No, I’m not responding to one of the dumbest commercials on television; I’m responding to the gospel passage this weekend.

We all know how empty it feels, when we think we are taken advantage of or when we think we are being taken for granted. Yet, I wonder how often we actually say a prayer of thanksgiving and praise to our Heavenly Father.

Are we no better than the nine lepers in this weekend’s Gospel, if we accept God’s daily gifts with an attitude that we deserve such gifts because we’re good people? Many of us are very blessed indeed. How often we take for granted the blessings we have been given! It’s not so much that we aren’t thankful,we just forget to stop and express our gratitude, to recognize and praise the source of all goodness.

O God, we thank you for the blessings of this day. May we be ever mindful of your love in the midst of life’s joys and burdens, and may all your people experience your peace this night.

I thank God for the ministries and services we share.

Over 30 years ago, we were told that legal and widely available abortion was the key to ending discrimination against women and the solution to a host of social problems. Today we face the devastating

results: More than forty million unborn human lives lost, untold numbers of others wounded. Children and other family members abused in ever-increasing numbers. And more women and children living in poverty than ever

before. Abortion is not a solution. In the U.S. every year, 1.6 million children die from abortion. The powerful propose yet more abortion, government-funded abortion, as the cure. How long will we refuse to see the bankruptcy of our choices? How long will we refuse to act? How long, O Lord, how long?

Last weekend, I helped lead a celebration of gratitude for Grace Day Home, a childcare facility which our Sisters have sponsored for 84 years. There were old photos, singing, sad faces of parents, staff members and Sisters, balloons and many hugs all around. Reading the journals in the archives, we learned that our sisters had opened a Japanese Mission in 1934 in the hopes of converting some of the families. Included among the children were a crippled child, a developmentally disabled child and two children of a leprous mother. Though the health department had declared that the children were not lepers and therefore, not contagious, I can’t help but admire the courage of the Sisters to risk people’s fearful reactions. (One of the children actually developed symptoms of leprosy in his fingers and eventually joined his mother in a special hospital in Louisiana.) The school did well until the spring of 1942 when all the Japanese were taken to internment camps. Our Sisters continued to visit these families in Tulelake, the only visitors allowed.

So many times these Sundays, the gospels have mentioned unlikely members of the kingdom of God: the wastrel son, the poor Lazarus (everyone knows that to be poor and sick is to be cursed by God!), Paul who actually persecuted the earliest followers of Jesus. And the first reading and the gospel today include lepers cured by the power of God. We need only remember when AIDS first struck and the fear accompanying it when no one knew exactly how it was transmitted. People responded to leprosy in the same way, without benefit of our modern day knowledge of viruses and bacteria. And these lepers were foreigners: Naaman was from Syria, though unfortunately the passage read doesn’t include that fact, and at least one of the ten cured were not Jewish.

Can we be open to what the scriptures are telling us? God’s love and mercy reaches out to ALL: those despised by their society, those who don’t even necessarily believe in God! How amazing! So can we imagine that God is always reaching out to us as well? If we’ve been raised being scrupulous, afraid that we’re sinning all the time, can we try to focus on God instead of ourselves? Can we imagine running into the open arms of God, as to a loving Father? And if we believe that God is that good, can we try to let the Spirit reach others through us? Peace and every blessing.

Attention, Eucharistic Ministers!

Join TIPPS for our Halloween get-together!!

Kids costumes are optional. There will be a potluck-please bring an item to share with six people, and a toy for your child to play with (no balls or weapons please). Feel free to invite new TIPPSters! As was discussed at our last meeting, we would love to see all the kids in costume-BRING YOUR CAMERA.

FESTIVAL RAFFLE NEWS

Congratulations!!!
to the winners of our High Roller Raffle!
The winners are:

$2,000 Tom DeMartini
$1,000 Rob & Cathy Aveson
$500 Helen Nardi
$500 Bart Murphy
$500 Sherman & Frances Heaney

We are scheduled for the 2nd Wednesday of each month. If you can prepare a favorite cookie, snack or lunch item for 10 to 12 people, please drop it off at the Children's Chapel, in the back of Church, by 9 a.m. on October 13th. Please pack the items in a non-returnable container. Frozen items can be donated.

We just heard that the room we’ll have at Mercy Center can only accommodate 50 women, so if you’d like to come to this retreat on Saturday, November 13 from 8:30am to 3 pm, please pick up a pink form at the main entrance to the church, fill it out with your $30 donation and drop it by the rectory or the school, addressed to Sr. Sheral or Donna McGuigan. Reservations are due by October 29.

The Youth Group will celebrate its one-year anniversary in the parish NEXT SUNDAY with a special Youth Mass at 5 p.m. Fr. Tom Hamilton will celebrate the Mass and I ask anyone in the parish who has given anything to the youth group, please join us on that night. No matter how small you thought your gift/contribution was, we would like to recognize and thank you. There have been so many generous people that individual invitations are not possible. Any questions, please feel free to contact me at (650) 255-0791 or SRYOUTHMINISTER@AOL.COM.

**The Youth Group meets every Sunday after the 5 p.m. Mass in the Hall, feel free to join us.

The human person is not only sacred, but social. The God-given institutions of marriage-a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman--and family are central and serve as the foundations for social life. Marriage and family should be supported and strengthened, not undermined. Every person has a right to participate in social, economic, and political life and a corresponding duty to work for the advancement of the common good and the well-being of all, especially the poor and weak.