Mary, Star of the Sea 

   Church

The Gospel is from St. Matthew 13:1-23. Christ's description of His audience, that day in Galilee, is unfortunately as true today as it was then. His message of salvation has been preached to a great part of the world's population, but the proportion of those who accept it and live up to it, is about the same today as it was then. There are millions of men and women today, in what was once Christian Europe, who are like the seed sown on the unplowed path. They refuse to accept the message, they have no thought for their future, they are content to end in the grave after their few years of misery and hardship on this planet.

Long before any thought of a pandemic, the Diocese of Honolulu and the Hawaii Catholic Conference offered sessions last fall on our Catholic Advance Healthcare Directive (AHCD). In those sessions, we had several questions on POLST and offered inconsistent answers. To remedy this, we have prepared the attached Catholic Moral Guide to Completing the POLST (attached). For more information on POLST, go to Kokua Mau’s website. https://kokuamau.org/polst/

Elections in 2020 are going to be very different!  Gone are the days when you go to ballot booth.  Now, whether or not you like it, the ballot comes to you.  To find out how that is going to work, you can watch the video (at right) produced by the Office of Elections.  In order to ensure that as many people vote as possible, we wanted to provide you with a few reminders.  First and foremost, (1) make sure that you are registered to vote.  You should have received a few mailings already from the Office of Elections including a signature capture card.  (2) Hopefully you received, and returned, that signature capture card.  (We can talk about security and safety at another time, but know that we have our concerns.) If you did NOT receive anything in the mail, please contact the Office of Elections directly.

The Gospel is from St. Matthew 11:25-30. Pagans and Jews had the same hardships of life to face as we have, and even greater ones. They earned their daily bread by the sweat of their brow and body. Their illnesses were more frequent and less bearable than ours, for they had not the medical help that we have. Death came to young and old then as it does now, but for them it was a final parting from loved ones, and no hope of a future happy meeting served to lighten their sorrow. All their crosses were crushing weights, sent to make life more miserable. Life on earth was passed in gloom and darkness and there was no shining star in the heavens to beckon them on or give them hope.

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The Gospel is from St. Matthew 10:37-42. In the first part, Christ tells his representatives, his delegates the Apostles, and those who succeed them, that they must be prepared to undergo great sacrifices, even death itself, if called on to do so for the sake of Christ. It was not only the Apostles who gave their lives gladly for Christ. There are thousands of martyrs who, during the first three centuries of the Church, not only accepted but welcomed death for Christ's sake, because they were convinced that it was the door to eternal life, the only life that mattered. Nor did occasions for martyrdom cease when the Church was granted freedom by Constantine, the first convert Roman emperor. Here and there, down through the centuries, the followers of Christ have been persecuted because of their belief in him, and many of us can be proud that we have had among our ancestors men and women who died for the faith.