Many parishioners are generously involved with the South Oakland Shelter this week. Once a year a door is opened up to a world that few of us experience: the loss of a home. Thanks to SOS the burden of homelessness is eased as families get the time and help they need to recover a place to call home. Thanks to Nancy and Tim Cahoon for their tireless efforts over many years to organize us to take our turn to host SOS.
October weekends are often home to multiple activities. Also this weekend the Knights of Columbus will be having their tootsie roll drive to support their summer camp for mentally challenged children. Next weekend is Mission Sunday, one of several opportunities we are given to support the mission work of the Church.
The Synod on the Family has finished its first week. Please continue to pray for the 270 members of the Synod as they address very important family issues. I came across Pope Francis' opening speech from and wanted to share a few lines of it with you.
"In this extremely difficult social and marital context, the Church is called to carry out her mission in fidelity, truth and love. To carry out her mission in fidelity to her Master as a voice crying out in the desert, in defending faithful love and encouraging the many families which live married life as an experience which reveals of God’s love; in defending the sacredness of life, of every life; in defending the unity and indissolubility of the conjugal bond as a sign of God’s grace and of the human person’s ability to love seriously.
To carry out her mission in truth, which is not changed by passing fads or popular opinions. The truth which protects individuals and humanity as a whole from the temptation of self-centredness and from turning fruitful love into sterile selfishness, faithful union into temporary bonds. 'Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love.'” (BENEDICT XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 3).