Season of Creation Week 4 (25th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Today we will hear God’s message from Isaiah: “As high as the heavens are above the Earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
In this Season of Creation, we are being called to recognize the global climate emergency in which we are living. The planet is warming dangerously because of our use of fossil fuels and our systems of production and consumption. The ways our economies function and the values they serve are violently depleting and wasting Earth’s resources, creating great inequalities, suffering and injustice, feeding brutal conflicts, and exceeding Earth’s regenerative capacity. Earth is crying out, the poor are crying out. The existence and wellbeing of future generations is threatened.
Climate experts continue to warn of devastating, severe and destructive changes to all dimensions of life becoming unpreventable within less than a decade unless the global community makes dramatic changes urgently.
In this Season of Creation, we are being called to take up our prophetic responsibility in love to spread the word and to transform the ways we are living upon Earth. We must acknowledge our failures to care for creation and embrace God’s ways.
Join us at St. Teresa’s for mass: Saturday at 4:30 p.m., or Zoom. The passcode is StTAvila. Worship aid
Take a look at our Facebook page: St Teresa of Avila Catholic Community, ECC
Abundant blessings,
Rev. Kate Lehman, OSB
Join us by the Sanctuary for blessing of your animals on Wednesday, October 4, from noon to 4 p.m. on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. All pets are welcome.!
At our ECC anniversary celebration on September 19, 2023, Fr. Teri Haroun recited a poem she had written for the 2020 Synod. Fr. Teri is an artist and poet in addition to being a stellar pastor at the Light of Christ parish in Longmont, CO! Here is the poem:
“our God is a Poet”
(Adapted for the 20th Anniversary of the ECC)
in the beginning
was God:
the God of all beginnings
in the beginning
was a single stone
with jagged edges
to break stained glass ceilings
a rock of faith
a faith that rocks
building one brick at a time
a communion of communities
in the beginning
was a single word
whispered
and heard
by two or three who gathered together
to experience God swaddled in flesh and bones
and starting a conversation
of ecumenical proportions
in the beginning
was a single table
with an empty chair
for everyone
and there was bread and there was wine
the scent of all are welcome in what is blessed and broken
revealing a God who presides
at all tables
and our lives blessed and broken
in the beginning
was a breath
an inhale
with our ancestors
and our families
and all those yet to be,
a holy communion
of saints
praying and playing
in the beginning
was grace begetting
sacramental justice the heartbeat
of love working in the streets
building up the kin-dom
revealing God’s new beginnings
oh God of all beginnings,
as we lean forward together from our beginning
blessed be this day beginning
blessed be this 20th anniversary where past and future brush up against one another
blessed be the Ecumenical Catholic Communion
blessed be the ones we serve, and share our stories with
blessed be the work we join hands to share
blessed be the roots stretching deeper
blessed be the wings emerging
blessed be the glasses we raise here
blessed be the song we sing together
blessed be the prayer God’s planted within us
blessed be
blessed be
blessed be
blessed be the God who is our beginning
is now
and ever shall be
beginning
blessed be
by Teri Harroun
for the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion
October 2020
Welcome!
St. Teresa of Ávila is united with many other authentic Catholic faith communities as a member of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC). The ECC is a "community of communities" that share a common theology and liturgical tradition with the Roman Catholic Church, but do not participate in its canon law.
The "ECC Difference" can be seen in the inclusion of all baptized Christians at the Eucharistic table, respect for and recognition that the Spirit is at work in those of other religions, ordination of women and married individuals, offering of the sacrament of marriage to committed LGBT couples and those remarrying after divorce, invitation to follow conscience regarding birth control, and active/equal involvement of the laity in the governance of the Communion.