring intimacy to our relationship with nature by addressing “brother sun” and “sister moon.”
 
The enduring love for the beauty of nature of St Francis and, in fact, the invitation from Pope Francis to          approach nature and the environment with “…awe and wonder “ should be no surprise to us believers. One of the most commonly prayed canticles in the “Liturgy of the Hours,” the daily prayer of the church is the “Canticle of Daniel” from the Hebrew bible.
 
Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord.
Praise and exalt him above all forever.
Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord.
You heavens, bless the Lord.
All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord.
All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord.
Sun and moon, bless the lord.
Stars of heaven, bless the Lord.
 
Every shower and dew, bless the Lord.
All you winds, bless the Lord.
Fire and heat, bless the Lord.
Cold and chill, bless the Lord.
Dew and rain, bless the Lord.
Frost and chill, bless the Lord.
Ice and snow, bless the Lord.
Nights and days, bless the Lord.
Light and darkness, bless the Lord.
Lightnings and clouds,  bless the Lord.
 
Let the earth bless the Lord.
Praise and exalt him above all forever.
Mountains and hills, bless the Lord.
Everything growing from the earth, bless the Lord.
You springs, bless the Lord.
Seas and rivers, bless the Lord.
You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord.
All you birds of the air, bless the Lord.
All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord.
You sons of men,  bless the Lord.
 
Join us at coffee hour in O’Connell Hall this Sunday, January 12th after the 8:45 Mass where I will make a     presentation on the Pope’s letter joined by our parishioner and cantor, Peg Arguimbau, Chair of the Sharon         Conservation commission.   ~Fr. Frank