The big news around the Community right now is our annual recommitment and Council election process. The packets have been down in Coffee Hour for a couple of weeks and those that haven’t been picked up by today will be mailed out.

Three good reasons for getting yours in:

1. You don’t get left off the Community roster.

2. You get to vote in the Community elections.

3. It’s part of our responsibility as members of this unique, lay-directed personal parish to commit our time, talent and treasure on an annual basis.

If you’re looking for something to sign up for, we need a volunteer to take over editing the first page of the newsletter where we run our news briefs and other Community tidbits. Contact Communications Chair John Lucic at 221-5017.

Jim Connell is heading up the effort to seek nominees for the various committees and the three at-large Council positions. Be praying about what you may be called to do for the Community next term.

Following is the first in a series of articles by Paul Kunkel based on his recent trip to El Salvador. Paul says he may get a slightly revised version of his reflection from last Sunday to me for the next issue. That’s especially good news for me because I was sick last week. (Not to worry, better now.) In any case, thanks, Paul, for turning this in so early.

My stay in El Salvador was perhaps the most overwhelming experience of my life. My heart was broken every day of our visit. I sit here still with tears in my eyes as I work on this account. I will attempt to give the reader a glimpse of the country of the "Savior" through my personal observations.

The Delegation was a pilgrimage to holy ground, a look into the future through the lives of the students at C.O.A.R. Children’s Village, a study of a country in transformation from war to peace, from a military-driven government to a democracy, and a glimpse at a few of the beautiful people who are striving to make a difference. They are living examples of Msgr. Romero’s words, "If they kill me, I will rise up in the Salvadoran people."

Our pilgrimage took us to the sites of those who died living out their faith working with God’s people, in applying the gospel message to their lives as Jesus showed us. We visited the Divine Providence Chapel of the Cancer Hospital operated by the Carmelite Order, where we were greeted by Sr. Rosa, whose father witnessed Msgr. Oscar Romero’s death here during a Mass here on March 24, 1980. We talked with Dean Brackley, S.J., at the Jesuit University of Central America and prayed at the Memorial Garden where the six Jesuit priests along with their housekeeper and her daughter were slain. We celebrated a memorial liturgy with Fr. Mike Williamson in the La Paz (which means ‘peace’) district of the country at the Memorial Chapel for the slain Church women, including Jean Donovan and Sr. Dorothy Kazel of Cleveland. Jean, as you know, worshipped with our Community before going to El Salvador. We felt the constant presence of the Cleveland Mission team, meeting with Fr. Ken Myers, Fr. Mike Williamson, Fr. Al Krupp, Fr. Bill Thaden along with Sisters Roberta Goebel, Lisa Belz and Cathy McConnell.

The most heartwarming and hope-filled part of our pilgrimage was the experience at C.O.A.R. Children’s Village. We witnessed the beautiful legacy of the war years, the fulfillment of a dream and the hard work of Fr. Ken Myers along with Sr. Dorothy, Jean Donovan, Christine Rody and others who brought those first kids down from Chalatenango to live at the rectory of Our Lady of Pillar Church in Zaragoza.

We witnessed first hand a country in transition from the ravages of a 13-year war to coping with the immense problems:

• The breakdown of the family.
• Street children.
• Unprecedented unemployment.
• Organized crime.
• Educational malaise.
• Mental health.
• Homelessness.
• Spousal abuse.
• Illiteracy.
• A broken infrastructure.
• Environmental disasters with the country’s water supply, etc.

In spite of these overwhelming problems, we witnessed a land of people living in dignity with a pride that is unmistakable —-- a happy people, who carry themselves proudly, who would give you their last tortilla.

Our CRISPAZ (Christians for Peace in El Salvador) guide, Sr. Laetitia Bordes, who has spent most of the last nine years in El Salvador, provided us with a program that shouted to us that good things are happening. We spoke with Deputies of the Legislative Assembly. We heard testimonies from many workers of the NGO’s (Non Government Organizations), who are devoting their lives to helping the children on the street, including the mothers of the disappeared and murdered children and assisting the women both young and old, who desperately need to rebuild their self-worth, and the human rights groups that are prodding the government to live up to the Peace Accords of 1992 and who are working to make the system work.

The next installment will deal with our experiences at the sites of the martyrs.

Two gospel stories are read this Sunday. The first occurs during the blessing and procession of the palms, and it is Matthew’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It is not hard to imagine the scene. The whole city seems to turn out to greet him. We as human beings are naturally curious, so it is quite likely that many in the crowd were there to join in the excitement, without any real appreciation of what was going on. "Who is this?" Matthew tells us they ask one another. And the answer? "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee." True enough.

However, in our second gospel story for this Sunday, the story of Jesus’ passion and death according to Matthew, these scores of well wishers disappear very quickly. Evidently, Jesus’ way of being a prophet, a way that involved suffering, disgrace and death, was not acceptable to most of them. Those who did congregate around the cross came to mock him, not to praise him. Even his disciples were unfaithful. Judas betrayed him. Peter denied knowing him. The rest were nowhere to be found.

The exceptions were his faithful women followers: "Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." After his death, Mary Magdalene and the "other Mary" took up watch outsideoutside of the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. These two will play a prominent role in the proclamation of the resurrection.

One other woman is mentioned at the beginning of Matthew’s version of the passion, but she is omitted in the lectionary reading for today. In view of this omission, I would like to print her story here:

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, "Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor." But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her" (Mt 26:6-13).

But alas! Such has not been the case. Though this story is also found in Mark’s gospel (the original version, which the author of Matthew’s gospel copied almost verbatim), few of us remember her. We remember the woman who was a sinner in Luke’s gospel, who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. And we might remember the version in John’s gospel, where the woman is identified with Mary of Bethany; she anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment, in an act parallel to Jesus’ washing his disciples’ feet to teach them the lesson that leadership means service.

But we do not remember the woman who anointed Jesus’ head with oil immediately before his passion. What has happened that Jesus’ prophecy about her did not come true? Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, eminent scripture scholar, suggests that this unnamed woman was performing a prophetic act. In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophets anointed the kings of Israel, thereby indicating that they were God’s chosen representatives for the exercise of God’s reign on earth. The most famous act of this sort is that performed by Samuel in anointing David, which we heard about in the first reading two weeks ago. This woman recognizes Jesus as the royal messiah, in the line of David, who would finally restore God’s reign to Israel. But Jesus’ words cast her act in a particular light. He says she has anointed his body for burial, indicating that she, alone among his disciples, understood that Jesus’ exercise of messiahship would happen by way of his suffering and death, rather than through glorious triumph understood in a worldly sense.

Judas betrayed Jesus. Peter denied him. The other male disciples ran away. But this woman understood better than all of them what Jesus was about, and, consequently, that the Christian following of Jesus would involve service unto death. Why has the church not praised her? Why has her story been left out of the lectionary account of the passion? One of the earliest ministries exercised in the early church was that of prophecy. And in the beginning this ministry was practiced by women and men alike. In the earliest version of the synoptic gospels (Mark’s, written around 70 CE, and repeated in Matthew, dated a decade later), Jesus’ words of praise recognized prophecy as an appropriate function for a woman. Thus this unnamed woman plays a prominent role in the passion story. But gradually equality in leadership between men and women began to be frowned upon. So Luke turns the woman into a sinner, in order to make her a bit more palatable to his audience. The meaning of John’s version of the story, while not exactly the same, has more in common with Mark and Matthew than with Luke. And we know that women were highly respected as leaders in the Johannine community.

Shortly before his death, Jesus offered a wish that the woman who anointed him be remembered for her prophetic act. We usually try to respect a dying person’s final wishes. Ought we not respect Jesus’ wish by restoring this woman to the story of his passion? He meant her to be a model of heroism, hope and faith. Can we allow this to be so?

N.B. The interpretation above is based upon Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza’s book In Memory of Her (Crossroad, 1983).

N.B. #2: In this column two weeks ago, I implied that Jacob and Rachel were the parents of 12 sons, who became leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel. While that was true of Jacob, it was not of Rachel who was the mother of only two of the sons: Joseph and Benjamin.

As I was beginning work on this issue of Communio earlier this week, I read the news about the Nebraska bishop threatening to excommunicate members of certain groups. The beginning of a story from the Catholic News Service said Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz is targeting members of groups supporting abortion or euthanasia. But a closer reading revealed that a more pressing concern was the formation of a Call to Action group in Nebraska.

Call to Action supports a greater lay participation in Church leadership, social justice, married priests and the ordination of women. It has a membership of 15,000, with about one-third of that total priests and religious women. Compared to many of the other groups on the bishop’s list, Call to Action is quite moderate. The list includes organizations like the Hemlock Society, Catholics for a Free Choice, Planned Parenthood, the Society of St. Pius X, and some that are affiliated with the Freemasons.

"Membership in these organizations or groups is always perilous to the Catholic faith and most often is totally incompatible with the Catholic faith," read an announcement in the Lincoln, Neb., diocesan newspaper. Catholic members of these groups in the Lincoln diocese have until April 15 to quit or be automatically excommunicated.

I called Chris Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch and a member of Community Council, who gave me some background. For one, the bishop apparently never met with members of Call to Action before taking his very extreme action. Chris faxed me an opinion by Canon Law professor Michel Theriault of Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, that said, in this situation, anyone who is excommunicated would have a good chance of having it overturned on an appeal to the Pontifical Council for the Laity. "Unless there are extraordinary circumstances that we do not know about in Lincoln, the decree seems —-- prima facie —-- to be difficult to be justified canonically," Theriault wrote.

Chris also faxed me the press statements of the national Call to Action, and the Nebraska chapter. The local chapter cited a letter to the bishop where co-chairs Lori Darby and John Krejci wrote, "We share your concern for the future of the Church. As faithful and committed Catholics we would be open to discussion of the specific issues that caused you to threaten sanctions."

National co-director Sheila Daley said the bishop’s action "is the sort of bully boy tactic that makes the Church incredible in the eyes of many reasonable people." Co-director Dan Daley added, "It is precisely because of Bishop Bruskewitz and people like him that Call to Action exists —-- to proclaim that the Church is not a dictatorship but a community of believers."

While all this is very discouraging, there could be a bright side, Chris told me. Traditionally the Church’s approach to such a call for change is first to ignore it, then laugh it off, then denounce it vigorously and condemn it, and then to accept it. We must be getting close to the acceptance stage, she said.

I sure hope so.

Cheers to Bill McLaughlin who helped so much with recommitment forms. Many thanks also to Lou Schroeder and Carol O’Neill-Lavelle for copying hundreds of forms on such a timely basis. Pat Coffey and Duane Horning were a great help with putting packets together. Cheers also to those on the membership committee who helped with distribution of recommitment packets.

This is a long-overdue cheer, and we’ll just see whether or not it makes it past the editor. (If not, some other form of revenge will be taken.) Let’s hear it good and loud for Dan Alaimo for the talent, time and energy he has for so long put into editing this Communio! And let’s not take his time-consuming contribution for granted. Sure, he’s not alone in this major contribution to our St. Malachi Community life —-- and we’ll recognize the others in issues to come —-- but Dan not only shares his professional skills, he backs ‘em up with patience, persistence and a gentle good nature. In a recent issue he observed that "it takes a fair amount of nudging, arm twisting and reminding" to get things written for Communio. This is untrue. It takes a lot! And I’m sure those of us who have been quite deservedly nudged, twisted and reminded will agree. It couldn’t come from a nicer guy! (Niceness, by the way, is for an editor a deadly weapon.) THANK YOU, Dan. (And another "by the way" —-- for those of you who unaware of it, his name is pronounced AL-LIE-MO, not that other way. And if you don’t print this Cheer, Dan —-- or if you delete anything —-- you’ll be sorry!)

St. Malachi’s Community Council met on Sunday, March 24, at 6 p.m.

SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT: Eight people have expressed an interest in forming a West Side prayer group, and a prayer group meeting has begun on the East Side. For more information about these and other small Christian communities, call Ron McComas at 382-3557. Sister Mary Francis Duffy will present at the next speaker series meeting on April 10 in the school hall.

MEMBERSHIP: Recommitment forms not picked up by March 31 will be mailed. Completed forms can be returned to the Rectory, placed in the collection basket, or turned in at the Community information table. Please return these forms before the April 28 general Community meeting. It is hoped that the new roster will be available in June.

SOCIAL ACTION: On May 1, a forum will be held at the Center at 7:30 p.m., entitled, "Community Building or Community Destruction: Welfare Reform 1996 —-- Where Do We Stand? What Can We Do?" The next Social Action Committee meeting will be April 17, 7:30 p.m. at Pat Forkas’, 1017 Wilbert Ave., Lakewood.

CHRISTIAN FORMATION: First Communion will take place during the 11 a.m. Liturgy on Sunday May 5. Watch for announcements for a new Liturgy of the Word program for children, which is envisioned to start this fall. Please note the Christian Formation enrollment form included with the annual recommitment form. Turning this form in as soon as possible with your recommitment form allows for discounts when new books are ordered for the fall. Checks can be made out to the Community of St. Malachi, however please put it in the recommitment envelope or a separate envelope with the Christian Formation enrollment form. You also can clearly delineate the check for Christian Formation on the memo line. If you have not paid for Christian Formation for ’95-’96, this would be a good time to do so. Call Barb Wingenfeld at 221-6722 or Karen Duffy at 331-5289 with any questions.

COMMUNICATIONS: We are currently looking for an editor for the Page One/News Briefs section of the newsletter. Word processing and layout skills are desirable, although the job has been done on a typewriter. Call John Lucic at 221-5017 for more details.

PRESIDENT’S REPORT: Central West District news: Fr. Dave Fallon and the Cristo Rey Community have raised $500,000 for a new church, which will bring an important sense of identity for the Hispanic community. Paul Kunkel will give a slide presentation about his experiences during his recent trip to El Salvador, to be scheduled after Easter.

PASTOR’S REPORT: Fr. Jim O’Donnell will be celebrating his 40th ordination anniversary on Sunday, May 19, at 3 p.m. at St. Malachi’s. The Chrism Mass, at which all the holy oils used throughout the diocese are blessed, will be Tuesday, April 2, at 7 p.m., at St. John Cathedral. Fr. J. Glenn Murray will be the second "St. Malachi Pentecost" speaker on Wednesday, May 15.

OTHER: Council continues to work on a draft procedure for the response to requests for funding by charitable organizations. Council will not hold a regular meeting in April. Instead the annual Community meeting will follow the 11 a.m. Liturgy on April 28.

THE COMMUNITY OF ST. MALACHI is a lay-directed, non-territorial personal parish of the Diocese of Cleveland. Although separate from the Parish of St. Malachi, we join together for many worthwhile activities. All are welcome to worship at the 11:00 a.m. Community liturgy on Sunday. Community members are expected to actively contribute of their time, talent and treasure.