Author: St. Charles Borromeo

Events

Returning to Mass at St. Charles Borromeo Church

| St. Charles Borromeo

St. Charles announces the resumption of public Mass.  Welcoming our brothers and sisters to gather together in worship is a long-awaited event and we have been working diligently to provide a safe environment for Mass.

New Mass Schedule beginning the week of June 29

Weekday Mass – Wednesdays at 12:10 PM followed by the opportunity for private prayer until 2 p.m. Begins July 1

Sunday Mass – 11:15 AM. begins July 5 (also streamed on Zoom)

Private prayer on Tuesdays and Thursdays will be discontinued.

Please note: in-person Masses are dependent on having enough volunteer ushers (4) to implement safety procedures. Please check the website for announcements regarding schedule. Continue reading “Returning to Mass at St. Charles Borromeo Church” →

Messages from Parishioners

Walking Before We Fly, Part IV – Joe Genova

| St. Charles Borromeo

Part II covered the spiritual belief shared by St. Francis and Pope Francis of the unity of everything in our universe, an undeniable truth because God created it all, from galaxies, to humans, to bugs and dirt under our feet.  A summary of the five-chapter, 115-page guts of Laudato Si’ was the auspicious goal of Part III.  In Chapter 6, “Ecological Education and Spirituality,” the gloves come off.

Pope Francis calls upon us to change ourselves and our lifestyle.  “The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own, and consume.” “Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle … can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.”  In Chapter 2, Pope Francis quoted the bishops of New Zealand, who put this pointedly in 2006 by asking “What does ‘Thou shall not kill’ mean when ‘twenty percent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs poor nations and future nations of what they need to survive.’”  My friends, few of us are not are in the 20%. “In the end,” Pope Francis says, “a world of exacerbated consumption is … a world which mistreats life in all its forms.”  He then consoles, “all is not lost” because, with thought and caring and inspired by meditative prayer, we can act in a way that treats all of God’s creation fairly. Continue reading “Walking Before We Fly, Part IV – Joe Genova” →

News

Diocese of Brooklyn Announcement on the Resumption of Weekday & Sunday Masses

| St. Charles Borromeo

The Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop of Brooklyn, is pleased to announce that churches in the Diocese of Brooklyn can re-open for Weekday Mass on Monday, June 29, 2020. At  St. Charles Borromeo, we will celebrate public Mass on Wednesdays at 12:10 PM beginning on July 1, 2020 and a public Sunday Mass at 11:15 AM beginning on Sunday, July 5, 2020. COVID-19 safety protocols will be in place, including the requirement that all who enter a church must bring and must wear their own mask during the entire Mass and maintain proper social distancing.

“Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens have been longing for the celebration of Mass and to receive the Holy Eucharist. But our sacrifice and patience have borne fruit, and we did our part to flatten the curve of the terrible coronavirus pandemic. Soon we can come together to be nourished by the spiritual food we have been desperate for,” said Bishop DiMarzio.

In preparation for the joyous day when Mass will resume, the Diocese of Brooklyn is launching a video today in English, which can be viewed above, and Spanish to give Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens an understanding of the changes they will experience as a result of COVID-19 safety protocols designed to keep everyone healthy and safe. Below is a sunmary of the safety protocols: Continue reading “Diocese of Brooklyn Announcement on the Resumption of Weekday & Sunday Masses” →

Homilies, Videos

12th Sunday Ordinary Time – Homily (Msgr. LoPinto)

| St. Charles Borromeo

Transcript:

It struck me at the beginning that we are observing the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Yet reality is that there’s nothing ordinary about the time. I’m not sure there ever is anything ordinary about the time – in the sense of if not all time has a character of being extraordinary – in the sense that we’re always dealing with the unexpected, with the surprises that God places in our way.

And certainly the idea of God surprising us is very much a part of the scripture for this 12th Sunday. The first reading – Jeremiah. Jeremiah – who has been anointed by God to deliver God’s word to the people – is constantly surprised by the reaction he gets: a reaction that basically puts him ever at risk. He’s imprisoned. There are those who would try to kill him. He must tell the people about in a sense trusting in God by placing themselves in God’s hands as they are led off into captivity. And so, in a sense, he is a person who must deal with fear – the fear for his own personal life, but he’s only able to deal with that because he has encountered the Lord. And because he has encountered the Lord, he trusts.  And he trusts that even though he doesn’t understand – he can’t comprehend, for the most part, God’s plan. He’s able to trust – he’s able to trust, because in his own way, he has come to know God. Continue reading “12th Sunday Ordinary Time – Homily (Msgr. LoPinto)” →

Events

Online Community Mass – 12th Sunday Ordinary Time – 6/21 11:15 am EDT

| St. Charles Borromeo

Please join us for our Online Community Mass for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Sunday, June 21 at 11:15 AM EDT.

Instructions to view the Mass are available here. You can also watch the view via YouTube Live above.

Events

Recording of Friday’s Prayer Service and Juneteenth Discussion

| St. Charles Borromeo

At Friday’s evening prayer service, St. Charles Borromeo commemorated the Sacred Heart of Jesus and also gathered together for Juneteenth. Fritz Cherubin Jr. spoke on the history of Juneteenth and offered suggestions for deeper exploration, including:

  • reflecting on what it would have been like for a slave in Texas to have heard the June 19, 1865 declaration;
  • reading more about Brooklyn Heights’ role in the abolition movement and the Underground Railroad; and
  • watching the documentation 13TH about modern-day mass incarcerations.

If you weren’t able to join, the prayer service was recorded and is available on our YouTube channel. Fritz’s remarks begin at this point. Following the June 5 prayer service on justice and equality, a number of parishioners reached out asking for suggestions on reading and viewing materials to explore these topics in more depth. Suggested materials, which cover the topics Fritz mentioned, are here.

Messages from Parishioners

Walking Before We Fly, (Pt. III) – Joe Genova

| St. Charles Borromeo

In Part II, I covered the introduction to Laudato Si’ with emphasis on its spiritual roots in Pope Francis’ relationship with St. Francis of Assisi. Today, I will give an overview of the first five Chapters, necessarily not comprehensive and necessarily from “30,000-feet.”

Chapter One describes our Earth’s woes. We are familiar with some: climate change and threats to water (including increasing scarcity), air, soil and biodiversity, for example. We may be less familiar with how these things bring about a decline in the quality of human life, and we may not realize that the burden of environmental degradation is born disproportionately by the most vulnerable. The Pope urges us to search for the right path between two wrong views; one view says we need do nothing because the earth will heal itself with the application of new technology and without the need for any ethical considerations or deep change; the other says that the only solution is to reduce the human population and all forms of intervention in nature. Continue reading “Walking Before We Fly, (Pt. III) – Joe Genova” →