St. James Catholic Church

The Catholic community of St. James Church is made up of loving and sensitive members seeking to meet their spiritual needs, strengthen their faith, and affirm their continued existence as the church of Jesus Christ today and tomorrow.  In their quest to evangelize, it is their mission to assist everyone toward a more abundant experience of the riches of their liturgy and scaraments, and to convince all of Christ's sheep that the Lord's Day is indeed for all.

Wednesday at 12:00 Noon, please bring your announcements and notices to the office in legible and written form for insertion into the bulletin. Thank you!

St. James parish welcomes all newcomers.  Please contact the parish office to register.

Cyber scammers are impersonating Priests, CFOs and people in ministry leadership roles. They are asking for money, gift cards and personal information.  DO NOT reply and immediately delete any email or text.  This is NOT a request from our parish priest, deacons, administrative personnel or any of its ministry leaders.

A poor illiterate man wanted to be baptized. The parish priest asked him many questions to see whether he was fit for baptism. “Where was Jesus born? How many apostles did he have? How many years did he live? Where did he die? The poor man knew nothing of all these questions. Irritated, the priest then said, “At least you know prayers like the Our Father and the I Believe”? The man again shook his head. “What do you know then?” asked the priest flabbergasted. The man explained, “Before I met Jesus I was a drunkard who beat up my wife and children; I lost my job and was wasting my life.” Then he continued, “But after encountering Jesus, I’ve quit drinking. I work hard and have begun to love my family. For me Jesus is my personal Savior!”

The preaching of the Good News of Jesus begins with the word, Repent. His invitation to repent is to enter into a special relationship with God in response to his call. For ‘repent’ usually means to be sorry for, to regret some wrong actions we have done in the past. Jesus is asking for much more than that. It is a call, not to wipe out the past, which is really not possible for any human person, but for a change of direction from now on and enter into a new future. The Greek word, rendered by many translations as equivalent to ‘repent’, is metanoia. This word implies a radical change of heart, change in one’s thinking, total transformation. It also means looking at life in a completely new way, making what is sometimes called a ‘paradigm shift’. This new way of seeing life is spelt out through the whole of the Christian Testament.  It is only when we begin to make this radical change that we begin to become part of that Kingdom that we begin effectively to come under the influence of God’s power in our lives. We begin to see things the way God sees them and our behavior changes accordingly. The call is not just to be sorry for past sins and not to commit them anymore. But it goes much beyond this namely, to have a complete change of heart, show hatred towards sin and to have a deep involvement in doing God’s work. That work involves reaching out to others, working with them to end poverty and destitution, bring an end to hunger and joblessness, to communal and religious hatred, to rampant greed, ambition and shameless consumerism.

The Good news that Jesus preaches is that people have to repent and change themselves as the kingdom of God is near. It is the good news of hope, peace, promise, truth and salvation that is contained in the kingdom. Jesus comes to his people as the herald or the messenger of good news. His message of the kingdom has certainty and assurance; it has total authority and power because it comes from the source which is God himself. The Scriptures indicate that the kingdom of God existed at the foundation of the world. It is the authority of God over everything that he created for John tells us that everything was created in and through Jesus. The mission of Jesus now is to re-establish this divine kingdom. There is the immediacy and the urgency in his proclamation as he says it is here and now. The listener has to respond to it immediately without delay. At the same time Jesus emphatically tells us that he is the good news and we have the obligation to listen to him. Already at his Baptism the Father had made it clear that he was his beloved son and we ought to listen to him. Now Jesus himself preaches this kingdom for all and invites them to respond to him.  To be in the kingdom, then, is not to be in a particular place, either in this life or the next.  Rather it is to be living one’s life, wherever we are, under the loving power of God. It is to be in a relationship of loving submission to one’s God and Lord and to be in an environment where values like truth, love, compassion, justice, freedom, community, and peace prevail.

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: “I don’t believe that God exists.” “Why do you say that?” asked the customer. “Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things.” The customer thought for a moment but didn’t respond because he didn’t want to start an argument.  Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: “You know what? Barbers do not exist.” “How can you say that?” asked the surprised barber. “I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!” No!” the customer exclaimed. “Barbers don’t exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.” Ah, but barbers DO exist! That’s what happens when people do not come to me.” “Exactly!” affirmed the customer. “That’s the point! God, too, DOES exist! That’s what happens when people do not go to Him and don’t look to Him for help. That’s why there’s so much pain and suffering in the world.”

1)      Vatican website: http://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html

2)      Monks of the desert video: https://youtu.be/U5YY684ZXDE

3)      Catholic League: http://www.catholicleague.org/ 

4)      Community in mission blog: http://blog.adw.org/author/cpope/

5)      Church teachings index: http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/teach/index.html

6)      Catholic liturgy library: http://www.catholicliturgy.com/

7)      Church cartoons: http://www.toonfever.com/