The Rev. Dr. John Joseph Mastandrea
The Rev. Dr. John Joseph Mastandrea became minister of spiritual growth and pastoral care development at Metropolitan United in 2000. John Joseph cut his teeth in the Etobicoke area of Toronto and now resides in Cabbagetown, he is "connected with the urban landscape, with the internal and eternal song."
He has Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, Master of Divinity, Master of Religious Education, Master of Arts and Ministry of Spirituality degrees , all from the University of Toronto. John Joseph completed his Doctorate from Chicago Theological Seminary, May 2009. Ordained in 1989, he is a certified Labyrinth Facilitator, Stephen Leader, and Spiritual Director following in the footsteps of Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Avila. John Joseph believes in nurturing body, mind and spirit. Monday to Friday at the local gymn, reading and meditating daily weaves three key components of life. Nurture for self to nurture for others. This is the credo he lives by. John Joseph is a Christian Mystic who lives by these words.
“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.” Henri Nouwen
John Joseph has served congregations from the Maritimes, Saskatchewan, northern Ontario and rural Quebec to urban and suburban parts of the Greater Toronto Area.
John Joseph's volunteer work for the church and community includes: Chairperson of the Toronto South East Presbytery Pastoral Relations Commission, membership in the Toronto Area Interfaith Council, Police Chaplin to 51 Division, Membership in the Toronto Rotary, Chair Person the Toronto Rotary Community Services Committee and Chair of the World Aids Concert Committee a benefit for Casey House. Volunteer ministry has included positions as chairperson of the Worship and Liturgy Committee of Toronto Conference for four years, chairperson of the Mission Committee of Toronto South Presbytery, chairperson of the Planning and Development Committee and co-chairperson of the Christian Development Committee in York Presbytery north of Toronto, chairperson of the AIDS Committee of York Region since 1998, and member of the Pastoral Care Committee of York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill. He represented Canada as a delegate to the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland, in February 1990.
Today John Joseph seeks to meet people where they are and build the capacity for relations between people in a diverse spectrum of society.
Dr. Mastandrea's Thesis: 
Mastandrea - Even The Rocks Will Cry Out (2.6 MB)
Jul 11
It is mid-summertime and the hour has arrived to curl up to one of my favourite author’s C.S. Lewis or Jack as so many fondly called him. Jack has written adventure, theology, spirituality and volumes of meaty poetry here is one.
After my prayers lie cold
Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.
Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness' and pardon's watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.
We have striven Enough
Midsummer tragedy is abundance as we the world lament.
In the past week we have witnessed the Scandal of Rupert Murdoch
The Man Who Owns the News, is to appreciate how intensely the media overlord lives for the fight: whether breaking the British newspaper unions in the mid-1980s, taking over and remaking the broadsheet Times of London into his own tabloid image, leveraging his company to the brink of bankruptcy, or bullying his way into buying The Wall Street Journal in 2007. Mr. Wolff, who received unprecedented access to Mr. Murdoch while researching his book, has become the go-to guy for decoding the goings-on at battle-scarred News Corp. Mr. Murdoch's past skirmishes offer clues to his modus operandi in the current crisis.
We have striven Enough
Turning our eyes to the African Continent. The United Nations has declared famine in parts of southern Somalia, signalling to donors the need for more aid and to insurgents that the population’s suffering is taken seriously.
The causes
High food prices and the driest years in decades have pushed many poor families into desperate need. In the Bay and Lower Shabelle regions, Somalia’s traditional breadbaskets, nearly 11 per cent of children under five had severe acute malnutrition.
We have striven Enough
Further still across the ocean in Norway. Norway’s peace was shattered twice Friday when a bomb ripped open buildings in the heart of its government and a man dressed as a police officer gunned down youths at a summer camp. Police say at least 80 people were killed at the youth camp shooting.
Police initially said about 10 were killed at the forested camp on the island of Utoya, but some survivors said they thought the toll was much higher. Police director Oystein Maeland told reporters early Saturday they had discovered many more victims.
We have striven Enough
Closer to home my brother-in-law Robert Calkins has died after a three battle with CancerLeaving behind two daughters age 14 and 10 and his wife Mary. There is likely not a person a live who has not been touched by cancer, through family and friends.
We have striven Enough
It was Leo Tolstoy who rocked the world with his ideas on Social Reform.
Tolstoy is known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth
Tolstoy writes:
But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906.
We have striven Enough
The kingdom of God is within you. This mid-summer time is the invitation and look inside to connect with the outside and find the healing hand comes with the sacred vocation to hear the call to act. Now is the time to be the hand of healing in our world.