Matthew 25

02/19/2020

Our great thanks to Jesuits East for this wonderful profile of Matthew 25 and our founder and Executive Director Father Fred Enman

In the spring of 1988, Fred Enman was a Jesuit in formation preparing for his ordination in June. While he would have to continue his theology studies after ordination, there was one class that would influence the rest of his life in the Society. “Our class read True Church and the Poor by Jon Sob...

02/08/2019

A New Valentine's Song

"Sing to the Lord a new song ." - Psalm 96

Valentine's Day is a holiday that many of us love to hate. Maybe we're single or lonely and married or divorced. Maybe we're "between things." Maybe we are madly in love and can't wait to go out to dinner with our beloved. Whichever or whatever we are or aren't, whichever of these blends identifies our romantic status, Facebook need not know. We can keep it to ourselves.

On the other hand, we can also be snarky enough to just hate all those red hearts, plastered up everywhere, bleeding and beating and encouraging us to buy something. Real hearts get arteriosclerotic or have an attack. They have angioplasty or face real stress tests every few hours every days in most people's jobs. Hearts are so beautiful that it is obnoxious when they are overdone, like in the drug store or grocery aisles where even the dog bones have come out in heart shapes.

I long for a new Valentine's song, one beyond the clutches of the consumer's heart-shaped candy box--the one you can't afford, don't like to eat but feel compelled to give. It would be like those good old days when we wrote a Valentine's card to every kid in our third grade class and rejoiced in the return of 26 to us. Or it would be like that day when I was doing the laundry and folding my husband's clothes and realized I really do love him. I shed a little tear. I felt it in my heart. I remembered all the times he had folded my clothes for me. I hope I remember to get him a Valentine's card this year, at least by the end of February.

Prayer

O God, grant us heart-melting love. Amen.

Written by Donna Schaper,Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City and the author of the book Prayers for People Who Say They Can’t Pray.

February 14, 2015

01/01/2019

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

"Ring Out, Wild Bells" was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Published in 1850, the year he was appointed Poet Laureate, it forms part of In Memoriam, Tennyson's elegy to Arthur Henry Hallam, his sister's fiancé who died at the age of twenty-two.

According to oft-recounted story the 'wild bells' in question were the bells of the Watham Abbey Church. Tennyson was said to be staying in the vicinity at High Beach and heard the bells being rung on New Year's Eve.

It is an accepted English custom to ring English Full circle bells to ring out the old year and ring in the new year over midnight on New Year's Eve. Sometimes the bells are rung half-muffled for the death of the old year, then the muffles are removed to ring without muffling to mark the birth of the new year.

May your bells be wild and your faith run deep in 2019. New Years Blessings to you all from Matthew 25

11/22/2018

Thanksgiving Blessings!

Prayer of Thanksgiving by Walter Rauschenbusch

O God, we thank you for this earth, our home;
For the wide sky and the blessed sun,
For the salt sea and the running water,
For the everlasting hills
And the never-resting winds,
For trees and the common grass underfoot.
We thank you for our senses
By which we hear the songs of birds,
And see the splendor of the summer fields,
And taste of the autumn fruits,
And rejoice in the feel of the snow,
And smell the breath of the spring.
Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty;
And save our souls from being so blind
That we pass unseeing
When even the common thornbush
Is aflame with your glory,
O God our creator,
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Walter Rauschenbusch, (October 4, 1861 - July 25, 1918) was a cleric and theology professor who led the Social Gospel movement in the United States. The Social Gospel was a movement that exerted a major influence at the outset of the twentieth century with the aim of mobilizing American Christians to work for a more just society for all, especially the urban working class. Walter Rauschenbusch served as pastor to a Baptist congregation of German immigrants on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen (a neighborhood in midtown Manhattan) in New York, taught church history at Rochester Theological Seminary (now Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School), and traveled the length and breadth of America by railroad to advocate the cause of the Social Gospel. He was committed to the necessity of vital religious experience to transform individual personalities and political activism to make social structures in society equitable. Considered both dynamic and compassionate, he always regarded himself as an evangelist seeking to win individuals to a “new birth” in Christ. At the same time, he believed that the Kingdom of God required social as well as individual salvation, and he demanded “a new order that would rest on the Christian principles of equal rights and democratic distribution of economic power.”

01/12/2018

https://sojo.net/magazine/february-2018/this-bonhoeffer-moment-American-Christians

Lessons for American Christians from the Confessing Church in Germany

12/29/2017

http://www.ucc.org/commentay_do_new_years_resolutions_actually_help_anyone

Growing up, my siblings and I made many New Year's resolutions at the closing of each year.

12/22/2017

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/12/21/christmas-prayer-nearly-everyone

This Christmas, please help me remember a few simple things.

08/21/2017

We are extremely grateful to the Realtor Association of Central Massachusetts, which recently donated $2,000 to Matthew 25 at a recent ceremony.
From left, 2017 President of the REALTOR® Association of Central Massachusetts, Sarah Gustafson, Matthew 25 co-founder and Executive Director Father Fred Enman, Matthew 25 Board of Directors members Emily Murray and David Lizotte, and 2017 Community Action Committee Chair Keith Krikorian. Thank you so much!!

06/29/2017

Thanks to our friends Worcester Area Mission Society for helping us with brickwork at one of our properties on Benefit Terrace! We truly appreciate it.

04/19/2017

Thanks to the volunteers who helped make possible the recent renovation of one of the units at our Firefighter House, our 1840s Greek Revival.

The three-bedroom units now has new carpet, stove, cabinetry, vanity tops and paint. We're now ready to house a new family with two children who are in need of affordable housing.

We could not have completed this renovation without the invaluable help of our volunteers, including groups from First Congregational Church of Holden, St. Mary's Church - Official Site, Holden Knights of Columbus, Worcester Area Mission Society, Trinity Church of Northborough, MA, Saint John's High School, Marlene De Leon and Campus Ministry Bridgewater State University, the Assumption College Reach Out Center at Assumption College, and Bernadine Kensinger and Al Mosher. Thank you so much! Hope to see you all again soon!

04/17/2017

We're so very grateful for the help we received today in installing a ramp at our Birch Street property. Thanks to Carpenter's Local 107, Shriver Job Corps ( Fort Devens , Mass ) and Al Mosher for helping us make this a reality. The ramp provides easier access to a child with special needs and is truly appreciated. Thank you!

03/03/2017

Thanks to our friends from Saint John's High School for volunteering their time yesterday to help us refurbish our May Street property.