Join us online for Sunday Online Mass at 11:15 AM EDT.
Download the service texts for the readings and hymns here.
Participate on Zoom. [Zoom dial-in info removed from website for security reasons] Recordings will be available at our website.
Support our Parish – Please contribute to our General Collection online here.
Help us support Catholic Charities Food Pantries in Brooklyn and Queens online here.
Catholic Charities food pantries in Brooklyn and Queens are experiencing dramatic increases in demand due to the current economic conditions and pandemic. Since last week, the need has doubled and lines are stretching around the block at emergency food pantries. MSNBC profiled Catholic Charities’ efforts in a segment that was broadcast nationwide yesterday. It can be viewed online here.
We support Catholic Charities in this ministry. We thank everyone who has supported our recent collections to Catholic Charities. We encourage anyone who can help support Catholic Charities efforts to donate online, stcharlesbklyn.weshareonline.
This week, Fr. Bill Smith speaks with Adele Mucci on Easter, reflecting on two works of art: “The Resurrection” by Piero della Francesca and “No. 14, 1960” by Mark Rothko, and discussing how resurrection and new life is a mystery and like all mysteries it best known by living not discussing.
St. Charles at Home episodes feature conversation between the prior Sunday’s homilist and parishioners to provide us with more connection to the parish during the week.
Below is the schedule of online St. Charles events for at least the next two weeks:
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
In early May, we will take stock and may adjust the schedule to better suit our parish’s needs and interests.
You can connect via our public Zoom meeting ID (819 741 616). Full instructions, including a way to join by phone, are available here.
Hello, for those who don’t know me, I’m Mike McGowan and I’ve been a member of St. Charles for a little over ten years.
In this uncertain time, all three of this week’s readings resonated more with me than in years past. From our current stay-at-home circumstances, I am better able to appreciate the early Christians’ experience of huddling behind locked doors. Never have 1st and 21st centuries felt so close together. Yet the early Christians transcended the locked doors, through the Holy Spirit, to build the enduring Church. Continue reading “Message from Mike McGowan, PPC”
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio, 1603
Second Sunday of Easter
1st Letter of St. Peter 1:3–9
April 19, 2020
During the weeks of Easter, the first reading will be from the “Acts of the Apostles” and the second reading from the very intriguing “First Letter of St. Peter.” We will use this opportunity to examine this letter in some detail.
Often discussion of 1 Peter can become fixated on if it was, in fact, written by St Peter. We will avoid this issue to a great extent and simply hold that if it was not it was written by Peter, it was constructed by a close associate who would have communicated his thought faithfully and reverently. This is most important. We will assume that the letter was written if not by Peter, who was executed in 64 AD, then soon after it, no later than 90 AD and most likely closer to 70 or 80 AD—in any event, rather early in the Church’s history. The author is addressing the same issues as other New Testament writers of this time especially St. Paul, his followers, and St. Matthew. Although St. Peter has a distinctive viewpoint that is well worth hearing, we should keep in mind how similar his message is to his contemporaries. Continue reading “Second Sunday of Easter – No Time When We Cannot Hope”
On behalf of Msgr. Al, Fr. John and of course myself I would like to wish all of you a most blessed Easter and assure you that although we are appearing to you virtually, our prayers and best wishes are as Pope Francis says “close and concrete”.
Easter is always a celebration that requires a bit of temporal sleight of hand. We say that Jesus offers us new life, but that new life comes with baptism, which most of us received as infants. We simply do not have much experience of the old life without Him and none of that with much consciousness. That is why Lent is so important. The church over the years has created many exercises and customs which allow us to imagine what life without a relationship with Jesus would be like. A good Lent is one in which we experience at least in our hearts some sense of what Jesus has done and is doing for and with us. Continue reading “Easter 2020 – Fr. Smith Homily”
