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Archbishop Henning's Advent Message: Recover the Practice of Friday Penance Throughout the Year

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 02:06:31 GMT

In a recent message to his priests, our Archbishop has encouraged the return to the devout practice of Friday penance throughout the year.

Advent 2025

When I was only two years of age, the American Bishops removed the requirement that Catholics abstain from meat on the Fridays outside the Lenten season. At the time, the Bishops reminded the faithful that Fridays remained a penitential day and that if the faithful should choose not to abstain, they should nonetheless adopt some form of penitential practice. Unfortunately, that element of the bishops' message was not widely received.

I would like to propose that we together use the Season of Advent to catechize the faithful of Boston to the penitential aspect of all Fridays and that we encourage them to observe the day of the Lord's own sacrifice with some element of penance such as abstaining from some food or activity, fasting, doing some work or act of charity, or spending time in prayer.

This call to the faithful would be far more powerful if we ourselves as ministers of the Gospel were to pledge that we would chose voluntarily to abstain from meat on the Fridays of this coming year of grace. I am prepared to make such a pledge myself, but it would be a more powerful witness if we made such a commitment together.

I am imagining that we use church bulletins, pastors columns, and homilies to highlight penance and sacrifice during the season of advent as a way of preparing our hearts for the coming of the Lord. I would address the matter to the faithful as well. If you look at the readings for the First Sunday of Advent, they provide opportunities to speak about penance and the summons to master our appetites and do the will of God.

Centenary of the Feast of Christ the King: 1925-2025

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 19:00:58 GMT

This year’s Feast of Christ the King marks the 100th Anniversary of the institution of this liturgical feast by Pope Pius XI during the Jubilee Year of 1925. The purpose of the feast was to draw attention to the Social Kingship of Christ and to re-assert it against the modernist errors which were seeking to push religious life out of the business of human society and relegate it to the purely private spiritual domain. This situation has only gotten worse over the last century.

In his Encyclical Quas primas explaining the purpose of a new feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius XI wrote:
To repair the crime of lesedivinity, which denies God’s rights over the human society whose Author He is, we must exalt Jesus Christ as King over all individuals, families, and peoples. If His universal royalty be proclaimed and His reign in society recognized, one of the principal evils of the modern world—the secularizing of public and private life—will be attacked at its roots.

Historical Note: Aug. 24, A.D. 410 - The Sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 23:40:33 GMT

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The Miracle of the Finding of the Body of St. Stephen, Protomartyr

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 04:32:47 GMT

“The divine intention in surrounding the Fall of Rome in 410, with discoveries of Saints’ bodies was clearly manifested in the most in the most important of these discoveries, the one we celebrate today, August 3rd. The Year 415 had opened. Italy, Gaul, and Spain were being invaded; Africa was about to share their fate. Amidst the universal ruin the Christians, in whom alone resided the hope of the world, put up their petitions at every sanctuary to obtain at least, according to the expression of the Spanish priest Avitus, ‘that the Lord would inspire with gentleness those whom He suffered to prevail.’ It was then that took place that marvelous revelation which the severe critic Tillemont, convinced by the testimony of all the chronicles, histories, letters, and discourses of the time, allows to be ‘one of the most celebrated events of the Fifth Century A.D.’

Through the intermediary of the priest Lucian, John, Bishop of Jerusalem, received from St. Stephen the first martyr and his companions in the tomb a message couched in these terms: ‘Make haste to open our sepulchre, that by our means God may open to the world the door of His clemency, and may take pity on His people in the universal tribulation.’ The discovery, accomplished in the midst of prodigies, was published to the whole world as the sign of Salvation. St. Stephen’s relics, scattered everywhere in token of security and peace, wrought astonishing conversions, innumerable miracles, ‘like those of ancient times,’ bore witness to the same faith of Christ which the Martyr had confessed by his death four centuries earlier. Such was the extraordinary character of this manifestation, so astonishing was the number of resurrections from the dead, that St. Augustine, addressing his people, deemed it prudent to lift their thoughts from Stephen the servant to Christ the Master. ‘Though dead,’ said he, ‘he raises the dead to life, because in reality he is not dead. But as heretofore in his mortal life, so now too, he acts solely in the name of Christ; all that you see now done by the memory of Stephen is done in that Name alone, that Christ may be exalted. Christ may be adored, Christ may be expected as Judge of the living and the dead.”

—Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year

The three companions found buried together with St. Stephen: Nicodemus, who had come secretly to Jesus (John 3), Gamaliel, the grandson of the great Rabbi Hillel, who had defended the Apostles before the Sanhedrin (Acts of the Apostles 5:3439), and Gamaliel’s son Abibo

The Solemn Te Deum on Trinity Sunday

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:36:18 GMT

The singing of the Solemn Te Deum on Trinity Sunday, as we are doing at our 9 AM and 11 AM Masses, is a way of expressing our praise and thanks to God on this Feast which celebrates the Trinitarian Mystery of God as He is in Himself: a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Being. We praise God for His Excellence and we thank God for all of His many gifts and benefits to us, even as we are aware that we can never, ever praise or thank Him enough.

The Te Deum is also known as the Ambrosian Hymn , as it is attributed to the composition of St. Ambrose (+397). Let us be drawn in to the mystery of these great phrases: Te Deum laudamus … We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord: all the earth doth worship Thee: the Father Everlasting. To Thee all Angels cry aloud: The Heavens and all the Powers therein. To Thee all the Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry. Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth.

Parish Lenten Mission Conference I: "The Land of the Angels"

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 04:01:40 GMT

Our Sermon Series for this year’s Parish Lenten Mission is entitled: “Themes in English Catholicism: From the Mission of Saint Augustine of Canterbury to the Elizabethan Settlement, 597-1564 A.D.”

The Catholic Religion is a universal religionone and the same for everyone–but it also has its peculiarities and varying textures as it finds itself accepted into the hearts of the world’s diverse peoples. The Catholic Religion “inculturates” it self, we may say, in its mission. This does not mean that it dilutes itself nor that mixes-in with already existing religions or spiritual understandings to become a hybrid, for it does neither. What it does is it plants itself adaptively, and then when a new place receives the Gospel the people there forge something freshly new in the life of Catholic Christianity.

So it was with the conversion of Britannia in the Seventh Century of our Christian era A.D. There emerged from that evangelization a distinctive “English Catholicism” of which we American Catholics are very much the inheritors, although we hardly think of ourselves as such!

We begin our story with the Mission of St. Augustine in the year 597 A.D. This is a different St. Augustine than the St. Augustine of the “Confessions” and the son of St. Monica. That St. Augustine of Hippo was from Roman Africa. He died in 430 A.D. Our St. Augustine here is the one known as St. Augustine of Canterbury, England.

Back in 410 A.D., Rome had abandoned its territory of Britannia, under the pressures of external enemies and internal collapse. In short order the Romano-British world was destroyed. Invaders from Scandinavia and Germany drove the British west, towards Wales and Cornwall. There were new kingdoms now of these heathen barbarian tribes over most of Britain: the Kingdoms of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.

One day in Rome, Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great), was struck by the sight of fair-haired war captives in the Roman slave-market. When he asked who these foreigners were, he was told that they were Angles. Then the Pope made a prediction: that one day these “Angles” would become “Angels”.

For the new mission to conquered Britannia, Pope Gregory turned to the Benedictine monastery of St. Andrew on the Coelian Hill at Rome, wherein he, Gregory, had once been a monk. He commissioned the Prior–Augustine–and forty of the monks to go to preach the Gospel in Britannia. The year was 596 A.D.

The missionaries set out as far as Provence in the south of France. Hearing of what fate likely awaited them among these fierce peoples and the dangers of crossing the Channel they tried to turn back, but Pope Gregory insisted they go on. He would not let them return.

After securing interpreters from among the Franks, Augustine and his missionary band landed on the Isle of Thanet off the coast of Kent, where the barbarian King Ethelbert ruled.

They disembarked, carrying a silver cross as their standard and a painting of Jesus Savior. They sent word to the King of their arrival and their purpose in coming. In reply he ordered them to stay where they were.

After a few days he came to Thanet and gave them audience. The King insisted they meet in the open. (He was afraid that these foreign wizards might use spells on him, which, he reasoned, could not work in the open air.) The King then sat under an oak tree. Augustine, through his interpreter, began to speak. Ethelbert, favorably touched, gave them leave to preach to his people and convert whom they could. But for himself, he was not ready to abandon all that he held sacred.

That was the opening the Holy Ghost needed. It was on Pentecost of the Year 597 that King Ethelbert and many of his nobles received Baptism at the hands of Augustine. Then on Christmas Day of that same Year, Augustine baptized upwards of 10,000 Angles in a river near York.

The prediction of Pope Gregory thus turned out to be a prophecy. The “Angles”, receiving the Christian Gospel, were indeed becoming “Angels”, so much so that this transformation has been marked ever since by the new country name given to Britannia. That name we know so well is “England”, which is an abbreviation of “Engelland”–or, to use modern English: “Angel-land”.

The Pleading of the Ninevites

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 05:03:53 GMT

Two weeks before the beginning of Lent the Iraqi Chaldean Catholic Mission here at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes observes a particular tradition of theirs called “Bautha”—the “Pleading of the Ninevites”. (This year, February 10th-12th) The “Bautha” is a three-day hard fast, followed on the fourth day by a thanksgiving feast. It commemorates the three days during which the Prophet Jonah lay trapped in the belly of the whale before he was spit out. He than proceeded to the heathen city of Nineveh to preach the warning of imminent destruction by God for their sins, unless they repented, which, in the event, they did. The city of Nineveh was spared.

The Christian religious fast then combines the memory of the suffocating imprisonment of Jonah with the repentance of the people. As many of you will recall, the Christian heartland in Muslim Iraq remained in the northern part of the country on the Nineveh plain. The tomb of the Prophet Jonah, revered by Christians but also by many Muslims, was preserved in the modern-day city of Mosul. The ISIS conquest of Mosul and the Nineveh plain in 2014 destroyed it. The Chaldean Christians in exile, however, keep alive their tradition.

The memory of Jonah in the whale and the Pleading of the Ninevites has a wider, universal application to Christians of all rites and traditions. Our Lord explicitly compares the “Sign of Jonas” to His own Death and Resurrection.

“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the Prophet. For as Jonas was in the whale’s belly three days and three nights: so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” (Matthew 12:39-40)
The week after next we shall be beginning our Lent by receiving the mark of the Ashes on our foreheads. (Ash Wednesday is March 5th.) The Pleading of the Ninevites is a perfect image for us of the spirit of Lent. A Christianity without a vigorous awareness of sin and the effects of sin is but a soft-soaped, knock-off version of itself. Beware of any Christian spirituality which would leave you complacently in your sins rather than challenging you to take on the hard personal work of really becoming a Christian!

The Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate at Lourdes: 1858

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 03:34:30 GMT

In the Year 1858, a 14 year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous, from the Pyrenean mountain town of Lourdes, received 18 APPARITIONS of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Blessed Virgin appeared to her in the cleft of a great rock known to the local people as the “Massabielle”. Bernadette received a total of 18 Apparitions. The first occurred on February 11th which has since become the Feast-day of Our Lady of Lourdes. That year it was the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Shrovetide.
According to the Liturgical Calendar of that Year, the Apparitions corresponded to the following days:
First Apparition: Thursday of Shrovetide
2nd Apparition: Shrove Sunday
3rd Apparition: Thursday after Ash Wed.
Apparitions 4-15, “The Fortnight” — From Friday after Ash to Thursday of the Second Week in Lent.
Apparition 16: March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation. Also, that year: Thursday in Passion Week.
17th Apparition: Easter Wednesday
18th Apparition: July 16th (Mt. Carmel)

THE TWO GREAT SIGNS GIVEN TO THE WORLD AT LOURDES:
THE FIRST SIGN: THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF THE FRESH SPRING OF WATER OUT OF THE SIDE OF THE GREAT ROCK OF THE MASSABIELLE, FEBRUARY 25th, at the NINTH APPARITION, A CLEAR SYMBOL OF THE WATER FLOWING FROM CHRIST’S SIDE ON THE CROSS AND THE BAPTISMAL REGENERATION.
THE SECOND SIGN: MARY IDENTIFIES HERSELF WITH HER SINGULAR PRIVILEGE OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. SHE SAID TO BERNADETTE: “I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”. THIS OCCURRED AT THE 16th APPARITION, ON THE FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION ITSELF, MARCH 25th. THE MYSTERY OF MARY’S FULLNESS
OF GRACE IS INDICATED IN THE ANGEL GABRIEL’S GREETING: “HAIL, FULL OF GRACE, THE LORD IS WITH THEE.”

Good Counsel From St Francis de Sales as We Begin the New Year 2025

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 04:33:08 GMT

Prayer of Saint Francis de Sales:

Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow. The same everlasting Father who takes care of you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations and say continually, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped. He is not only with me, but in me, and I in Him.”

St. Gregory the Wonderworker and the Faith that Moves Mountains

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 03:06:56 GMT

In the life of St. Gregory the Wonderworker (+270) we have the example of a Saint who fulfilled Christ’s words of the Gospel in a literal way: “ Amen I say to you that whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed and be cast into the sea and shall not stagger in his heart, but believe that whatsoever he saith shall be done: it shall be done unto him. (Mark 11:23)

St. Gregory, the Bishop of Neocaesarea, performed great signs and wonders in the Name of Christ. As we read in the Roman Breviary:

By his prayer he removed a mountain which was an obstacle to the building of a church. He also dried up a lake which was a cause of dissension between brothers. The River Lycus, which was inundating and devastating the fields, he restrained by fixing in the bank his stick, which immediately grew into a green tree, and served as the limit which the river henceforth never overpassed.

The most powerful effect of St. Gregory’s prayers, however, was the graces of conversion for his city which he obtained:
When he was dying, he asked how many infidels remained in the city of Neocaesarea: and on being informed that there were only seventeen, he gave thanks to God, and said: When I was made bishop, there were but seventeen believers.
Indeed for anyone at all to be truly converted to Christ is the equivalent of a mountain being moved. And yet it does happens. May we be good instruments by prayer and good example.

The Mass of All Holy Relics

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:59:00 GMT

During All Saintstide there is a Mass which may be said: F east Of The Holy Relics Preserved In The Churches Of The Diocese,or, All Holy Relics . This Mass draw our attention to the Mystery of the Resurrection. The relics of the Saints—fragments of their bones, ashes, clothes, or other objects used by them—yet “ work wonders on earth.” Just as divine power emanated from Christ and worked miracles for people, even if they so much as touched the hem of His Garments, so Christ in His Church continues to heal and work wonders through the relics of His Saints. These relics “ exorcise devils, heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, cleanse lepers, drive away temptations and bestow on all the excellent gifts which come from the Father of Light.” (Lessons of the Second Nocturn at Matins for the Feast of All Holy Relics)

This mysterious divine power of relics is a pledge to us of the future Resurrection. If God can work through their ashes here and now, how can He not also bring this dust back into a glorified, resurrected body on the Last Day?

The early Christians had the spiritual intuition to connect the remains of the martyrs with the Sacrifice of the Mass. This is why Mass was celebrated near the tombs of the martyrs in the Catacombs “ in order to show that these Saints had mixed their blood with that of the Victim of Calvary.” (Vespers Antiphon)

After the Persecutions had ended the beautiful churches erected served as vast reliquaries to preserve the tombs of celebrated martyrs. The remains of those who had confessed their faith were placed under the Church’s High Altar, in the Conf essio . (For example, in St. Peter’s Basilica, the main altar is over the tomb of Peter. It is the Confession of St. Peter.)

Related to this is the custom of placing martyrs’ relics in a small cavity of the altar stone called the “sepulchre” in the ceremony of the Dedication of a new Church. I can find no information on which particular martyrs’ relics are placed in the sepulchers of our parish altar stones, but we know that they are there. We also have our other visible reliquaries on the reredos over our High Altar. May the regular sight of them stir us to thoughts of Heaven and the Resurrection of the Body.

Prayers for Our New Archbishop

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 19:39:14 GMT

Thursday of this week, the Vigil of All Saints (All Hallows’ E’en) our new Archbishop, His Excellency Richard Henning formally takes possession of his Episcopal See of Boston with a Mass of Installation at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. This is an event of great significance for us as we receive our new Chief Shepherd. Our Thursday evening Mass at 5:30 PM will be offered for Archbishop Henning’s special intention.

Rosary Sunday

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 04:53:18 GMT

Today we are observing theFeast of Our Lady of the Rosary as an “External Solemnity”. (The actual Feast-day is October 7th.) The Feast has its origins as a Feast of Thanksgiving for the deliverance of Christendom from an Ottoman Turk invasion by sea. As we read in the summary from Dom Guéranger’s Liturgical Year:

The Turkish fleet had already mastered the greater part of the Mediterranean, and was threatening Italy, when, on October 7th, 1571, it came into action, in the Gulf of Lepanto with the pontifical galleys supported by the fleets of Spain and Venice. It was Sunday: throughout the world the Confraternities of the Rosary were engaged in their work of intercession. Supernaturally enlightened, St. Pius V watched from the Vatican the battle undertaken by the leader he had chosen, Don Juan of Austria, against the three-hundred vessels of Islam. The illustrious Pontiff, whose life’s work was now completed, did not survive to celebrate the anniversary of the triumph; but he perpetuated the memory of it by an annual commemoration of Our Lady of Victory. His successor, Gregory XIII, altered this title to Our Lady of the Rosary, and appointed the first Sunday of October for the new feast …

It is to be emphasized here that the spectacular victory of the under-dog Christian navy against the invader was, on the higher, spiritual plane, a gratuitous gift of the Divine Mercy in answer to the earnest prayer of faith and so it was recognized by the people of that day. It was not in any way a matter of the Rosary as “spellcasting”, as if large numbers of people praying the same prayer could have generated a forcefield of energy to achieve the desired result. Our prayers, in and of themselves, are nothing. It is rather God compassionating our prayers that makes the difference. The clearer we are on this distinction, the stronger our prayer life will be and the greater our gratitude to God.

Michael Archangel

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 04:35:32 GMT

The Feast of St. Michael Archangel, also known as “Michaelmas” (Michael + Mass), is our gateway into the Mystery of the Holy Angels in God’s Plan of Redemption. In addition to being the Month of the Rosary, October is also the Month of the Holy Angels. October 2nd is the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

The two kinds of creatures of highest intelligence God created are Angels and Men (human beings). The Angels are pure spirits, of higher intelligence than us. We men are hybrids, with spiritual souls and physical bodies. In the beginning of creation, some of these pure spirits rebelled against God. “There was war in Heaven.” (Apoc. 12:7) The faithful Angels, led by Michael, “fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels. And they prevailed not: neither was their place found anymore in Heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world. And he was cast unto the earth: and his angels were thrown down with him.” (ibid, vv. 7b-9)

As best we can understand it from the content of Divine Revelation, Satan had some claim on divine justice to try to seduce the human creatures into sin, which, in the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, he succeeded in doing. When Christ comes into the world as the Man-God, we see Him doing battle with Satan, as He must do if He is to be truly the Second Adam.

The Victory of Christ’s Cross is complete and irreversible over Satan’s power and his “right-of-conquest”, which he was holding over the sinful earth with the purest malice. All that is left to defeated Satan now until the Second Coming of Christ is to fight a “rear-guard” action by trying to snatch human souls who will perversely reject the graces offered them for salvation to the very last moment when death separates their immortal souls from their mortal bodies. This is what is meant by the phrase “final damnation”. Of all the evils in the world, the only absolute one for us is that one: final damnation.
We most definitely have need then of St. Michael, the “Prince of the Heavenly Host”, and all the good angels to come to our aid against the “wickedness and the snares of the Devil.” Let us give praise and thanks to God today for the ministry of His Angels!

The Nativity of Mary and the Blessing of Seeds and Seedlings

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 04:41:12 GMT

Today on the Nativity of Our Lady we will offer the Blessing of Seeds and Seedlings at the end of Mass. We will repeat this Blessing on Saturday morning, September 14th, at the end of our 9 AM Mass for anyone who was not prepared for the blessing of their seeds for planting today. It is a beautiful Ritual Blessing which beseeches God, as the “Sower and Tiller of the heavenly world” to “cultivate the field of our hearts with heavenly tools, hearken to our prayers, and pour forth bountiful blessings upon the fields in which these seeds will be sown. By Thy protecting Hand turn away the fury of the elements, so that this entire fruit may be filled with Thy blessing and may be gathered without hindrance into the granary.”

Assumptiontide and the Blessing of First-Fruits

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 06:13:49 GMT

With the celebration of Our Lady’s Assumption we reach the high-point of our Catholic summer. At the Assumption Day Masses on August 15th we had the Blessing of the FirstFruits associated with this Feast-day. The texts of these prayers are particularly beautiful and fill the natural world with a heightened sense of God’s higher power of grace enfolding us. I quote sections of these prayers from the Roman Ritual:

O GOD, by Moses, Thy servant Thou didst command the children of Israel to carry their sheaves of new grain to the priests for a blessing, to pluck the finest fruits of the orchards, and to make merry before Thee, the Lord their God. Hear Thou our supplications, and bestow blessings in abundance upon us and upon these bundles of new grain, new herbs, and this assortment of produce which we gratefully present to Thee on this festival— blessing them in Thy Name … Through the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary whose Assumption we celebrate, may we likewise, laden with sheaves of good works, deserve to be lifted up to Heaven … O GOD, Who on this day hast raised up to heavenly heights the rod of Jesse, the Mother of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord, that through her prayers and patronage Thou mightiest communicate to our mortal nature the Fruit of her womb, Thy same Son; we pray that we may use these fruits of the soil for our temporal and eternal welfare— the power of Thy Son and the patronage of His glorious Mother assisting us. Through the same Jesus Christ, Thy So, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever Amen. And may the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost come upon these creatures and remain for all time. Amen.

A New Archbishop for Boston

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 16:27:44 GMT

This past week we learned who will be our next Archbishop. It will be His Excellency Richard G. Henning, the current Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island. According to the Announcement made at the beginning of the week His Excellency will be formally installed as Archbishop of Boston on October 31st, the Vigil of All Saints. The era of Cardinal Sean’s stewardship will draw to its peaceful close and a new era for the life of our local church will begin. We want to make sure to do our part to welcome our new Archbishop and support him in the office of great responsibility which Pope Francis has placed upon him. Archbishop Henning’s Coat-of-Arms takes the motto Put Out Into The Deep . These words are taken from the Gospel scene where Christ commands Simon Peter to “launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught” (Luke 5:4) . Peter is reluctant to do so.

“And Simon answering said to Him; Master we have labored all the night and have taken nothing: but at Thy word I will let down the net. And when they had done this, they enclosed a very great multitude of fishes and their net broke. And they beckoned to their partners that were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came and filled both the ships, so that they were almost sinking. Which when Simon Peter saw, he fell down at Jesus’ knees saying: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was wholly astonished, and all that we with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken. And so were also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners. And Jesus saith to Simon: Fear not: from henceforth thou shalt be a fisher of men. And having brought their ships to land, leaving all things, they followed Him.” (Luke 5:5-11)

Careful Speech About the Holy Eucharist

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 06:41:39 GMT

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"An Open Letter From the Americas to Pope Francis"

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 04:44:13 GMT

On Monday, July 15th, amidst the rumors that Pope Francis was on the point of issuing new restrictions upon the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, an open letter was published, signed by a group of prominent cultural and intellectual personalities in the United States, both Catholics and nonCatholics. The Letter was entitled: An Open Letter from the Americas to Pope Francis.

The Letter was a plea for the Mass as a part of the patrimony of human civilization:
We come to you with humility and obedience but also the confidence of children, telling a loving father of our spiritual needs … To deprive the next generation of artists of this source of mystery, beauty and contemplation of the sacred seems short-sighted … All of us, believers and non-believers alike, recognize that this ancient liturgy, which inspired the works of Palestrina, Bach, and Beethoven and generations of great artists, is a magnificent achievement of civilization and part of the common cultural heritage of humanity. It is medicine for the soul, one antidote to the gross materialism of the postmodern age.
The “Open Letter” was organized by the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia. Among other signatories: Morten Lauridsen, composer (“O Magnum Mysterium”, “Les Chansons des Rose”, “MidWinter Songs”) , Nina Shea (international religious freedom advocate), composer Frank LaRocca (Mass of the Americas), David Conte (Chair and Professor of Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music), Larry Chapp (theologian and founder of Dorothy Day Workers’ Farm), Eduardo Verástegui (film producer and actor), and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan.
Their plea to Pope Francis: “[That] no further restrictions be placed on the Traditional Latin Mass so that it may be preserved for the good of the Catholic Church and of the world.”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco singled out this Open Letter for praise on his social media account. A week earlier, in an essay published in the National Catholic Register , His Excellency said that the beauty of the Latin Mass in an important part of the Church’s ministry in “a de-Christianized age that is becoming increasingly inhospitable to any traditional sense of religion.”
The Second Vatican Council sought to “read the signs of the times.” “One sign staring at us right now in large block letters is: BEAUTY EVANGELIZES.”
“We live in an age when we need to leverage the power of beauty to touch minds, hearts, and souls for beauty has the quality of an inescapably real experience, one that is not subject to argument … In an age of anxiety and unreason, beauty is thus a largely untapped resource for reaching people, especially young people, with the Gospel message of hope.”

"Lily of the Mohawks"

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 05:11:31 GMT

On the Calendar of Saints for today we commemorate the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (+1680), who was raised to the altars by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. She is the first Native American so honored and therefore has a special pride-of-place for American sanctity.

Kateri’s mother was a Christian Algonquin who had become enslaved by the Mohawks in a warraid. Her father was the Mohawk Chief Great Beaver who had made the captive-slave his wife. Her parents died from a small-pox epidemic which swept the village when she was a very little girl and she was raised by her father’s family.

When Kateri was eleven Jesuit missionary priests—“blackrobes”— were allowed into the Mohawk village to minister to the Christian Indian captives. In 1675, circumstances converged to make it possible for Kateri to become a catechumen and she was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676.

In the eyes of her father’s family this was a betrayal and they persecuted her with great cruelty:

Because she found joy in her freedom to live her Christian religion Kateri’s aunts became jealous of her happiness. They would never call her by her Christian name (Kateri = Catherine), and when she tried to observe the Lord’s Day by not doing any servile work, the aunts refused to share their food with her. Kateri remained firm in her resolve though each succeeding Sunday meant a fast day. Since the aunts did not achieve their aim in breaking Kateri’s determination the resorted to new forms of persecution—scolding her and finding fault with all that she did, criticizing and insulting her as well as making her do all the household chores. In all this Kateri never complained. The non-Christian villagers soon began to imitate the aunts in ridiculing her and spitting upon her, and even young braves were told to lie in wait and threaten to kill her if she did not abandon her Christian faith. Kateri realized the purpose of this harassment and bravely bore the humiliations. (Portraits in American Sanctity, ed. By Joseph N. Tylenda, S.J., Franciscan Herald Press, 1982 A.D.)
In August, 1677, Kateri was spirited away to refuge with other Christian Mohawks in a Christian Indian “prayer village” near Montreal. The Jesuit missionary priest sent with her a letter of introduction to her new director:
Kateri Tekakwitha now comes to join your community. Granting her your spiritual guidance and direction, you will soon realize what a jewel we have sent you. Her soul is very close to the Lord. May she progress from day to day in virtue and holiness of life, to the honor and glory of God.
Although it was the practice not to allow Indian converts First Communion until they had given sufficient proof that they were sincere about living a Christian life, Kateri was allowed to receive the Holy Eucharist barely a year after her Baptism. She made her First Communion at Christmas Midnight Mass, 1677.
Kateri had a great desire to live like the French nuns she met at Ville-Marie (the original name of Montreal) and dedicate her life to caring for the sick. When it came time for the winter hunt pf 1679 she stayed behind at camp to care for the sick and elderly as if she were a French nun.
Her own health, however, failed her and after receiving the Sacraments, she died on Wednesday of Holy Week, 1680. She was 24 years old.
In 1715, only 25 years after her death, her missionary Spiritual Director Père Cholenc wrote the following:
All the French living in these colonies as well as the Indians have a singular veneration for her. They come from far off to pray at her tomb and several through her mediation have been cured of their illnesses, and have received from heaven other wonderful favors.
Devotion to Kateri, known as the Lily of the Mohawks , spread throughout the United States and Canada. As early as 1884, the American Bishops petitioned Rome to consider her cause for canonization. This petition was renewed by the Bishop of Albany, New York, in 1922. Pope Pius XII, in 1943, approved the decree declaring Kateri Tekakwitha “Venerable”. During the 300th Anniversary Year of her death, 1980, John Paul II beatified her. Then in October, 2012, in what would be the last canonizations of his Pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI raised Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks, to the altars.

On the 80th Anniversary Commemorations of D-Day

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 01:55:47 GMT

In the wake of the very moving commemorations of the D-Day landing of June 6th, 1944, I would like to highlight two aspects of memory which have come forth.

The first was expressed in the Houses of Worship essay, “God’s Place in D-Day’s Great Crusade” (Michael Snape, The Wall Street Journal, Friday, June 7th, 2024). C urrent-day cynicism and secularism have projected back an atmosphere of widespread religious indifference to the time of World War II. This is historical amnesia. That was not the reality of the time.

General Eisenhower’s order to the troops on the eve of D-Day “hailed the cross-channel invasion as a ‘Great Crusade’ and invoked ‘the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking’…”

And, “As news of the D-Day invasion spread, house of worship filled for services, perhaps ‘the greatest wave of mass intercession in history,’ as one magazine described it.”

“For our own generation, D-Day may seem to have scant connection with religion, beyond its lingering association with some terminology embarrassing to modern ears. Yet to many contemporaries, it marked a decisive moment in a life-or-death struggle between the JudeoChristian democracies of the West and the malignant pagan forces of Nazi Germany. The success of D-Day, like that of the Dunkirk evacuation four years earlier, was naturally and widely taken as providential.”

Also in The Wall Street Journal , there appeared on the 80th-anniversary day itself an essay about the 20th Anniversary documentary Dwight D. Eisenhower had done with Walter Cronkite, broadcast in June, 1964. (Rob Greene, “Ike Returns to Normandy”, June 6th, 2024.)

As described, Eisenhower is driving a jeep along the Normandy beach and he says to Cronkite: “You see these people out sailing in their pleasure boats, and you see them all along here. And the people have been swimming … taking advantage of the nice weather and the lovely beach. It is almost unreal to look at it today. There’s no smoke and fire and all the rest of it. It’s a wonderful thing. To remember this was what the fellows were fighting for, and sacrificing for. That these people could do this.”

For Eisenhower, to behold the ordinary pleasures of human life on a summer beach was a tangible fruit of victory. He knew how not to underestimate the value of the blessings of peace and the tranquility of order.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The end of all human endeavor is to be happy at home.” Let us not take for granted the blessings of such a post-war peace as we now still enjoy, 80 years on. And as we remember the war-dead and all of the veterans who returned but whose time is passing on, may we pray for wars to cease wherever they now rage around the globe, and may we pray with real fervor that petition we make after the Lord’s Prayer at Mass: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days …”

Blessed Carlo Acutis to be Raised to the Altars

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 04:24:39 GMT

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The Solemn Te Deum on Trinity Sunday

Mon, 27 May 2024 05:07:05 GMT

Reliquary Busts on the High Altar

I have had many questions about the four new statuettes which are now on the reredos above our high altar. They are “reliquary busts” with a small relic of the saint placed in it. The four new saints’ relics are of St. Francis de Sales (+1622), +St. Charles Borromeo (+1584), St. Philip Neri (+1595), and St. Cajetan/Gaetano (+1547). (N.B. Today, May 26th, is the Feast Day of St. Philip Neri.) The presence of relics near our altars is a cheering reminder of the communion we share with all of the blessed in Heaven even as we are still part of the timebound earth.

Rogation Processions

Sat, 04 May 2024 04:32:30 GMT

Thursday of this week, May 9th, is the Ascension of Our Lord. In anticipation of this triumphant entry into Heaven of the Risen Christ, we dedicate ourselves to the spirit of Rogation in these days of “Rogationtide”. This year we are going to offer the celebration of Rogationtide in full, holding a special Mass on Tuesday, May 7th, at 12:30 PM, as well as the regular parish daily Mass at 12:30 PM on Monday and Wednesday.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week we shall hold the Rogation Procession at 12:30 PM, followed by the offering of the Rogation Mass. Please join us in this communal petition for Divine Mercy. If you cannot join us in person please consider praying the Litany of the Saints privately on each of these three Rogation Days or of offering 5-decades of the Rosary.

Easter and the Sacraments of Christian Initiation

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 07:22:28 GMT

Three of the Seven Sacraments of the Church are known as the Sacraments of Christian Initiation . They are Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist. When an adult catechumen is baptized, the other two Sacraments of Christian Initiation should be part of that event. On Easter Eve at our Easter Vigil three of our new parishioners received Sacraments of Christian Initiation. Robin Anastasia Thérèse Hollins received all three as she was re-born in Baptism. Two other men were welcomed into full-Communion with the Catholic Church, having been baptized in Protestant churches. They received Confirmation and Holy Communion thus completing their Christian Initiation. Together with Robin we welcome Julian Pereira (Confirmation name: Thomas Aquinas) & Peter Bauer (Confirmation name: Louis Martin [the father of St. Thérèse]). These accompanying photos are of the Baptismal Regeneration part of the Easter Vigil Ceremony. Just prior to the Baptism and Confirmations, all received the sprinkling of the newly blessed Easter water, a symbol of our Baptism.

Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blassed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire: Conference VI: O Rex Orbis Triumphator

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 03:58:41 GMT

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Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blassed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire: Conference V: A Golden Age

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 06:31:22 GMT

Christmas Day, December 25th, 800 A.D., is one of the watershed dates in Western History. It was on this day that the Sovereign Pontiff and the Successor to St. Peter, Pope Leo III, crowned Charles the King of the Franks with the Crown of Imperial Rome and the people of Rome hailed him as “Augustus”. It had been 324 years—since 476 A.D.—that there had been a Roman Emperor for “Old Rome”.

And here we might stress how great a hold the idea of Imperial Rome still had on Latin Catholic Christianity after so many centuries. Pagan, persecuting Rome had become, by the mysterious Providence of God, Christian Rome.

And so we find in the writings of the Patristic Fathers of the Church the belief that it will be the definitive fall of the Roman Empire which willsignal the days of Anti-Christ: hence, the End-of-the-World and the Second Coming of Christ. But since the great Anti-Christ had not appeared and the world went on living, then that must mean that the Roman Empire lived on.

Tenuously, it could be maintained that the Roman Empire lived on in the “New Rome” of Constantinople to the East. Also, the residence of the Popes in Rome gave the Roman Pontiffs the stature of spiritual Emperors of the West. But it was the coronation of Charlemagne which made the continuation of the Roman Empire a concrete fact. Here at last was a Roman Emperor who realized the political unity of Christendom and who in his person actually acted to further the spread of the Gospel and more deeply Christianize the people under his sceptre’s rule. Charlemagne fit the role of a true Christian Emperor far better than Constantine ever had in the 4th Century A.D.

We might consider this work of Charlemagne from various aspects, but let us focus on this one: his love for the Church’s sacred music as it was practiced in Rome. He decreed that all of the clergy of his vast Empire should learn the Cantus Romanus.

“The sons of nobles of his empire and of his vassals were expected, by imperial command, to be instructed in grammar, music, and arithmetic, while the boys in the public schools were taught music and how to sing, especially the Psalms. The Emperor’s agents and representatives were everywhere ordered to watch over the faithful carrying out of his orders regarding music. He not only caused liturgical music to flourish in his time throughout his vast domain, but he laid the foundations for musical culture, which are still potent today.” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Charlemagne And Church Music”, A.D. 1908)

So much did he love the Gregorian chant that Charlemagne himself would participate in the chanting of the choir (although, as his biographer says, “in a subdued voice”. )

Another picture of him left by his contemporaries is the happiness he found in being with his children, joining in their sports, particularly in his own favorite sport of swimming.

When we think of how much the traditions which have come down to us from the Age of Christendom have to do with the gold-standard of a righteous and just King whose reign was a golden age of justice, honor, piety where the royal might would vindicate the good and punish the bad, and how much the return of that golden age is longed for in later evil days, then we can appreciate better the magnitude of Charlemagne’s influence on the whole of our civilizational ideals across the centuries. We might think, for example, as a point of comparison, of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece of story-telling, the Lord of the Rings.

Charlemagne died on January 28th, on the Second Feast of St. Agnes, in 814. He was in his 72nd year. He was buried in the octagonal Byzantine-Romanesque church at Aachen (French: Aix-la-Chapelle) which he had had built and decorated with marble columns from Rome and Ravenna.

In the great Jubilee year of 1000 A.D., 186 years after Charlemagne’s death, Otto III, who then wore the imperial crown, had Charlemagne’s tomb opened. There, they were struck by an awesome sight. Charlemagne was found as he had been buried, “sitting on a marble throne, robed and crowned as in life, the Book of the Gospels open on his knees.”

Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blassed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire: Conference IV: Carolus Augustus

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 05:01:47 GMT

At the end of our last Conference, we saw Charlemagne consecrated as “first champion” of the Catholic Church on Easter Day, 774 A.D. there at Rome, where he had delivered Pope Adrian and the Patrimony of Peter from the menace of the King of the Lombards. He had not used his immense military power to conquer Rome nor to make the Pope submit to him: rather he had made himself and his mighty force the sword and shield of the Church, ready to protect her against aggressors of any kind. Moreover, he had made himself the protector of the Roman Pontiff, as a loyal son of the Church.

After his consecration in Rome, for the next twenty years, Charlemagne’s life was one of continuous warfare. There were 53 distinct military campaigns, almost all of them in connection with his role as wielding the royal defensive sword on behalf of the Catholic Church. There were 18 campaigns against the heathen Saxons in Germany, who were trying to eradicate Christianity with violent attacks. It was not until 785 that Wittekind, the Saxon warrior-chief, acknowledged, in his utter defeat, that the God of the Christians was stronger than his god Odin. He submitted at last to Baptism, and it was Charlemagne who stood as his godfather.

In our very first Conference, we recounted Charlemagne’s siege of Mirambel Castle in the Pyrenees and the submission of the Muslim commander Mirat, who took the baptismal name Lorus, from which derives the town-name “Lourdes”. This was in the year 778, when Charlemagne had launched a campaign against the Muslim rulers of Spain.

During this campaign there occurred the ambush of the Franks at the Pass of Roncesvalles (Roncevaux) where Roland blew his horn to summon Charlemagne and the rest of the army to their rescue, even as they were fighting valiantly to their death. This is the inspiration for the famous medieval epic poem, the “Chanson de Roland” (the “Song of Roland).

On Christmas Day, 795, Pope Adrian I died, a man whom Charlemagne had revered as a spiritual father. The next day, December 26th, St. Stephen’s Day, on the very day in which Pope Adrian was buried, his successor was elected as Leo III. The new Pope immediately sent to Charlemagne the keys of the Confession of St. Peter and the standard of the city of Rome. In return, Charlemagne sent Leo a warm letter of regard and much treasure which enabled Leo to be a great benefactor to the churches and charitable institutions of Rome.

Sadly, the new Pope Leo was bitterly hated by many relatives of his predecessor Pope Adrian. On April 25th, 799, during the Procession of the Greater Litanies, the Pope was attacked by a body of armed men. They seized him, flung him to the ground, and tried to mutilate him by pulling out his tongue and gouging out his eyes. Panic ensued. People fled away. Leo was left unconscious and bleeding on the street for some time. At night he was rescued and hidden in a monastery. In a miraculous manner he recovered the full use of his tongue and eyes. He then escaped from the city and went to seek Charlemagne, who was in Paderborn, Germany. The King received him there with the greatest honor.

Charlemagne vindicated Pope Leo (whom the Church now honors as Pope St. Leo III). He had the Pope escorted back to Rome and re-installed, to the joy of the people and to the terror of his false accusers.

The next year (800 A.D.) Charlemagne himself came to Rome. On Christmas Day, at St. Peter’s, after the Gospel had been sung, Pope Leo approached Charlemagne, who was kneeling before the Confession of St. Peter, and placed the imperial crown upon his head. Then he did him the formal reverence after the manner of ancient Rome and saluted Charlemagne as both Emperor and Augustus. Finally he anointed him. The Roman people in the assembly burst into acclaim, three-times repeating: To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, to our great and pacific Emperor, life and victory!”

By this act on Christmas Day 800 A.D. the Roman Empire in the West was revived. Leo, Successor to Peter and Roman Pontiff, had declared that the whole world was now subject to one temporal head as Christ had made the world subject to one spiritual head. And the first duty of Carolus Augustus, the new Roman Emperor, was to be the faithful protector of Holy Roman Church and of Christendom itself against the heathen aggressor.

Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blassed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire: Conference III: The Christian Imperator of Rome

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 06:10:26 GMT

In the Sacred History of Israel in the Old Testament, the emergence of the ruddy youth David as the Lord’s Anointed is a pivotal event in the progressive unfolding of the Divine Plan of Redemption. As we read in the First Book of Kings, Samuel is sent by the Lord to Bethlehem, to the House of a man named Jesse in order to make a sacred anointing as king of the son whom the Lord had chosen. Finally, the 8thand last son of Jesse, David, is brought before Samuel: “Now [David] was ruddy and beautiful to behold, and of a comely face. And the Lord said: Arise and anoint him for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward...” (I Kings 16:12b-13a)

David is the Lord’s Anointed, the Messiah, who becomes the great heroic figure of Israel. And the Lord God makes him a promise that from his descendants shall come the long-foretold and long-awaited Great Messiah. David the Lord’s Anointed, the Ruler of Israel, is both Priest and King. He is the type and foreshadowing of his descendant Our Lord Jesus Christ who combines in His Person both Priesthood and Kingship.

After the Redemption, the Priesthood of Christ continues in the persons of His Apostles and their successors, the Bishops. But what of the Kingship of Christ? Is that to have no continuity on the earth? Or should Christians look for a sacred kingship to be found? Where shall the Church find the Righteous Sword to defend her rights and protect her against aggressors?

It is this element which is present in the sacred anointing of Pippin and his two sons Charles and Carloman by Pope Stephen III in 754. It is to this new Royal House from among the Frankish nation that the Holy See of Peter looks to provide its sword and shield amidst the ruins of the Roman Empire.

So many parallels there are between the boy-king David and the future Charlemagne. Charles/Charlemagne, anointed at 12 years-old, growing up since boyhood in the rigors of warfare alongside his father. Like David, he is heroic on the battlefield. Like David, he is blessed with qualities such as great personal attractiveness, and like David he is devoted to God and his religion.

In 768, Pippin divided his kingdom between his two royal sons shortly before he died. As David was betrayed by his son Absalom, so Charles was betrayed by his rivalrous younger brother Carloman, but by the death of this brother in 771, Charles inherited the whole of their father’s kingdom.

Pope Stephen died in 772 and his successor as Pope was Adrian I. Didier, the King of Lombardy, opposed this choice and resolved to make war on the Patrimony of St. Peter. Pope Adrian appealed to Charles for help, as his predecessor had given him the title Patricius Romanus (Nobleman of Rome). Charles took his army over the Alps in 773 for a great invasion of Lombardy and struck hard. The result was total victory and Charles King of the Franks entered Rome, the “Eternal City”, as its savior.

Everything was done to welcome Charlemagne as the old Roman generals had been welcomed in the pre-Christian times of ancient Rome. He was given the welcome of what was called a “Triumph”. The judges went forth to meet him 30 miles outside the City. The militia laid the banner of Rome at his feet and hailed him as “Imperator”, that is, “Emperor”. But Charlemagne came into Rome as a Christian Imperator. He prostrated himself to kiss the threshold of the Apostles, the limina apostolorum , and he spent seven days in conference with the Pope, days in which he was to c onceive many great ideas of what he might do for the glory of God and the exaltation of Holy Church in time to come. On Easter Day, 774, Charlemagne was consecrated as first champion of the Catholic Church. It seemed as if the Sacred Priesthood of Christ had found its champion in a new Sacred Kingship–of Christ and for Christ.

Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blessed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire: Conference II: The Golden Threads of Providence

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 04:23:25 GMT

History, we are often reminded, is not a morality tale. The human chronological record as a whole is vast, contradictory, and incoherent. At the same time it is maddeningly incomplete–so much of the past is fragmentary or has simply been lost altogether. The best we can do is try to construct narrative frameworks to make sense of it, or at least parts of it.

Sacred History, which is connected to our Profession of Faith, is our Catholic Christian way of making sense of human chronology based upon our belief in Divine Revelation. It overlaps so-called “scientific history” but it is not confined by it. Sacred History encompasses every mode in which humans have remembered their past by the telling of stories.History, we are often reminded, is not a morality tale. The human chronological record as a whole is vast, contradictory, and incoherent. At the same time it is maddeningly incomplete–so much of the past is fragmentary or has simply been lost altogether. The best we can do is try to construct narrative frameworks to make sense of it, or at least parts of it.

Bolstered by this Sacred History then we expect to find (and we do) all kinds of golden threads of God’s Divine Providence in the historical record. Only in Eternity will we be able to see the “Big Picture” and how exactly it all worked out, but here and now we get glimpses and revealing threads which we try to follow.

One of these “Golden Threads”, I suggest to you, is the relationship of the Roman Empire to Sacred History. In Our Lord’s Day, the Jewish People in their national homeland were a conquered, tributary people subject to the heathen Roman overlords. At the same time, the Roman Imperium enabled the migration and mingling of many peoples, including the Jews. In Our Lord’s Day there were millions more Jews living in the Diaspora across the Roman Empire than were living in Judea or Galilee.

The Early Christian Church was fiercely persecuted by Rome, across three centuries. Rome is the Seat of the Anti-Christ, the “Belly of the Beast”, “Babylon”. And yet, it was to this Rome that Peter the Chief Apostle went to set up his Chair of teaching authority, his “cathedra”. The eventual conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, practically as a result of the long Age of Martyrs, embedded the sense into Christian people that Rome and all that was the Roman Empire now belonged to God and was a very providential thing in sustaining the life of the Church and in the spreading of the Gospel. The “Pax Romana”, the “Roman Peace”, is fulfilled in the Peace of the Church, the “Pax Ecclesia Catholica”.

The decline of Rome, especially in the western half of the Empire after the barbarian chieftain Alaric the Goth sacked Rome in 410 A.D., was therefore viewed by Catholics as a calamity and a trial for the Church. The idea of the Roman Imperium as an arm of Christ’s Church and of Christian Civilization persisted, especially as the Pope in Rome, the successor to Saint Peter, was a visible embodiment of what God had done in history to make the heathen Roman Empire the holy Roman Empire. We think of the Popes: St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo the Great, “Leo Magnus”!

In 754 A.D., Pope Stephen III made an arduous journey across the Alps to go to the household of Pippin, the son of Charles Martel, who held the title “Mayor the Palace” and was, in effect the chief of the Christian Franks. At St. Denis on the Seine, on July 28th, 754, Pope Stephen anointed Pippin as King of the Franks, and not only Pippin but his two young sons as well: the older, Charles (our “Charlemagne”), who was but 12 years-old, and the younger, Carloman. All three were anointed with the oil of kingship by the Pope, Bishop of Rome and Successor to the Apostle Peter. Furthermore, the Pope commanded that the Frankish nation, under the gravest spiritual penalties, was he nceforth “never to choose their kings from any other family.”

Why this favor to the Franks and to their leader Pippin and his two boys? The Franks were rightly seen by the Popes as the defenders and the vindicators of the rights and liberties of the Roman Church. Even when Rome, as a political reality, had fallen the spirit of Christian Rome still lived strong.

Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blessed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire Conference I: Charlemagne and Lourdes

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 04:12:03 GMT

Our Lenten Parish Mission this year is entitled: “Blessed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire.” Charlemagne–“Charles-Le-Magne”, “Charles-the-Great”–lived from 742 A.D. -814 A.D. The King of the Franks, he established a great and powerful Kingdom stretching across what is today France and Germany. On Christmas Day, 800 A.D., in the City of Rome, the Pope crowned him Roman Emperor, reviving the glory of that once-great Empire, which had first persecuted but finally embraced Christianity. He is one of those great figures of history who both shapes events and sets in motion developments which continue for generations after he is dead. In the human story, things could always have been different. For us as Christian believers therefore we are always alert to the golden threads of God’s Providence.

Let us begin our story in the year 732 A.D. The leader of the Christian Franks Charles Martel (“Charles-the-Hammer”) decisively defeated the Islamic invaders who had entered France through Spain. This was the Battle of Tours which prevented Europe from being overrun by the Muslims. The invader retreated back over the Pyrenees Mountains but some Muslim groups held out in their fortresses of Aquitaine (southwestern France). One of these was the castle of Mirambel which is on the rock overhanging Lourdes.Our Lenten Parish Mission this year is entitled: “Blessed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire.” Charlemagne–“Charles-Le-Magne”, “Charles-the-Great”–lived from 742 A.D. -814 A.D. The King of the Franks, he established a great and powerful Kingdom stretching across what is today France and Germany. On Christmas Day, 800 A.D., in the City of Rome, the Pope crowned him Roman Emperor, reviving the glory of that once-great Empire, which had first persecuted but finally embraced Christianity. He is one of those great figures of history who both shapes events and sets in motion developments which continue for generations after he is dead. In the human story, things could always have been different. For us as Christian believers therefore we are always alert to the golden threads of God’s Providence.

Forty-six years later, in the Year 778 A.D., the grandson of Charles Martel, another Charles (our “Charlemagne”), 36 years-old and now the King of the Franks, was on his return from a military campaign against the Muslim Saracens in Spain. He laid siege to this Mirambel Castle.

The fortress was impregnable. Charlemagne tried to starve its defenders into submission. The siege went on and on. The Muslim commander, a man named Mirat, had sworn an oath by the Prophet Mohammed that he would never surrender the castle to any mortal man.

One day, an eagle carrying a trout caught from the River Gave, dropped it inside the Saracen castle walls. Mirat had a clever idea. He had the still floundering fish thrown over to the Christian besiegers as if to show them that it was an unwanted extra to the supplies of his garriso n. “Hey, Christian Infidels! We’ve still got plenty of food! We’re fine!”

Thinking he had been besieging the fortress in vain, Charlemagne was on the point of giving up and marching away. But his chaplain, the Bishop of Le Puy, had a hunch that this was a bluff. He asked for and obtained a meeting with Mirat and he immediately saw that the Saracens were indeed starving and at the point of collapse. The Bishop encouraged submission on honorable terms but Mirat fell back on his oath to the Prophet.

So, the Bishop replied: “Brave Prince, you have sworn never to yield to any mortal man. Could you not with honor make your surrender to an immortal Lady? Mary, Queen of Heaven, has her throne at Le Puy, and I am her humble minister there.”

This persuasion broke the deadlock. Mirat the Saracen came to terms with Charlemagne. In a token of his vassalage, he brought to the sanctuary of Mary, to whom he had surrendered, some handfuls of grass from the banks of the River Gave. Mirat accepted Christianity and was baptized under the name Lorus. Charlemagne knighted him and gave him back the command of the fortress of Mirabel. It is from the Knight Lorus that the name of the town of Lourdes is derived. This is the story of Charlemagne at Lourdes.

Let us close our First Conference then with this thought: Mirat/Lorus surrendered his castle to Mary in 778. In 1858, one thousand and eighty years later, Mary the Queen of Heaven appeared on earth to manifest her particular sovereignty over this place.

(Source for the story of Charlemagne at Lourdes: St. Bernadette: A Pictorial Biography, By Leonard von Matt and Francis Trochu; Translated from the French by Herbert Rees, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1957 A.D., “The Dedication of Lourdes to the Blessed Virgin Mary”, pp. 1-2.)

The Apparitions of Mary Immaculate at Lourdes According to the Liturgical Calendar

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 06:14:26 GMT

The Apparitions of Our Lady at Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 can be best understood by correlating them to the liturgical calendar then in use. There we can see how well they align with the Patristic Church’s Easter Baptismal Catechesis. Here follows an outline, continued from last week:

The Fortnight: Weeks I & II of Lent

The first of the two Signs given to the world at Lourdes was the water of the underground spring gushing forth from the side of the great rock of the Massabielle, as the water and blood gushed forth from the side of Christ as He hung on the Cross: “But one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side: and immediately there came out blood and water.” (John 19:34)

The people of Lourdes discovered this on Friday, February 26th (Ember Friday in Lent) the day after Bernadette had been told by the Vision to dig in the dirt and drink from the then non-existent spring (February 25th). This Friday was also the day of the Feast of Holy Lance and Nails. The Gospel Lesson for this Mass is the Gospel of the water and blood flowing from the side of Christ. (John 19:28-35)

10th Apparition: Ember Saturday in Lent (February 27th). Lenten Gospel Lesson: The Transfiguration of Christ, Mathew 17:1-9. Bernadette, in ecstasy of prayer, is seen to perform acts of penance in obedience to the Vision and drink from the miraculous spring— “Go and kiss the ground as a penance for sinners.” —The Vision also tells the girl: “Go and tell the priests to have a chapel built here.”

11th Apparition: Second Sunday in Lent (February 28th). Lenten Gospel Lesson: The same Transfiguration Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9) as the previous day Ember Saturday. Bernadette again performs a penitential exercise climbing the rock and kissing the ground.

12th Apparition: Monday of the Second Week in Lent (March 1st). Lenten Gospel Lesson: Christ in the Temple, assailed by His enemies, makes a cryptic allusion to His coming Crucifixion and His Divinity: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM and that of Myself I do nothing…” (John 8:21-29).

13th Apparition: Tuesday of the Second Week in Lent (March 2nd) Lenten Gospel Lesson: Christ in the Temple at the beginning of Holy Week: “The greatest among you will be your servant. The man who exalts himself will be humbled and the man who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:1-12) After the Apparition, Bernadette goes to the Parish Priest to convey the Lady’s request that people come in procession to the Grotto and for a chapel to be built there. The Parish Priest, with an explosion of temper, rebuffs her and says he must know this Lady’s name first.

14th Apparition: Wednesday of the Second Week in Lent (March 3rd) Lenten Gospel Lesson: Christ, on the Pilgrim Road to Jerusalem for the Passover and His Coming Passion, quells the rivalrous spirit of ambition rearing its ugly head among His Apostles: “But Jesus called them to Him and said: You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them and their great men make them feel their authority. Among you this must not be … The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:17-28) The Vision does not appear to Bernadette in the early morning when the crowds are gathered. Later in the day, however, Bernadette receives an interior calling and returns to the Grotto. The Vision tells her the reason why she did not appear earlier: Some curiosity-seekers had wished to see what Bernadette looked like in ecstasy and they were unworthy of it.

15th Apparition: Thursday of the Second Week in Lent (March 4th) Lenten Gospel Lesson: Parable of Lazarus and the Dives (the rich man), (Luke 16:19:31). 20,000 people gather at the Grotto, expecting a great miracle. Bernadette receives an audience with the Vision, but there is no public miraculous sign. The Fortnight has come to its close.

The Second Sign: “I am the Immaculate Conception”

16th Apparition: (March 25th) Feast of the Annunciation, Thursday in Passion Week. Feast-day Gospel Lesson: The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38); Passion Thursday Gospel Lesson: The Sinful Woman before Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee (Luke &:36-50). The Vision gives Bernadette her name: “I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”.) This is the second sign to the world at Lourdes: “[God said to the serpent] I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Genesis 3:15, the “Proto-evangelium”, the First Proclamation of the Gospel.

17th Apparition: Easter Wednesday (April 7th) Gospel Lesson: The Breakfast on the Shore of the Risen Christ with His Disciples (John 21:114).

18th Apparition: The Feast of Mount Carmel (July 16th) Gospel Lesson: Luke 11:27-28.

The Apparitions of Mary Immaculate at Lourdes According to the Liturgical Calendar

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 09:25:30 GMT

1st Apparition: Thursday in Shrovetide (February 11th, 1858), the Night Office for this day presents the Covenant of God with Noah after the Great Flood and the Rainbow in the heavens as the sign of God’s reconciliation. The waters of the Great Flood prefigure the waters of Christ’s Baptism and Noah’s Ark the Ark of Christ’s Catholic Church—the Ark of Salvation.

2nd Apparition: Shrove Sunday (February 14th)

3rd Apparition: Thursday after Ash Wednesday (February 18th): The Vision addresses Bernadette for the first time and asks the girl to visit her there for a fortnight.

The Fortnight: Weeks I & II of Lent

4th Apparition: Friday after Ash. Also, the Feast of the Sacred Crown of Thorns, the Third in the series of seven particular Feasts of the Passion which were said on designated days in Septuagesima and Lent. In 1858, these were observed in the diocese to which Lourdes belonged. (February 19th)

5th Apparition: Saturday after Ash (February 20th) Lenten Gospel Lesson: Jesus walks on the water and calms the storm. Mark 6:47-56

6th Apparition: First Sunday in Lent. The Gospel Lesson is of the Temptation of Christ in the Desert. Matt. 4:1-11 (February 21st)

Monday of the First Week in Lent, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch (February 22nd): No Apparition to Bernadette.

7th Apparition: Tuesday of the First Week in Lent (February 23rd). Lenten Gospel Lesson: Jesus cleanses the Temple on Palm Sunday, Matthew 21:10-17.

8th Apparition: Ember Wednesday in Lent (February 24th). During her ecstasy Bernadette is heard to say: “Penance … Penance … Penance.” Lenten Gospel Lesson: Jesus tells the Pharisees the only sign that will be shown them is the “Sign of Jonas” (i.e., His own death and Resurrection from the Tomb). Matthew 12:38-50.

9th Apparition: Thursday of the First Week in Lent (February 25th) The Apparition commands Bernadette to “Go and drink at the spring and wash yourself in it.” Bernadette digs in the dirt where the Vision indicates. Only on her 4th attempt is she able to drink a little muddy water. Lenten Gospel Lesson: The Canaanite mother who begs Christ to deliver her possessed daughter. Matthew 15:21-28.

Ember Friday in Lent (February 26th) and the Feast of the Holy Lance and Nails. The Beautiful Lady does not appear to Bernadette, but the people of Lourdes are amazed to find water gushing from the side of the great rock, from the very place were Bernadette had been digging in the dirt the day before. This is the first Sign given to the people: the water gushing from the side of the rock is a symbol of the water and blood flowing from the side of Christ on the Cross, John 19:35.

Parish Lenten Mission for 2024: Blessed Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 04:53:17 GMT

On Friday, February 2nd, we concluded the Christmas Cycle for this year and we are very quickly preparing for Lent which is the Church’s ver sacrum (“sacred spring”) in the lead-up to Easter. Shrovetide begins on Thursday of this week. Next Sunday is Shrove Sunday—we will be celebrating our Parish Patronal Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11th—and a week from Wednesday, February 14th, we will observe Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the holy fast.

As has become the custom here at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes during Lent we will hold a Holy Hour with the Stations of the Cross every Friday from 7:30-8:30 P.M., from Friday after Ash (February 16th) to The Feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady (March 22nd). After the Stations, I will offer a series of Sermons on a particular Lenten Mission theme. This year, I have chosen to give a Mission around the life of Blessed Charlemagne and the reconstitution of the fallen Roman Empire as the Holy Roman Empire (Christmas Day, A.D. 800).
This Lenten Mission is open to all, not just for parishioners. I encourage you to make this Mission with the Stations as part of your Lenten practices on as many of the Friday evenings as you can.

Septuagesima

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 22:06:22 GMT

Even before we have finished with the 40 Days of Christmas (February 2nd, Friday of this week) we begin our remote preparation for Easter. In the older Roman Missal there is a distinct period of “pre-Lent” called “Septuagesima”, (the Latin word for “seventieth”). We are today (approximately) seventy-days away from Easter. Here is an explanation of Septuagesima from the Missal note of the 1961 St. Andrew’s Missal:

Man, “justly punished for his sins” (Collect prayer for Septuagesima Sunday), is deeply conscious of his pitiful state and implores divine mercy. The Septuagesima liturgy, which serves as an introduction to Lent, emphasizes man’s sorry state, but speaks of it to God with the whole strength of Christian hope founded on the Redemption wrought by Christ; the Introit and the chants of today’s Mass, the Epistle and the Gospel urge us to respond to God’s summons, calling all men, every generation of mankind, at whatever time this summons comes, to work for their salvation.

In the old Liturgy also the Scriptures Lessons for the night-v igil of Matins lay out the framework for the work of Redemption by taking key readings from the Book of Genesis. We have the patriarchal figures of Sacred History who also pre-figure Jesus Christ in His Coming.

I. Septuagesima Week, the Creation Story and the Fall of Man into Sin. The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, our First Parents, from the earthly paradise and the promise of a future Redeemer, born of a Woman (Mary). Jesus Christ is the New and Second Adam.
II. Week of Sexagesima (Shrovetide). Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood are the central consideration. The great destructive Flood which wiped out life on the earth was an act of divine justice. The Flood of Noah, however, pre-figures the waters of Baptism which are the expression of God’s mercy. The Ark of Noah is an image of the Catholic Church and the Patriarch Noah is a figure of Christ . The rainbow in the heavens, which is the sign of God’s reconciling covenant with His renewed creation, will be fully realized in the Reconciliation accomplished by Jesus’ Death on the Cross.
III. Week of Quinquagesima (Shrovetide/Ash Wednesday and the Three Days after Ash). The Patriarch Abraham is promised a descendance as numerous as the stars in the heavens, but God commands Abraham to sacrifice His only son Isaac, the Son of the Promise. Abraham nonetheless obeys God, but at the last moment an Angel of the Lord intervenes and a ram is miraculously provided for the sacrifice. That ram is a figure of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Beloved Son of the Father, who will die in our place on the Cross at Mount Calvary. The Sacrifice of the only Son is prefigured in Isaac, but fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Time After Epiphany: Octave Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Jan 18-25th

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 17:06:44 GMT

Epiphanytide is completed, but the Time-after— Epiphany keeps us within the Christmas feastspan of 40 days, as Dom Prosper Guéranger reminds us:

We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the NATVITY of OUR LORD, December 25th, and end with the PURIFICATION of the BLESSED VIRGIN, February 2nd. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense JOY of which she received the good tidings from the Angels on that glorious Night…..The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of Our Savior’s Nativity by a feast or commemoration of forty days’ duration is founded on the Holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfill, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.
—The Liturgical Year, Christmas-Book I

The yearly Octave Week of Prayer for Christian Unity always falls between January 18th-25th, traditionally important feasts of the Apostles Peter and Paul (January 18th was formerly the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair-at-Rome). These words of Cardinal Newman, himself a convert from Anglicanism, set the tone for our prayer.

Pope Benedict XVI, Year's Mind

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 05:48:55 GMT

Let us recall at this time the blessed memory of Pope Benedict XVI, who reigned as Pope for 8 years, 2005-2013, and who accompanied the Church by his prayers on earth for nearly ten years more.

PHOTOS below: Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to Lourdes in 2008 for the 150th Jubilee of the Apparitions. Benedict announced his resignation on February 11th, 2013, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Christmas Greetings from Fr. Salako in Rome and Africa

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:49:10 GMT

I am happy to share with you these words of greeting from Father Salako along with pictures of him in Rome and in Africa:

Good Morning, Fr. Higgins:

Greetings from Rome. I went to Rome for a meeting. On the 19th of December I went to [St. Peter’s] Basilica for you and for our parishioners. I have prayed before an empty Christmas Crib—without the Newborn, hoping that He will soon be with us. I went to pray also before the graves of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. I have prayed a lot for the Church and for Pope Francis….Through their intercessions, may God keep His Church in the right way. I’m on my way back to Benin for Christmas. Pray for me, as I do for you. Thanks for your help. I have received $54,931 dollars [from Mary Immaculate of Lourdes] for the Mission. May God bless all of our benefactors. We are grateful!

Fr. Desiré Salako, S.M.A.

The Holy House of Loreto

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 04:56:22 GMT

December 10th is the day appointed for the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House of Loreto, the House “translated from Palestine by the ministry of angels—in which was born the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in which the Word was made flesh.” (Benedict XV, 1916) The Collect prayer for this Mass offers us a solid theological thought for Advent reflection: O God, Who in Thy mercy didst hallow the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the mystery of the Word made flesh, and didst wonderfully place it in the midst of Christendom: grant that we may shun the dwellings of sinners, and become worthy to dwell in Thy holy house. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Adventide and the Feast of the Immaculate conception

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 07:17:03 GMT

The beginning of Adventide and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary fall very closely together this year. The Feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, besides being a Holy Day in the Catholic Church, is also the national patronal feast-day for our country the United States of America and one of the two titular feasts of our parish Mary Immaculate of Lourdes (the other titular feast is February 11th, the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate at Lourdes). Please note the Calendar of Masses for December 8th in the notice below. It is always a Holy Day of obligation in the USA.

"All Creatures of our God and King" and the "Canticle of the Sun" of St. Francis of Assisi

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 23:08:37 GMT

On this last Sunday of the Church’s Year of Grace for 2023, we are singing the hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King” for our Sunday Mass Recessional. The lyrics of this hymn are a translation of St. Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun”, by William H. Draper and set to the tune of a German Easter hymn, Lasst Uns Erfreuen . St. Francis composed this praise of the goodness of God’s Creation in 1225 (he died on October 3rd, 1226), based upon Psalm 148, Laudate Dominum de caelis (“Praise ye the Lord from the heavens…”) . It is considered to be the first poem written in the spoken Italian of the people.

The whole of the text gives us a wonderful meditation for keeping in balance the spirit of gratitude for the wonders of the present world while not losing sight of the ultimate realities of the world-to-come, particularly in St. Francis’ closing verses:

Praised be You, my Lord,/through our Sister Bodily Death,/from whom no living man can escape./Woe to those who die in mortal sin./ Blessed are those whom death will find in Your most holy will,/for the second death shall do them no harm./Praise and bless my Lord,/ and give Him thanks,/and serve Him with great humility./Amen.

Feast of the Dedication of the Parish Church: Thanksgiving Day, November 24th, 1910

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 05:09:26 GMT

Thanksgiving Day is always a double-feast for our parish of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes. In addition to our national holiday of Thanksgiving it is the Dedication Feast for our parish church, which was consecrated on Thanksgiving Day, 1910, 113 years ago.

The front cover photo shows the church as it was in 1970, the Centenary Year of the Parish’s founding. This is how I remember the church as a boy, with the two immense fir trees on the front lawn.

Our 9:00 A.M. Mass on Thanksgiving Day will be the Mass of the Dedication of a Church. The Collect prayer of this Mass expresses the thought of the sacred place where prayers to God are made and answered:

O God, every year Thou dost renew the day of the consecration of this holy temple, and continue to bring us in safety to Thy sacred mysteries; graciously hear the prayers of Thy people, and grant that all who enter this temple to implore Thy blessings, may rejoice in obtaining whatever they ask. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Parish Stewardship in the Moment of the "Great De-Churching"

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 07:30:51 GMT

Recently a book has appeared about the contemporary social reality of American religion entitled: The Great De-Churching: Who’s Leaving? Why Are They Going? And What Will It Take To Bring Them Back? , by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, with Ryan Burge. It argues that, across-theboard, Americans are presently falling away from the practice of church (and synagogue) going religion in such numbers that it represents a reverse of the previous religious revival “Great Awakenings” of American history, hence the coining of the term: “The Great De-Churching”.

It is a hard truth for any church congregation to face (of any religious denomination) and the existential challenges it presents to the maintenance of already well-established churches are obvious. In the midst of all of our particular challenges to keep the doors of this church of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes open, we also have to contend against these strong cultural headwinds which are outside of our control.

When it comes to parish stewardship and church support, I can only appeal to your own sense of faith and to your own sense of giving back to God that “Lord’s portion” out of the total substance the Lord has provided for you.

PARISH ANNUAL REPORT FY2023

Photocopies of the Parish Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2023 (end-of-June) are available in the pamphlet rack of the church vestibule. I encourage you to take them in order to have a concrete idea of the parish/cemetery’s financial state. There are some difficult numbers we are dealing with, particularly with regard to the sustaining of our parish church. Although we have been successful in keeping costs down (for those expenses under our control), these economies have been off-set by the declines in donor dollars. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you are making for the support of our parish of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes.

November 5th, 2023: Centenary of the Death of Father Danahy

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 06:05:01 GMT

One hundred years ago today— November 5th, 1923, the Pastor of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Church, Father Timothy J. Danahy, died unexpectedly. He had been Pastor for 33 years. He is the priest responsible for the building of the new Saint Mary’s parish church at this location and for the renaming of the parish under the title: Mary Immaculate of Lourdes .

In the 1890s Fr. Danahy made a pilgrimage to the Lourdes shrine and bathed his damaged eyes in the Lourdes spring. He received a miraculous healing of his eyes and in thanksgiving made a vow to one day build a church in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes. This church is the fulfillment of his vow.
It was an ambitious undertaking and it seemed he had set himself and the parishioners of Saint Mary’s parish on an impossible task to raise money for such a grand architectural project at the top of the Elliot Street hill. (The original parish church was located on Chestnut Street, near the Charles River.) Somehow, he and they did it. The vintage photo on the front cover shows our parish church when it was first built. Fr. Danahy is the priest standing in front of the church, accompanied by his two dogs to whom he was extremely attached.
Let us poignantly recall the memory of Father Danahy on this 100th anniversary of his birthday to Eternal Life, the fifth day of AllSaintstide. Let us continue to offer praise and thanks to God in this church—a church which is the votive offering of a priest miraculé of Lourdes, a testament to the goodness and compassion of God and the power of the merciful, motherly prayers of Mary on our behalf.

Christ "Pantokrator" and the Kingdom of God in the Missions

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 05:44:15 GMT

Our last Sunday in October, just preceding the Feast of All Saints on November 1st, is the Feast of Christ the King according to the Old Roman Calendar (in the New Calendar, Christ the King is the final Sunday of the Year, just before the cycle begins anew with Adventide). The front-cover picture is of a mosaic of Christ “Pantokrator”, which is a Greek title of God: “The All Mighty”. It is an image which depicts Christ ruling the universe from Heaven.

Recently I received news from Father Salako, who as Father Provincial is visiting his missions in Niger, a country which is 98% Muslim and which has been disrupted by a military coup d’etat since the summer. These pictures show Father Salako with his missionary priests, a mission church with the faithful, and young seminarians.
These pictures show as the mustard seed of faith being planted for the Kingdom of God in Africa.

Remembering John Paul II and Parishioners Stan & Maria Schroter

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 02:22:48 GMT

Today we commemorate Pope Saint John Paul II, who reigned as Pope from 1978-2005. His Feast-day is observed today because it is the anniversary of his Installation to the Chair of Saint Peter: October 22nd, 1978.

He was truly a “great man” of history: in his biography, in his contribution to the intellectual thought of Western Civilization, in his role as the World Pastor of a truly global Church. There were times during the course of his long reign when he seemed to be holding the world together by the force of his personality and the fervor of his prayers.

In connection with John Paul II’s memory, I want to recall two of our late parishioners, Stan and Maria Schroter, who were of his generation and shared in the crucible experience of the Polish struggle against Nazi Germany. Stan fought with the Polish army in September, 1939, was captured and escaped six times, and the n, after Poland was overrun, went into exile and joined the Polish Legion fighting with the Allies. Maria was among the young women of the Polish Home Army who fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. She was deported into Germany until the end of the War. Stan, who had known her family before the War, saw her name on the Displaced Persons list and took an army truck from Rome to find her.

A most persistent suitor, Stan persuaded Maria to go back with him to Rome, where they were married. Their journey eventually brought them here to Newton Upper Falls and Mary Immaculate of Lourdes parish, where they raised their five children.

Given their history, I thought it most poignant that each of them should have died, a year apart, flanking John Paul II’s Feast-day—Stan died on October 21st, 2016, and Maria died on October 23rd, 2017. Last Sunday’s 5:30 PM Mass was offered for the repose of their souls, at the request of their daughter Christine (Schroter) Tramontozzi. Requiescant in Pace.

The Brigittine/Carmelite Rosary

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 19:47:37 GMT

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The Franciscan Crown

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 06:24:52 GMT

The Rosary, as it is commonly called is, technically, the Dominican Rosary. It is the form of prayer on the five-decade Rosary beads which was promoted by the Dominican religious order. With its fifteen decades of “Hail Mary’s” it mirrors the 150 Psalms of the Bible. A series of meditations is organized into the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Christlife.

Another form of praying the Rosary, which is approved by the Church, is the seven-decade Rosary of the Franciscan religious order. This Rosary is known as the “Franciscan Crown”, or the Rosary of the Seven Joys of Mary.

The Seven Joys are as follows:

1. The Annunciation.

2. The Visitation.

3. The Nativity.

4. The Adoration of the Magi.

5. The Finding the Child Jesus in the Temple.

6. The Appearance of the Risen Christ to Mary.

7. The Assumption of Mary and her Coronation in Heaven.

The original Crown consisted of 1 “Our Father” and 10 “Hail Mary’s”. Later, two “Hail Mary’s” were added to make up the number 72, which, according to one worthy tradition, was the age of Mary at her falling-asleep and Assumption. (It has also become customary to add the “Glory Be” doxology at the end of each of the seven decades.)
Having just celebrated the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi this past week (October 4th), we do well to consider how much the preaching and the missionary activity of the Franciscan friars has shaped the life of the Catholic Church. To the Franciscans we owe such beloved devotions as the Angelus, the Stations of the Cross, and the Christmas Crib. Also, to the Franciscans we are indebted for their vigorous defense of the doctrine of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception (before its solemn dogmatic definition in 1854) and their spreading of it.
The Franciscan Crown is an alternative or additional way of praying the Rosary and Catholics should feel free to make use of it as they choose.

The Blassed Family Ulma of Markowa, Poland

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 18:39:23 GMT

Three Sundays ago (September 10th, 2023) a most remarkable Beatification occurred. Jozef and Wictoria Ulma and their seven children were declared “blessed” by the Catholic Church. They are blood martyrs of charity for having risked their lives to hide Jewish neighbors who were being hunted down for extermination by the Nazi German occupiers during World War II.

In 1939, on the eve of the German invasion of Poland, there were 4,500 people living in the village now called Markowa (southeastern Poland), 120 of them Jews. In 1942. the Nazi policy towards the Jews went from murderous persecution to outright, organized massmurder, Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question” in Europe. The wellpublicized Nazi penalty for anyone harboring Jews was death.

Jozef Ulma and his wife Wictoria were among those Poles who took the personal risk to hide Jews. They took in Saul Goldman and his four sons, Golda Gruenfeld, and Lea Didner and her daughter Reszla who was five or six-years-old.
For more than a year, their families lived as one: the men tanning hides and skins for sale; the children growing into the world together, reading, helping their mothers raise their children, performing chores. Jozef, a farmer by trade, was an amateur photographer and documented the daily workings of their domestic church… (“The Good Samaritans of Markowa, Poland”, by Nicholas Tomaino. Houses of Worship, Wall Street Journal, September 15th, 2023)
Betrayed by an informer to the Nazis, German officers and collaborationist Polish “Blue Police” raided the Markowa farm at 4 AM on March 24th, 1944. First they murdered the Jews. Then they took the Ulma family out front. They shot dead the parents. Finally, they shot dead all of the children: Stasia, 7; Barbara, 6: Wladyslaw, 5: Franciszek, 3; Antoni, 2; and Maria 1. After the marauders had looted the house and left, villagers came to give the victims a proper burial. There they discovered that Wictoria, who was seven months pregnant, had gone into labor during the execution and given birth to a baby son. In the beatification of the Family Ulma, this baby was included—the Catholic Church’s first such beatification of an entire family. A crowd of 30,000 people attended the Mass of Beatification in Markowa on September 10th.

In their family Bible, Jozef and Wictoria Ulma had underlined passages from the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). After Jesus’ words: “Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbor to him that fell among the robbers? But [the lawyer] said: He that showed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go, and do thou in like manner”, was scribbled in the margin, “Yes!”.

Despite the massacre at the Ulma farm, not all of the Jews in hiding in Markowa were betrayed. Several days after Nicholas Tomaino’s essay, the following letter appeared in the Wall Street Journal :

My mother and her family were hidden during World War II by Antoni and Dorota Szylar, who were next-door neighbors to the Ulma Family. Even after the Ulmas were killed for protecting Jews, the Szylars continued to shelter my mother and six other family members for 17 months, knowing that they, too, would be killed if found out. It is a testament to the strong Christian faith of the Szylars that I am here today.
RUTH OSOWSKY HEISLER

Kew Gardens, N.Y .

Our Lady of Ransom

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 04:14:09 GMT

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The Impression of the Stigmata of Saint Francis: September 17th

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 05:09:00 GMT

The Calendar of Saints for today recalls the miraculous impression of the Five Chief Wounds of Christ’s Crucifixion (Hands, Feet and Side), the “Stigmata”, on the living body of St. Francis of Assisi. This miracle occurred in 1224 A.D., two years before the Saint’s death.

Brother Francis was on Mount Alvernia, undergoing a 40-day fast in preparation for the Feast of St. Michael Archangel (September 29th). In the midst of this extraordinary feat of prayer and fasting, Francis had a vision around the Feast of the Holy Cross (September 14th). His early biographer St. Bonaventure describes it thus:

As he was praying on the mountain-side, he saw what appeared to be a Seraph, with six shining and fiery wings, coming down from heaven. The vision flew swiftly through the air and approached the man of God, who then perceived that it was not only winged, but also crucified; for the hands and feet were stretched out and fastened to a cross; while the wings were arranged in a wondrous manner, two being raised above the head, two outstretched in flight, and two remaining over and veiling the whole body….
He who appeared outwardly to Francis taught him inwardly that, although weakness and suffering are incompatible with the immortal life of a seraph, yet this vision had been shown to him to the end that he, Christ’s lover, might learn how his whole being was to be transformed into a living image of Christ crucified, not by martyrdom of the flesh, but by the burning ardor of his soul. After a mysterious and familiar colloquy, the vision disappeared, leaving the saint’s mind burning with seraphic ardor, and his flesh impressed with an exact image of the Crucified, as though, after the melting power of fire, it had next been stamped with a seal. For immediately the marks of nails began to appear in his hands and feet, their heads showing in the palms of his hands and the upper part of his feet, and their points visible on the other side. There was also a red scar on his right side, as if it had been wounded by a lance, and from which blood often flowed staining his tunic and underclothing.
These marvelous wounds St. Francis bore for the rest of his life. The Collect prayer for the Mass of St. Francis’s Stigmata points to the larger lesson for us:
O Lord Jesus Christ, who, when the world was growing cold, didst renew the sacred marks of Thy Passion in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, to inflame our hearts with the fire of Thy love; mercifully grant, that by his merits and prayers we may always carry the cross and bring forth worthy fruits of penance. Thou Who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

"Juditha" and Our Lady

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:15:04 GMT

One of the important biblical “types” of Our Lady is the virtuous and beautiful widow Judith of the Old Testament Book of Judith. In this story she risks her life in order to save her city from destruction by the powerful Assyrian army. Taking her maid with her, she pretends to defect to the enemy camp. Holofernes, the enemy commander is charmed by her. On the fourth day, she is alone with him in his tent and he has drunk himself into a stupor. Judith beheads him and makes her escape back to the Israelite camp. The enemy, upon discovering their leader killed, panics and flees. Thus the city is saved by Judith, and the people all sing her praises. The Catholic Church in her liturgy sees Judith and Holofernes as figures of the Protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmities between thee (i.e. the serpent-devil) and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Judith is like Mary, and Holofernes like Satan. For this reason, the praises of the people for Judith find their way into the Masses for the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, as praises applied by the People of God to Mary, the handmaid of the Lord: “Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honor of our people.” (Judith 13)

The Blessing of Seeds and Seedlings on the Nativity of Our Lady

Sat, 02 Sep 2023 03:28:17 GMT

As the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady has its Blessing of Herbs and First Fruits, so the Nativity of Our Lady on September 8th has its Blessing of Seed and Seedlings. The text of this blessing prayers is as follows:

V. Our help is in the Name of the Lord.

R. Who made heaven and earth.

V. The Lord be with you.

R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray:

O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God, we beg Thee to look with friendly countenance and benevolent eyes upon these seeds and seedlings. And as Thou didst proclaim to Moses, Thy servant in the land of Egypt, saying: ‘Tell the children of Israel that when they enter the land of promise which I shall give them, they are to offer the first-fruits to the priests, and they shall be blessed’; so too at our request, O Lord, bless these seeds in Thy benevolence, and let them germinate and grow. Let neither hail nor flood destroy them, but keep them unharmed unto a finest maturity and abundant harvest for the service of body and soul. Thou Who livest and reignest in perfect Trinity forever. Amen.
Let us pray:
O Almighty, Everlasting God, Sower and Tiller of the heavenly word, Who dost cultivate the field of our hearts with heavenly tools, hearken to our prayers, and pour forth bountiful blessings upon the fields in which these seeds will be sown. By Thy protecting Hand turn away the fury of the elements, so that this entire fruit may be filled with Thy blessing, and may be gathered without hindrance into the granary. Through Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in unity of the Holy Ghost, God forevermore.

R. Amen.

This Blessing of Seeds and Seedlings will be offered at the end of our parish daily Masses on Friday of this week, September 8th, (7:30 AM and 12:30 PM), and also on Saturday morning, September 9th, after our 9:00 AM Mass. You are invited to bring your own seeds and seedlings for this seasonal blessing. A table will be set up outside the altar rail for it.

Mission Appeal for "Father Salako's Missions"

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 03:16:16 GMT

This Sunday we are having our Mission Appeal on behalf of “Father Salako’s Missions” which benefits the apostolic missionary ventures of his S.M.A. Province Benin/Niger. Fr. Salako will be our Missionary preacher at all of our Sunday Masses and we will take up a Second Collection on his behalf. You have been so very generous as a parish community to Father Salako’s Missions each year, even during his absence in the Pandemic years 2020-2021 when he was prevented from coming to us in person. We thank him for the assistance of his summer ministry to us, and we follow him back to Africa with our prayers and our love as Christians.

Please support the Collection for Father Salako’s Missions Sunday, August 27th, 2023 A.D.
Please make any checks payable to “Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Church” with the Memo: “Father Salako’s Missions” .

New Vocations From Our Parish

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 04:15:22 GMT

We are saying Ave atque vale to our parish Week-day Sacristan Jack Monbouquette who has been a great addition to our Parish Staff for the last three years. Jack has been discerning a priestly vocation and is now going to test it further by entering the priestly formation program at our Archdiocesan seminary of St. John’s at the end of this month. He will be joined there by another young man from our parish Sean McKeown , who will also be at the beginning of the formation process. This past week, at our evening Mass on Assumption Day, we bade farewell to Sean Wu as he sets out to test a priestly vocation with the Redemptorist Fathers in New York City.

Sean has been generous with his time in serving Mass here over the last several years.

Each of these young men has been on his own journey but their entrance into seminaries converges at this moment. It is a happy experience for any parish community to see those from among them take the risk of training to serve God as priests. We support these men with our prayers and good will. Priestly formation takes many years and a seminarian needs to cultivate the virtues of patience and perseverance to a degree!
Let us pray for the special intention of these three young men as they embark upon their seminary journey. And let us continue to pray for worthy vocations in the Church of our time.

Blessing of Herbs and First-Fruits on the Assumption of Our Lady

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 04:58:58 GMT

The Church provides a beautiful blessing prayer of herbs and first-fruits of the harvest on the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, August 15th. I provide the full text of the three Orations here:

Almighty, everlasting God, by Thy Word alone Thou hast made heaven, earth, sea, all things visible and invisible, and hast adorned the earth with plants and trees for the use of men and animals. Thou appointest each species to bring forth fruit in its kind, not only to serve as food for living creatures, but also as medicine for sick bodies. With mind and word we earnestly appeal to Thine ineffable goodness to bless these various herbs and fruits, and add to their natural powers the grace of Thy new blessing. May they ward off disease and adversity from men and beasts who use them in Thy name. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever. R. Amen.
O God, by Moses, Thy servant Thou didst command the children of Israel to carry their sheaves of new grain to the priests for a blessing, to pluck the finest fruits of the orchards, and to make merry before Thee, the Lord their God. Hear Thou our supplications, and bestow blessings in abundance upon us and upon these bundles of new grain, new herbs, and this assortment of produce which we gratefully present to Thee on this Festival— blessing them in Thy Name. Grant that men, cattle, sheep, and beasts of burden find in them a remedy against sickness, pestilence, sores, injuries, spells, against the bites of serpents and other poisonous animals. May these blessed objects act as a protection against diabolical mockeries, cunnings, and deceptions wherever they are kept, carried, or other dispositions made of them. And through the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose Assumption we celebrate, may we likewise, laden with sheaves of good works, deserve to be lifted up to Heaven. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forevermore. R. Amen.
O God, Who on this day raised up to heavenly heights the rod of Jesse, the Mother of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord, that through her prayers and patronage Thou mightest communicate to our mortal nature the Fruit of her womb, Thy same Son; we pray that we may use of these fruits of the soil for our temporal and eternal welfare—the power of Thy Son and the Patronage of His glorious Mother assisting us. Though the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever. Amen.
And may the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost come upon these creatures and remain for all time. R. Amen.

You are invited to bring herbs, plants, fruits, fresh produce, “first fruits”, to be blessed at all of our Masses on Assumption Day, Tuesday, August 15th. A table will be set up outside the altar rail to bless your items.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord is the Mass-Mystery

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 05:47:27 GMT

Our Sunday Mass today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the pre-view of the resurrected glory of Christ which the three chief Apostles—Peter, James, and John—saw on Mount Tabor before the Crucifixion had taken place. Although the vision did not prevent the Apostles from being overthrown during the event of Christ’s Passion, it was a further support to their faith once they had experienced the Risen Christ in their midst. Each Mass is also an experience of the Miracle of the Transfiguration of Our Lord through the Mystery of Faith which is the Holy Eucharist. “Behold! The Lamb of God… .”

Welcome to Fr. Desire Salako, S.M.A.

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 06:17:16 GMT

We are very happy to welcome back Fr. Desiré Salako, Provincial Superior for the S.M.A Province of Benin/Niger, to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes for the next five Sundays. Fr. Salako has been assisting us for summer ministry since 2015 and we have been helping his primary evangelization ministry in Africa by taking up a special collection at the end of August. This year, our Mission Appeal Collection for “Father Salako’s Missions” will be on Sunday, August 27th.

I include in this Sunday’s Bulletin some pictures Father Salako has sent of the S.M.A. Missionary Priests, and of their school for young mothers and one of their water-wells. These pictures are very helpful in giving us an idea of the mission work.

Welcome home to your American parish, Father Salako!

Please support the Collection for Father Salako’s Missions Sunday, August 27th, 2023 A.D.

The Apparitions of Our Lady Mary Immaculate of Lourdes: 17 + 1 the Eighteenth and Last Apparition to Bernadette, July 16, 1858

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 20:09:49 GMT

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The Lif of Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727 A.D.)

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 21:28:11 GMT

The front cover of our Sunday Bulletin today is of St. Veronica Giuliani. Today, July 9th, is her feast-day. The red roses adorning our altars are given by a parishioner out of special devotion to her. Here are some of the details of her life, as we find them in Fr. Thurston’s edition of Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

St. Veronica Giuliani’s baptismal name was “Ursula”. She was born at Mercatello in Urbino.
She is said to have begun to show signs of unusual piety at a very early age; at six and seven she was concerned to give away her own food and clothing to the needy, and at eleven devotion to Our Lord’s Passion had begun to color her own life…
In consequence of a vision of Our Lady, Ursula made a vow to become a nun, but met with strong opposition from her father, Francis Giuliani: he not only wanted her to marry, but insisted on presenting eligible suitors. This worried her into an illness; Francis gave way, and in 1677 she was clothed a Capuchiness in the convent of Città di Castello, in Umbria, taking the name [in religion] of Veronica.
After her Profession her absorption in the Passion deepened, she had a vision of Our Lord bearing the Cross, and she began to have acute pain over her heart. In 1693, she experienced another vision in which the chalice of Christ’s sufferings was offered to her; after a great struggle she accepted it, and henceforth reproduced in her own body and soul something of the sufferings of the Divine Master.
In the following year the imprint of the Crown of Thorns appeared on her head, and on Good Friday, 1697, the impress of the Five Sacred Wounds. These physical manifestations were subjected to medical treatment, but without any effect on them.

The Bishop was informed of this and he referred the matter to the Holy Office of the Inquisition for guidance. Sister Veronica ended up being put under the strictest surveillance in order to eliminate any chance for fraud.

She was forbidden to receive Holy Communion, to mix with the other nuns, or to have any sort of communication with the outside world; and she was to be day and night under the eye of a lay sister. The bishop, moreover, ordered that the wounds were to be dressed and bandaged, and her hands put into gloves with the fastenings sealed with his signet. Veronica suffered these prudent precautions with exemplary patience. They made no difference at all to the phenomena, and the bishop having communicated this and the nun’s obedient and humble demeanor to the Holy Office, it was ordered that she should be allowed to return to the normal life of her community.

St. Veronica was of the type of St. Teresa of Avila and all the greatest contemplatives, adding to her devotion and supernatural gifts common sense and ability in affairs. She was novice mistress of her convent for thirty-four years, which itself shows how well she fulfilled the office, and eleven years before her death was elected abbess.

At the end of her life this “spouse of the Lord” who for nearly fifty years had suffered with patience, resignation and joy, was afflicted with apoplexy, and she died of this disorder on July 9, 1727. She left an account of her life and spiritual experiences, written by order of her confessor, and this was much used in the process of beatification; she was canonized in 1839. Long before her death she had told her confessor that the instruments of Our Lord’s Passion were imprinted on her heart, giving him more than once, for they, as she averred, shifted their position, a rough plan of a heart on which they were sketched. A post-mortem examination in the presence of the bishop, the mayor, the surgeons, and other witnesses, revealed in the right ventricle a number of minute objects corresponding to those she had drawn.

“To make of all my life a Mass and of the Mass all my life”: Reflections on My 35th Anniversary of Priestly Ordination

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 05:29:54 GMT

Last Sunday, June 25th, I marked my 35th Anniversary of priestly ordination—June 25th, 1988, at Holy Cross Cathedral, Boston. (The first photo to the left is the formal picture I had taken for the Boston Pilot: the second [middle] is a picture with my mother Joyce Higgins on the day I offered my First Mass of Thanksgiving at our home parish of St. Joseph’s, Needham, June 26th, 1988.)

These anniversary occasions naturally lend themselves to much thanksgiving, reflections on the events of the last 35 years, and renewal of resolutions for going forward.
I had the particularly wonderful experience last Sunday of attending the Iraqi Chaldean Mission’s Sunday Mass, celebrated by their Bishop, Francis Kalabat, and hearing the Liturgy sung in Aramaic, “the language of Jesus.”
The holy card to the right (above) was a gift to me upon my ordination by my friend Father Jean-François Thomas, S.J. (who was ordained a priest on June 26th, 1988, in France). The words Faire de toute ma vie une Messe et de la Messe toute ma vie translate as: “To make of all my life a Mass and of the Mass all my life.”
They are words of inspiration indeed for any priest, but they have their meaning for every Christian too. All of us, by virtue of our Baptism share in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ. Our lives should be immersed in the Mass-mystery, with our Praise and Adoration, Thanksgiving, Reparation and Petition joined to that of Christ’s and offered to the Eternal Father. Therefore every one of us Christians can apply the saying, “To make of all my life a Mass and of the Mass all my life.”
With God there is always more. All around us we see a world where people are demoralized and panicked in their lives. And all the while the Sacrifice of the Mass is in their midst, with everything that is needful for them. If only they could see it…
May our faith in the Mass-mystery ever increase. May God deliver us from the spirit of indifference and that “making free” with God which is so prevalent these days. Thank you for all the kindness, good-will and support which you give to your ordained-priests and which helps to sustain us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and The Sacred Heart

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 05:22:59 GMT

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Behold the Lamb of God!

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 02:59:06 GMT

Please join us for our annual Corpus Christi Procession, directly following the 11 Am Mass (approximately 12:30 PM). The Procession route:

CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION SUNDAY, JUNE 11th, 2023

Weather permitting, we will proces s outside with the Blessed Sacrament, following our usual route out the main doors of the Church, down Elliot Street, right on Linden Street, and then right into the Linden Street parking lot through the parish gardens on our way back to the Church. We will conclude with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Te Deum Laudamus

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 04:06:12 GMT

We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord: all the earth doth worship Thee: the Father Everlasting. To Thee all Angels cry aloud: The Heavens and all the Powers therein. To Thee all the Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry. Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee. The goodly fellowship of
the Prophets praise Thee. The noble army of Martyrs praise Thee. The holy Church throughout the world doth acknowledge Thee. The Father of an Infinite Majesty; Thine honorable True and Only Son; Also the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ: Thou art the everlasting Son
of the Father. When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man Thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb. When Thou didst overcome the sharpness of death Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father. We believe that Thou shalt
come to be our Judge. We therefore pray Thee: help Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy Precious Blood. Make them to be numbered among Thy Saints in glory everlasting. O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine heritage. Govern them and lift them up forever. Day by day we magnify Thee.
And we worship Thy Name ever world without end. Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us. O Lord, let Thy mercy lighten upon us. As our trust is in Thee. O Lord, in Thee have I trusted. Let me never be confounded.

Pentecost and the Close of Paschaltide

Sun, 28 May 2023 04:54:09 GMT

Today we reach the culmination of our celebration of the Easter Feast: The Day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter. It is the third of the three great Easter Feasts—Easter Sunday of the Resurrection, Ascension Thursday, Pentecost (or Whitsunday); it is the inaugural of the divine institution of the Catholic Church. St. Augustine of Hippo (+430 A.D.) contrasts the 40 Days of the Lenten Fast with the 50 Days of the Easter Feast. The Easter Feast is longer by ten days, which indicates both the superiority of the feast over the fast and the mystical sign of Eternity. On this Feast of Pentecost, it is fitting to recall St. Augustine’s Prayer to the Holy Spirit, a fairly easy one to memorize and make part of our own personal devotion.

St. Augustine’s Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit That my thought may be all holy.

Act in me, O Holy Spirit That my work, too, may be holy.

Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit That I love but what is holy.

Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit To defend all that is holy.

Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit That I always may be holy.

Amen.

Ad Multos Annos

Sun, 21 May 2023 04:22:07 GMT

AD MULTOS ANNOS— “May you have many years.” This is the greeting given to a priest on the Anniversary of his Ordination. Today Fr. Stephen LeBlanc, our Parochial Vicar, celebrates the 7th Anniversary of his priestly ordination: May 21st, 2016. Our visiting assistant priest Fr. Juan Carlos Rivera, S.J., who is helping us in the parish this Sunday morning, is also celebrating the 7th Anniversary of his priestly ordination this year: June 11th, 2016.

Both Fr. LeBlanc and Fr. Rivera celebrated Masses of Thanksgiving here at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in 2016, after their respective Ordinations (PHOTOS below). May they have many more years!

Rogationtide

Sat, 13 May 2023 05:12:12 GMT

The “Great Forty Days” commemorating Christ’s visible presence among His disciples after His Resurrection (from Easter to Ascension) are drawing to a close. Thursday of this week is Ascension Thursday. [See the Mass Schedule for the Ascension below.] Traditionally the three days before the Ascension of the Lord are observed as Rogation Days, with public processions of penance and the Mass of Rogation. To distinguish these Rogations Days from the St. Mark’s Procession of April 25th, they are also called the “Lesser Litanies”.

The Procession consists of the chanting of the Litany of the Saints and prayers of petition. Their object is a prayer for mercy—to call God’s mercy down upon the earth that we may be spared the consequences of strict divine justice, and that the earth may be fruitful for this year’s harvest.
We will hold two such Rogation Processions this year, Monday and Wednesday, at 12:30 PM. At the conclusion of the Procession, the priest will celebrate the Mass of Rogation. If you cannot attend these Processions, it would be a wonderful practice to recite the Litany of the Saints privately in union with the spirit of Rogationtide. Also, alternatively, one could offer 5 decades of the Rosary for this intention.

ASCENSION THURSDAY MAY 18th, 2023 Holy Day of Obligation

Mass times at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes:

7:30 AM (Novus Ordo)

12:30 PM (Traditional Latin)

5:30 PM (Novus Ordo)

7:30 PM (Traditional Latin)

Children's First Communion

Sat, 06 May 2023 05:50:39 GMT

Today at our 9AM Mass and next Sunday, Mother’s Day, at our 11 AM Mass, we will be celebrating the First Holy Communion of several of our parish children. (You will see their names in the panel to the right.) This is always a high point of every parish’s life. It is an occasion of pure joy. Let us pray for the special intention of these children and their families.

Also, looking ahead, next Sunday will be Rogation Sunday, the Sunday before Ascension Thursday, which is May 18th, this year. Ascension Thursday marks the close of the “Great Forty Days” when the Risen Lord appeared visibly to His disciples and showed them, by many proofs, that He was alive again. Our Mass Schedule for Ascension Day will follow the week-day for a Holy Day: 7:30 AM (Novus Ordo), 12:30 PM (Traditional Latin), 5:30 PM (Novus Ordo), 7:30 PM (Traditional Latin).

The following children of the parish are making their First Holy Communion over the next two Sundays:

May 7th, 2023

9:00 AM Mass:
Brooks Augusto Olivero

Morgan Elise Towns

May 14th, 2023

11:00 AM Mass:
Margaret Delaney Horan

Thomas Joseph Devoid

James Michael Malley

Emmet Jack Mulqueen

Thomas Augustine Phelps

Please join us for the May Procession to the Parish Gardens at the end of the First Communion Mass where we will have the Crowning of Mary.

Saint Joseph, Terror of Demons

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 18:50:51 GMT

At a time when folly has reached such a level that there are people who would actually use ritual satanism as a way to épater la bourgeoisie (that is, doing things to shock conventional people), it is a solace to us to consider the Patronage of Saint Joseph under his title Terror of Demons . Historically, this Sunday in the Easter Cycle belongs to Saint Joseph. In 1847, at the beginning of his long reign as Pope, Pius IX introduced a feast of Saint Joseph during Eastertide. He called it the Patronage of Saint Joseph and it was appointed for the Third Sunday after Easter (4th Sunday of Easter). Then in 1912, Pope Pius X changed the practice by having a Solemnity of Saint Joseph celebrated on the Wednesday of the third week of Easter and making this a feast with an Octave. Thus, the Sunday of the Patronage of Saint Joseph falls within the Easter Octave of Saint Joseph.
This Easter Solemnity of Saint Joseph remained in place until 1955 when Pius XII superseded it with a new feast of St. Joseph the Workman, which he appointed for May 1st, “May Day”— the very day which the Communist parties had appropriated as their show-of-force in the streets, with mass marches and parades. The Catholic Church’s Saint Joseph the Workman was to be the counter-point to a very powerful political ideology which claimed speak to exclusively for the working class and which, following Karl Marx, despised religion, particularly Christian religion, as the opiate of the people.

Devotion to Saint Joseph, and the faith-belief that is expressed through it, directs us to a confidence in prayer. Writing in the 1800s, Dom Prosper Guéranger says of Saint Joseph:
Extraordinary as is this power, need we be surprised at its being given to a man like Joseph, whose connections with the Son of God on earth were so far above other men? Jesus deigned to be subject to Joseph here below; now that He is in Heaven, He would glorify the creature to whom to whom He consigned the guardianship of His own Childhood and the honor of His Mother. He has given him a power which is above our calculations. Hence it is that the Church invites us on this day to have recourse, with unreserved confidence, to this all-powerful Protector.

St. Teresa of Avila (+1582) was instructed by Heaven with regard to the powerfulness of Saint Joseph’s intercession. She says:

I took for my patron and lord the glorious St. Joseph, and recommended myself earnestly to him. I saw clearly...that he rendered me greater service than I knew how to ask for. I cannot call to mind that I have ever asked him at any time for anything which he has not granted: and I am filled with amazement, when I consider the great favors which God hath given me through this blessed Saint, the dangers from which he hath delivered me, both of body and soul. To other Saints, Our Lord seems to have given grace to succor men in some special necessity; but to this glorious Saint, I know by experience, to help us in all: and Our Lord would have us understand that, as He was Himself subject to him upon earth— for St. Joseph, having the title of father , and being His guardian, could command Him—so now in Heaven He performs all his petitions. I have asked others to recommend themselves to St. Joseph, and they too know this by experience; and there are many who are now of late devout to him having had experience of this truth.

Below: An illustrat ion rendering the mystery of Saint Joseph’s heavenly power against the attacks of the Devil. “Saint Joseph, Terror of Demons, pray for us….”

The Saint Mark's Procession (The Greater Litanies)

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 01:16:31 GMT

Today, immediately prior to our 11:00 AM Mass, we will carry out the “St. Mark’s Procession”, also known as the “Greater Litanies”. This is what is called a Rogation Procession: we are entreating—begging—of God, in His Divine Mercy, to spare us the just calamities which sin brings upon the natural world. It is a penitential procession, which may seem out of place to us in Easter, but its origins are well-established in our traditions.

April 25th, according to a worthy tradition of the Early Church, was the day when Saint Peter first entered the city of Rome, having escaped from certain death in Jerusalem by miraculous means (Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 13). It is from this day that Peter’s reign is calculated as having lasted 25 years, two months, and some days until his martyrdom under the Emperor Nero. (The common calculation is A.D. 42-67.) Later on in the life of the Church, April 25th became the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, who was Peter’s secretary in Rome and who is credited with the shaping of St. Peter’s preaching into the text we know as St. Mark’s Gospel.
In the carrying out of the Rogation Procession perpetually on this day, April 25th, even when the Easter feasts supersede the Feast of St. Mark, the memory of the beginning of Saint Peter’s pontificate was preserved.
Over the course of time, the lay faithful’s participation in the Rogation Processions fell off. It was a clergy-performed affair. This popular indifference much disturbed St. Charles Borromeo (16th Century) when he first took position of his see as archbishop of Milan. He himself took part in the April 25th Procession walking bare-foot. Such fervor made its impression: the people began to take their place in this moving common-prayer of petition and reparation at long last.
The historical connection with the St. Mark’s Procession and the Rogation Processions in the three days before Ascension Thursday were further obscured by their elimination from the Roman Missal in 1970. We have the chance to revive these observances in our parish life by holding the St. Mark’s Procession on an available Sunday proximate to April 25th itself. The Procession is introduced by the Antiphon: “Rise up, O Lord, and come to our assistance, and deliver us for Thy Name’s sake. V. We have heard, O God, with our own ears the things which our forefathers have told us….”
Then begins the chanting of the Litany of the Saints, Kyrie, eleison …. Lord, have mercy! For our Procession today we will follow behind the Processional Cross and walk around outside the church as we did for our Procession on Palm Sunday. When we return to the church there are concluding prayers of petition, starting with Psalm 69: O God, come to my assistance: O Lord, make haste to help me.
Here is a sample of the petitions:
We beseech Thee, O Lord, inspire and guide our works in their beginning, and accompany them unto fruition, that every prayer and work may ever begin with Thee, and through Thee be accomplished.
Almighty, everlasting God, Who hast dominions over the living and the dead, and art merciful to all whom Thou fore-knowest shall be Thine by faith and good works; we, Thy supplicants, pray that they for whom we propose to pour forth our petitions, whether this present world detain them in the flesh, or the world to come hath already received their souls, may by Thy benign goodness and through the intercession of Thy Saints, obtain pardon from all their sins. Through Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever. Amen.
V. The Lord be with you. R. And with thy spirit. V. May the Almighty and merciful Lord, graciously hear us. R. Amen. V. And may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. R. Amen.

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! - Indeed He is Risen! Alleluia

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 20:37:03 GMT

Easter Greetings, as we mark the Octave Day of Easter. We are very grateful as a parish for the beautiful Holy Week we have just lived. We had wonderful participation at all of the services from you, the lay faithful. I am particularly grateful to the individuals from our Parish Staff, our musicians, our sacristans and altar servers. I want to make mention especially of our Parish Music Director Bobbie Hoffmann who put together, once again, such a high quality music program and directed its performance with her team of professional guest musicians. Also, I want to acknowledge the work of parishioner Tyler Molisse in making preparations for and then also acting as Master of Ceremonies for the more complicated Offices of Holy Week, according to the form in general use in the Church through 1954.

If you visit our Parish website you will see some beautiful photo galleries of our 2023 Holy Week. These photos were taken by our parishioner Sarah Custodio who manages our web-page and who puts her talent for photography generously at the service of the parish in the recording of our parish life. I also put some photos from Palm Sunday on Page 8 by our Latin Mass Children’s Catechism Director Patti Strom. Deo gratias!

Parish Lenten Mission, 2023: Frere Andre, the Miracle-Man" of Montreal Conference VI: "The Grain of Wheat That Dies"

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 20:32:29 GMT

“But Jesus answered them, saying: The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in this world keepeth it unto life eternal.”

—St. John 12:23-25

Our Lord spoke these words on Palm Sunday, just after He had made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. They are words which fill us with emotion as we understand how Jesus is looking into the depths of His Passion. The grain of wheat that dies and is buried in the earth, which then bringeth forth much fruit, is Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself in His Death and Resurrection. The grain of wheat that dies in order to bring forth more abundant life is also a key image of our own Christian lives. Eternity is contained within our “grain-of-wheat”. It is only by our dying that it can be released.
We have been considering in our Conferences over the past six Lenten Fridays how God used the Holy Cross Brother André Bessette (who held only the lowly office of the door-answerer in his religious Community) as an instrument of divine power, all the while the Brother saw himself as a secondary instrument to Saint Joseph, who was the primary conduit of God’s divine power at work through prayer.
It is striking to us from a distance just how “unadorned” Frere André’s apostolate was. We are quite accustomed to the religious celebrity who sits at the center of a well-organized (and frequently well-funded) “ministry”. The developments in social media have further promoted this style of reaching people. Inescapably, it tends to fall into the groove of the business model of expansion and public-relations promotion.
But the apostolate of Frere André through Saint Joseph was not at all like that. He wrote no books. He gave no speeches. Our record of what he said is cobbled together from people’s memories of them. Frere André’s apostolate had three phases: first, people began to seek him out as the porter at the College NotreDame; then the Community sent him down to the tramway station to talk to the people who came in the tramway reception room; finally he was assigned to the original, small Oratory of Saint Joseph erected on the Mount Royal to receive the visitors. Other than that he was taken to visit the poor sick who could not come to him. His tools of ministry were the sacramentals of St. Joseph medals and St. Joseph oil, to be rubbed on the sick body, accompanied and followed by prayers to St. Joseph.
The last years of Frere André’s life were a virtual Way-of-the-Cross. He was very old, his health was failing, he was at the point of exhaustion, and yet—throngs of visitors came to his office making ever-increasing demands. Under the strain of it all, the cracks of impatience began to show through, as his Superior, Father Cousineau, later testified:
Many people, frightened by his ascetic expression or by the abruptness with which he put an end to meaningless conversations, failed to notice that Brother André maintained, despite his abrupt demeanor, a facial serenity [which was] the mirror of his inner pea ce…
For five days at the turning of the Year 1937, Frere André lay dying in a Catholic Hospital run by the Sisters of Good Hope. He asked the Sisters attending him to “Pray for my conversion”. On January 3rd, he said: “The Almighty is coming.” Fifty minutes after midnight on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, Frere André breathed his last. The grain of wheat had died and was buried in the earth.
Since then, his life in eternity has borne much fruit. The Church has given her judgment by raising him to the altars as one of her canonized Saints. But as with Christ, so with His Saints: an unbelieving, cold-hearted world does not recognize the goodness of God in their midst. This is our challenge—to see through the world’s filter and to discover just what it is to be a Christian!

Parish Lenten Mission, 2023: Frere Andre, The "Miracle-Man" of Montreal Conference V: "He Hath Done All Things Well"

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 05:20:03 GMT

“And they bring to Jesus one deaf and mute: and they besought Him that He would lay His hand upon him. And taking him from the multitude apart, He put His fingers into his ears: and spitting He touched his tongue. And looking up to Heaven, He groaned and said to him: Ephpheta, which is, Be thou opened. And immediately his ears were opened and the string of his tongue was loosed and he spoke right. And He charged them that they should tell no man. But the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal did they publish it. And so much the more did they wonder, saying: He hath done all things well . He hath made both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

—St. Mark 7:32-37

By 1890, 20 years after Alfred Bessette had taken the name-in-religion “André”, his reputation had spread far and wide that he was a miracle-man, un faiseur des miracles! In spite of the derision from within his own Community, the visitors seeking Frere André kept coming in ever greater numbers. Some parents of the school-boys lodged a protest with the College authorities: all of these sick people coming to see Frere André were likely vectors of infection for their children, they claimed with indignation. They demanded it be stopped!

An ingenious solution was found. In 1893, when a new tram-way line was built, linking downtown Montreal to the small neighborhood of Cote-des-Neiges, the Superior of the College negotiated with the authorities to have a stop near the school. When this happened, they sent Frere André down to the tramway stop to receive his visitors apart from the College. This was his reception room for a dozen years until he had a new one built by the first small chapel of the Oratoire Saint Joseph.

At this point in our story we do well to consider the place of miracles in God’s Divine Providence. I draw here from the book Brother André by the Montreal priest Jean-Guy Dubuc, published in English translation in 1999. We read in the Gospel Books how Jesus was a great worker of miracles. Even His enemies had to concede that He performed some extraordinary things which could not be explained.
Why did He do them? He did them at once to reward the faith which had already been shown and to express the charity of God. Fr. Dubuc explains:
Miracles can be fully understood—that is, perceived as acts of God’s love—only by those who believe in Him. Unbelievers can see only conjuring tricks or sorry acts of magic, all more or less spectacular or comprehensible. For one has to be prepared, to be readied for the sign, in order to recognize it when it appears and to understand its meaning...

...As related in the Gospels, Jesus’ miracles always linked the human, indeed the humane, to the Divine. They were invoked by a cry for help, expressed directly by persons in need or by others on their behalf. Thus initially, it is love for a person that triggers divine intervention. But also, Jesus’ actions are either preceded or followed by an act of faith. Miracles, being visible signs of a supernatural presence, can be accepted fully for what they are only in a context of faith. Without faith, they cannot be recognized, much less understood. A miracle is a sign directed exclusively to the faithful. A miracle is not a right that can be claimed. It is always an exceptional and gratuitous favor.
It is with this understanding that we should approach the miraculous in Frere André’s life. And then we can see just how abundantly the Divine Pity was poured out in answer to the Brother’s compassionate prayer for others.

Parish Lenten Mission, 2023: Frere Andre, The "Miracle-Man" of Montreal Conference IV: "Hidden in the Silence of St. Joseph"

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 04:23:20 GMT

“A faithful man shall be greatly praised; and he that is the keeper of his Lord, shall be glorified.”

–Proverbs 28 (Little Chapter for the Office of Vespers, Feast of St. Joseph)

It is a surprise for us, looking back from our vantage point, to realize just how long it took for Devotion to St. Joseph to develop in the life of the Catholic Church. It was in 1621 that Pope Gregory XV extended the observance of a Feast of St. Joseph on March 19th (piously believed to be the date of his death) to the whole Church. In 1870, the year our protagonist entered the Congregation of Holy Cross and took the name in religion “André”, Pope Pius IX declared St. Joseph to be “Patron and Protector of the universal (i.e., the “Catholic”) Church.
St. Joseph had long been the Patron Saint of French Canada, and, as a child, Frere André had taken to heart a most strong and tender filial devotion to St. Joseph through the example of his mother Clotilde. St. Joseph: the great and and silent Saint who plays such a crucial role in story of our Redemption, and yet we hear no word from him in the Gospel Books. God was to show His divine power through Frere André Bessette by means of the Holy Cross Brother hiding himself in the silence of St. Joseph.
Let us see how this began to unfold. Frere André, as Brother Porter for the College, had some very simple, tedious duties. He opened the door, he cleaned, he said his prescribed prayers, and he kept to his place on the bottom rung of the Community. One day, while watching over patients at the College infirmary he came to the bed of a boy who had been lying there for several days under strict doctor’s orders. He was running a dangerous fever.
“Why are you being so lazy,” the Brother asked the boy. He replied, “But I’m sick.” – “No, you’re not ... Why don’t you go and play with the others?” At this, the boy, feeling a sudden strength, got up from his sick bed, and rejoined his friends, to the astonishment of everybody. The boy was thoroughly examined by a doctor. He was watched. Everyone expected a relapse. But there was none. The sick boy had been instantaneously cured and no-one knew how.
What was the Community’s reaction to this healing? They came down on Brother Porter like a ton of bricks. How dare he! Who did he think he was! And this was just the opener.
As anyone who has ever even tried religious life or seminary life knows, often enough you can be in for some very rough treatment from other members of your community, especially if they consider you a little odd or “a bit much”. And so it was for Frere André.

Sometimes, instead of telling sick people bluntly that they were cured, the Porter told them to take some oil which had burned under a St. Joseph statue–“St. Joseph’s oil” he called itand to rub their sick limbs or wounds with it. This earned him the derisive label from his Community Brothers of “Old Greaser”, or “Old Smearer”. If St. Joseph were really going to work miracles in their day through someone, why would he use that one ? The question answered itself, didn’t it? It was all too ridiculous!
One day, in the Year 1884 (14 years after Frere André had been in religious life), two men came in carrying a woman crippled with rheumatism. Frere André was busy scrubbing the floor at the entrance to the College. She begged to see the Brother in order that he might cure her. Frere André did not address her. Instead, he said to the two men carrying her: “Let her walk by herself.” The woman managed to walk one step on her own, then another, and another. The whole time Frere André kept on scrubbing the floor. After a while, he finally spoke to the woman: “You’re no longer sick. You can go home now.” And she did–completely cured.

Parish Lenten Mission, 2023: Frere Andre, the "Miracle-Man" of Montreal Conference III "The Saints Behind the Saints"

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 04:42:21 GMT

“The LORD hath done great things for us: we are become joyful. Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as a stream in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds. But coming, they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves.”

–Psalm 125:3-7

This Psalm of David, which treats of the joy of the captive Jews upon their return from Babylon, is accommodated by the Church to express the rejoicing of the just upon their entry into Heaven. It is therefore a Psalm which expresses the redemption of mankind. It is an appropriate Psalm to introduce our Conference for tonight which is entitled: “The Saints Behind The Saints”. In the end, nobody gets to Heaven without help from the Communion of Saints on earth. We are meant to be vessels of grace for one another, and God in His dispensations arranges the intersections of our lives accordingly. This is an important awareness to protect us against a stark and reductive idea of God’s election, as if it were a plucking of individual souls here and there while allowing the mass of men to sink into damnation. The actual record of sanctity shows something else altogether.
Frere André Bessette was revered in his lifetime as a miracle-man, un faiseur des miracles , a “thaumaturge”. People had great faith in his prayers. He is now a canonized Saint of the Catholic Church.
But we can see the human links which shaped him and enabled God to fill him with that extra unction which transformed him into “Frere André”. I would like to focus on three human links–two individuals, and one collectivity. They are: Father André Provençal, the Parish Priest of Saint-Césaire, who sponsored him for Holy Cross, his mother Clotilde Bessette, who died when he was 12 years-old, and the faithful Catholic people of French Canada, who shaped his world, both in Quebec and in the U.S. New England migration.
Who was Fr. André Provençal? It would seem he was a hard-working parish priest in a rural community, esteemed by his parishioners as a true man of God. He was a “builder”, presiding over the building of a new parish church, a convent, and a “commercial college” for boys.
Fr. Provençal took notice of the young man Bessette who hung around the parish house, available for odd jobs and spending a great deal of time praying in church. He took Alfred under his wing, mentored him and wrote the strong letter which got him in the door with Holy Cross. Fr. Provençal wrote to the college authorities: “I am sending you a saint...”
Clotilde Bessette was a brief presence in the life of child Alfred, but he remembered her motherlove with great feeling for the whole of his long life. He remembered her sweetness to him. As Frere André recalled: “Probably due to the fact that I was the most sickly, my mother showed more affection to me than to the other children and also took greater care of me. She kissed me more often than I deserved...And I, also, how I loved her!” It was thanks to his mother that he got his deep inclination to be devoted to Saint. Joseph. Near t he end of his life, he revealed: “I’ve rarely prayed for my mother, but I’ve often prayed to her. ”
Finally, we must take a look at the collective faith-world of Catholic French Canada. We cannot adequately estimate the great advantage of being in a society infused with the ethos of Catholic faith and practice, as Quebec was at this time. Was it a perfect society? No. Was everybody a model Catholic? Of course not! Were there no counter-examples, shades of dark to challenge the light? No doubt there were plenty. But it is easier, far easier to learn how to become a Saint in a world where the Catholic imagination is so rich, so tangible, so re-assuring. The sanctity of Frere André is in a real sense an expression of the sanctity of so many just souls of French Canada, who both lived in his day and preceded him, and who now rejoice with Him in the land of Heaven.
Sanctity, you see, is not a divine work of splendid isolation. It comes out of our most familiar human bonds. These are the Saints behind the Saints.

Parish Lenten Mission, 2023: Frere Andre, the "Miracle-Man" of Montreal Conference II "Frere Andre's World of French Canada"

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 05:33:14 GMT

“For see your vocation, brethren, that there are not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise: and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen: and things that are not, that He bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in His sight.”

–I Corinthians 1:26-29

This is the Second Conference in our Parish Lenten Mission series, “ Frere André, the Miracle Man of Montreal” . Last week we were introduced to the Holy Cross Brother André Bessette, who filled the lowly office of portier, the porter, at the Congregation’s College NotreDame in Montreal for decades. His was a hidden life and a seemingly insignificant life. And yet, when he died on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, 1937, at the age of 91, over a million people turned out to pay their respects over the days of mourning. It was a spectacle of mass-mourning such as Canada had never seen, and it reached across the border into the United States, particularly the New England states. So something quite mysterious was going on in the life of this man, which surfaced so dramatically upon his death. I suggest to you that in Frere André we see an example of the fulfillment of these verses from First Corinthians, about how God chooses what is foolish, weak, base and contemptible in the eyes of the world in order to overturn all worldly expectations, and thereby show forth His divine power precisely from where it was least expected to come.

Alfred (the future “Frere André”) Bessette was to be sure an unprepossessing man: uneducated, uncultivated, suffering from all of the effects of chronic poverty in his physical person. But at the same time we might say he also embodied the “marginalization”, if you will, of a large mass of the Catholic people of French Canada in that day.
The French Canadians, the “Québecois”, were a conquered people–the descendants of the French colonists of New France who had been overwhelmed by the British military invasion of Quebec during the French and Indian War (1756-1763) and permanently cut off from France thereafter. In addition, after the American Revolution, British Loyalist refugees from the Thirteen Colonies found refuge in Canada and were rewarded with generous land-grants by the British Crown. In 1845, when Alfred Bessette was born, Canada was known as British North America. The situation of the French Canadians in the 1800s is comparable, I think, to that of the Irish, also a conquered people under the British.
In both places you had a large surplus rural population trying to eke out its living Frere André’s father Isaac was a construction worker and carpenter, supporting a family of ten children (Alfred/Frere André was the 8th child): he died cutting wood in the forest when Alfred was 10. His mother Clotilde died of tuberculosis two years later. The poor household was immediately dissolved: the younger children split up among relatives in the extended family. As an adolescent youth Alfred was sent out to make his way in the world, however he could.
We are familiar with the flood of Irish immigration into the United States in the wake of the Great Famine of the mid-1840s. There was also a flood of French Canadian immigration into the United States, particularly into New England seeking work in the factories of the Industrial Revolution. By the beginning of the 1900s there were as many French Canadians living in New England as in the whole of Quebec. Alfred Bessette joined this immigration.

We know nothing of the years of his life as a migrant worker in New England, although we know a great deal about the harsh working conditions at that time. He returned to Quebec in 1867, the year Canada became a Dominion instead of a colony. He was 22, still on his own as an unskilled worker. He settled in the village of Saint-Césaire, where he was acquainted with the parish priest there, Fr. André Provençal. Under the guidance of this priest, a new chapter of his life was to begin.

Parish Lenten Mission, 2023: Frere Andre, the "Miracle-Man" of Montreal Conference I "Who Was Frere Andre?"

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 05:51:03 GMT

“Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much.”

–St. James

“For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much...” This Scripture verse is going to be the underlying theme for our Parish Lenten Mission series this year. Our Mission is entitled “Frere André (Brother André): The Miracle Man of Montreal.” Who was Frere André?

Frere André Bessette was a religious Brother of the Congregation of Holy Cross, C.S.C. (Perhaps we know this Congregation best for its University of Notre Dame in Indiana.) He lived from August 9th, 1845, to January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, 1937. He was 91 years-old. He entered the religious life with Holy Cross in November, 1870, at the College Notre-Dame in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. As a novice he was put to work as a porter–that is, the brother who answers the door, greets all visitors, and conveys the messages. The simplest work. No special skill needed. A role that can be filled by a brother who is not considered fit for any other task. The novice brother Bessette was to retain this lowly office for the rest of his life.

It was with misgiving that Holy Cross accepted him into their community at all. His health was too poor. Moreover he had no education, no intellectual aptitude, no cultivation. In short, nothing to recommend him as an asset to a congregation dedicated to education as part of its fundamental mission.

What he had though was a simple, strong Catholic faith which he had received from the milieu of the farm people of Quebec. It was a Catholic faith tested by poverty, by ill-health, by hunger, by being orphaned as a young boy, by the toil of migrant work in the United States. At the age of 25 Alfred Bessette came to the Congregation of Holy Cross with a faith-life already deeply marked by the Cross. And within that Catholic faith-life so marked by the Cross he nurtured a special devotion and friendship with St. Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus Our Lord.

The love and friendship with St. Joseph was what he shared with the many visitors with whom he talked in his office as porter. People would tell him their problems, unburdening th emselves to a sympathetic ear. They would ask for prayers. He would always tell them: Pray to St. Joseph (“Priez St. Joseph”).

Frere André also had the inspired dream that the College should build a chapel in honor of St. Joseph. At first, he was unable to convince his Superior. Finally, after six years, the Superior gave his permission and the Brother began trying to raise money for it. Two years later a modest chapel of St. Joseph was opened. This was the inauspicious beginning for the now magnificent Shrine in Montreal of St. Joseph’s Oratory (L’Oratoire St. Joseph) . The Oratory is still a popular place of pilgrimage today: a stark contrast to the mass unbelief and repudiation of Catholicism which has taken hold in oncefervently Catholic French Quebec.

By the time of his taking perpetual vows in 1874, Frere André had begun to acquire an unsought reputation as a miracle-man for the power of his prayers of intercession for the sick. He always credited the power of St. Joseph’s prayers for any favors received or miraculous cures. But people trusted the prayers of St. Joseph and Frere André. They sought him out, in greater and greater numbers. Upon his death in January, 1937, over one million people turned out to pay their respects. It was a mass-mourning such as Canada had never seen. And it extended into the United States where Frere André’s was well-known. Special trains were put at the disposal of visitors from the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont to bring them to Montreal for the funeral.

During the conferences of this Lenten Mission we shall focus on the person of Frere André, who is now a canonized Saint of the Church. But we shall also consider the background of the times in which he lived and look for insights into the unbelief of our own day with the aim of avoiding its traps. Let us ask Frere André to intercede with his friend St. Joseph that we may gain good spiritual fruit from our Mission.

+Saint André Bessette, C.S.C.

“Brother André” 1845-1931

Sister Andre Randon, " La Doyenne de l'Humanite"

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 07:09:02 GMT

On January 17th of this year Sister André Randon, a French nun of the Daughters of Charity, died in her sleep. She was 118 years old, just a few weeks short of her 119th birthday. She was born on February 11th, 1904 (the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes).

At the time of her death she was, officially, the world’s oldest person— “La Doyenne de l’Humanité”. Before that she had successively reached the status of France’s oldest person, the oldest nun, and—at the age of 117—the oldest person to survive a bout of COVID-19. She had tested positive but experienced no symptoms.
Although the aging process had deprived Sr. André of her eye-sight and her mobility, she was still of sound mind, her present-day awareness and all of the memories of her long life still intact. She was born into a French Protestant family in the city of Ales. She and her twin sister were the youngest children (there were three older brothers). Her given name was Lucile.

Lucile and her twin sister became mortally ill at 18 months. The sister died, but Lucile, against the odds, survived. At the age of 12 she was sent to work as a governess in the city of Marseilles.
In her mid-twenties she experienced a religious conversion and became a Catholic. Then, in 1944, she entered the convent to became a Daughter of Charity. She was forty years old. The name she took in religion was André, after one of her older brothers, who was much distressed over her decision to become a Catholic Sister.
As a Daughter of Charity, Sister André worked in the care of the sick, the elderly, orphaned children, and wounded military veterans. Even after retiring she continued to work in one of the Order’s nursing homes until she was 100 years old.
If she had not lived to such a record-age, her life would have no doubt remained hidden from the world-at-large. But her moment in the limelight revealed something of the great value of a life spent in faithful service to Christ, the love of Christ being the chief motive. St. Thérese of Lisieux believed that God purposefully keeps hidden the lives of some of His greatest saints. They do not even become known to the Church and their glory will not be seen until the Last Day. They are among His divine secrets.
The world-at-large looks at Sr. André Randon and exclaims, “ Wow! She lived to 118! And she liked hot chocolate too!” As Christians, we should look at her life and be moved to thoughts of Te Deum laudamus! (We praise Thee, O God…) . For her 117th birthday, Pope Francis sent her a pair of rosary beads which she cherished and used to pray. A great consoling thought this: the oldest person in the world, consecrated to Christ in the Evangelical Counsels, praying her rosary beads from the Pope, praying for the intentions of the world until the end of her days.

Benedict XVI and Lourdes

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 04:21:48 GMT

As we celebrate our Parish Patronal Feast Day, Our Lady of Lourdes (Feb. 11th), as an External Solemnity, I want to recall some poignant connections between Pope Benedict XVI and Lourdes. It fell to him as the reigning Pope to mark the 150th Jubilee of the Apparitions of Our Lady, Mary Immaculate, at Lourdes in 1858. The front cover shows Benedict praying inside the Grotto of Lourdes during his visit there in 2008.

Five years later, on the Feast of Lourdes, February 11th, 2013, Pope Benedict stunned the world with his surprise announcement that he was resigning the Papacy.

That very night, lightning struck St. Peter’s Basilica, as seen below.

Ten Sundays to Easter

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 01:26:53 GMT

This Sunday we begin the traditional Easter Cycle of the Church’s Year of Grace with the observance of Septuagesima Sunday. Ten Sundays from today we will be celebrating Easter, April 9th, 2023. Septuagesima, the Latin word for “Seventieth” draws us back in to the history of Israel in the Old Testament. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon, many of the survivors were carried off into slavery in Babylon (present-day Iraq). After seventy years of this Babylonian Captivity, the Jews were allowed to return and re-build their capital city, including their Temple.

The Church makes use of this imagery in the Lenten renewal. The faithful are invited to place themselves spiritually in the state of unredemption, likening their state to the captives of old. Their seventy-year captivity is re-purposed into the Christian’s seventy-day spiritual journey to Easter, a journey which begins with three Sundays of Pre-Lent (Septuagesima), then intensifies with Ash Wednesday and the Forty Days of Lent proper, and culminates in the Sacred Triduum on Easter Eve, the celebration of the Paschal Mystery.

Septuagesima is the window of opportunity to prepare ourselves to make a good Lent.

Review the relevant Church laws regarding fast and abstinence and then decide on a personal program for Lenten observance: How am I going to practice prayer, fasting, and almsgiving during the Forty Days?

As we have in past years, we will have a Parish Lenten Mission incorporated into the Via Crucis , the Stations of the Cross, on Friday nights during Lent. The theme of this Year’s Mission will be: “ Frere André Bessette, the ‘Miracle Man of Montreal’.”

Christmas Greetings from Father Salako in Africa

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 00:45:52 GMT

As we bring to its close our celebration on the Christmas Feast this week with Candlemas Day, I am happy to share with you Fr. Desiré Salako’s Christmas message from Africa.

Dear Brothers and Sisters of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Parish:

The joy of Christmas is here again. I greet you with the peace of that Night with which the Son of God made Man brought to us. Let us rejoice because the Word-made-flesh brought to our world a hope-filled message: "Emmanuel, God is with us".
My prayer for you all is that the Infant Jesus makes your families places of peace, love, unity and spiritual nourishment. May He continue to bless you and all members of your family. Allow me to share some events of our mission with you.
We have begun a new mission in the village. We hope that in years to come, this mission of primary Evangelization will yield its fruit in due time.
On behalf of all of us from here, I wish you all a happy and blessed New Year. My prayer for you is this: May the Lord bless and keep you. May He let His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May He show you His face and bring you peace. Amen.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Yours in Christ Jesus.

Forty Days of Christmas and the Culture of Life

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 07:03:12 GMT

How long does the Christmas Feast last? Forty-days, from December 25th at the commencement of the Midnight Mass to Candlemas Day on February 2nd. This is well explained by Dom Prosper Guéranger in his Liturgical Year .

—The Liturgical Year, Christmas-Book I
It is perfectly appropriate and fitting to keep the Christmas decorations up in the church and in the Catholic home through February 2nd, especially the scene of the Christmas Crib.

January 22nd in the Aftermath of DOBBS vs. JACKSON
We have reason to give thanks for answered prayers that on this 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade the decision has been overturned by the Court’s decision this past year Dobbs vs. Jackson . What had seemed an impregnable legal fortress enshrining abortion as a “constitutional right” was overthrown at last.
Unfortunately, as we know, the end of the Roe vs. Wade era has exposed another underlying reality which is how little of the population firmly agrees with the pro-life message. While at least half of the adult population seems ambivalent about abortion this does not translate into a consensus for protecting the right-to-life of unborn children nor for the kind of social reforms which would move the United States toward a Culture-of-Life.
And it is not just about abortion. We see the determined efforts to legalize “ medical assistance in dying ” around the country, including here in our own Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Note the disingenuousness of the word choice in order to avoid the plain meaning of euthanasia and suicide. As with the abortion issue, the thing is framed as about individual autonomy: I should have the legal right to do whatever I want with my body/life. We have reached the point of extreme egoism in the American experiment with ordered liberty in the framework of a constitutional republic. How can we expect to hold together any kind of a commonwealth when it really is all about me? No social duty, no keeping faith with those who came before us, no duty to posterity: once personal autonomy is asserted, all discussion is supposed to end.
Our own personal, credible Christian witness to the Gospel of Life is more urgent than ever!

Homage to Pope Benedict XVI

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 02:25:55 GMT

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The Sacred Monogram

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 03:57:33 GMT

This symbolic representation of the Most Holy Name of Jesus is a monogram of the Holy Name according to the Greek Alphabet. It looks to us like an “I-H-S”, but in Greek it means “J-E-S”, the first three letters of the Lord Jesus’ Name.

New Relics for the Parish High Altar: The Martyrdom of Father Ragheed Ganni

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 05:21:03 GMT

Last Sunday I presented the background to three of the Iraqi Christian martyrs in the new reliquaries on our parish High Altar. Today I relate the background of the fourth martyr: Fr. Ragheed Ganni, Chaldean Catholic priest of the Holy Spirit parish and secretary to the Bishop of Mosul, the martyr Archbishop Faraj Radho. My source material is taken from an article by Rody Sher, A Priest and Martyr for the Faith: The Cause for the Beatification of Father Ragheed Ganni. (Erbil, Iraq, August 19th, 2022, CNA).

Father Ganni, considered one of the most influential martyrs of the Catholic Church in Iraq, was killed by fanatical terrorist on June 3rd, 2007, after celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul … Father Ragheed was born in Mosul in 1972, where he complete his university studies, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He had loved the Church since childhood and learned its liturgical rites and melodies. He decided to devote his life to the Church in the sacred priesthood … Bishop Georgios Jarmo sent him to Rome in 1996 to begin his priestly formation journey. He studied at the Irish Institute and continued his studies in theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas—the Angelicum.
He had a strong desire to return to Mosul and serve the believers and members of his Church who were in tribulation due to the persecution of extremist Islamic groups since 2003. His wish was granted; he returned to Mosul and committed himself to serving its people, in addition to teaching at the Babylon College of Philosophy and Theology, in 2004.

During this period, the city of Mosul suffered from campaigns of intimidation, kidnapping, and killing of Christians, in addition to bombing many churches and monasteries. Many people were forced to seek refuge and escape to other cities and villages in northern Iraq, and many families were forced to migrate to other countries, fearing for their lives and their faith.
These challenges were not an obstacle to Father Ragheed, who continued all pastoral activities, celebrated Masses in the various churches in his diocese, and provided moral and spiritual support to his church children even in the most challenging times.
Father Ragheed constantly said: “The terrorists want to end our lives, but the Eucharist gives us life. When I hold the cup of the Eucharist in my hands, I say: This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. I feel His power overwhelm me. I hold the cup in my hand, but He is the One who holds me and us all, defying the terrorists and making us united in His boundless love.”
He emphasized more than once in his conversation with those close to him that he would continue to spread the message that obligated him to be a missionary in the name of Christ, saying: “The terrorists think that they are killing us physically or scaring us spiritually with their brutal methods. Many Christian families have fled because of the abuses committed against them, but the paradox is that we have come to realize, through the violence of the terrorists, that the dead and risen Christ gives us life. This gives us hope and helps us survive every day.”

The threats directed at Father Ragheed continued because of the various activities he led with the youth of the Church. His ministry angered the terrorist groups in Mosul, and death threats began to emerge.
The terrorists arrested him after he celebrated the Divine Liturgy with three deacons: Basman Yusef Daoud, Waheed Hanna Isho, and Ghassan Essam Bidawid. At that time, the terrorists asked him: “Did we not ask you not to open the church for prayer?” He replied, “How can I close the House of God in the face of worshippers?” These were the last words uttered by Father Ragheed Ganni, days before he became a martyr for Christ and His Church.
Father Ragheed Ganni realized that the Islamic terrorists would not let him live, given his disobedience to their orders and his continued celebration of the liturgy in Mosul, so he wrote his last prayer on October 12, 2006:
“Lord, I don’t think they will look at my prayer/Although it was a pessimistic prayer, everyone knew me as an optimist./And perhaps, for a moment, they forgot. They wondered why I was so optimistic,/ They have seen me smiling, braver and stronger in the most difficult situations,/ But, when they remember the times of troubles I lived, and the hardships I’ve been through,/ The ones that showed how weak I am and how capable You are./ You revealed how fragile I am and how strong You are,/ They will know that I, my Hope, have always spoken of You/ Because I knew You, and You were the reason for my optimism/ Even when I knew my death was near,/ But let me be with You now,/ May I please put it before You,/ You know better than I what time we are living./ I am a human being and know how weak a person is./ I want You to be my strength so that I will not allow anyone to insult me in the priesthood that I hold./Help me not to weaken and surrender myself in fear for my life./ Because I want to dies for You, to live with You and with You./ Now I am ready to meet You;/ Help me not to lose time for trial/ Because I told You that I knew man, but I also said that I knew You,/ O my Strength, my Power, my Hope.”

New Relics for the Parish High Altar

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 16:55:25 GMT

Deacon Sermed Ashkouri has asked to have placed among our Saints’ relics on the high altar four* relics presented to the Chaldean Mission of the Immaculate Conception by their Bishop, His Excellency Francis Qualabat. One reliquary contains the relics of two priests massacred among their people in Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad. Deacon Sermed (whose family church this was) describes the attack:

On October 31st (Feast of all Saints, Vigil), 2010 an attack was committed in the Cathedral...the most horrible attack against Iraqi Christians during a Sunday Mass. A group of 5-15 Jihadis of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq massacred 47 people (children, women, and men), and among them two priests: Father Thaler Abdalla who was reading the Gospel...and Father Wassim Sabieh [who] died on his mother’s lap...The attack was a watershed event, the world became suddenly aware of how Iraqi Christians were threatened, abused, and persecuted by Islamic terrorists and mafia groups….
Another relic is of Sister Cecilia Moshe Hanna , of the Order of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From the papers of her cause for Beatification we read:
Some people leave behind a ray of light. This is how Sister Cecilia was. Her lively presence filled the various parts of the monastery, due to her serious commitment to the work given to her and her perseverance in living the daily routine of the monastery. She was a woman of prayer in the first place, a Sister who persevered and was faithful to what was asked of her, a Sister who had brotherly love that enabled her to live with everyone without exception .
[*In next Sunday’s Bulletin: the story of Fr. Ragheed Ganni, priest and martyr.]
Sister Cecilia was slaughtered with a dull knife in a hate crime against Christians in 2002.
I thank Deacon Sermed and the Iraqi Community for sharing these relics with us as a whole parish community. The stories of these three contemporary Christian martyrs (and the stories of all the other Christians martyred with them) are something for us to reflect upon very deeply.

PHOTO: Our Lady of Salvation Cathedral after the 2010 attack, with pictures of the murdered parishioners.

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Immaculate Conception

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 06:21:50 GMT

Dom Prosper Guéranger (18051875) is a towering figure of the Catholic revival in 19th Century France. To him is due credit for being instrumental in the re-establishment of the Benedictine Order in France (suppressed by the French Revolution) and the renewal of the liturgy of the Roman Rite. His 15 volume The Liturgical Year (completed by his monks after his death) is a masterpiece of scholarship and spiritual reflection.

As a young man the future Dom Prosper received an extraordinary mystical grace regarding the Mystery of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, which he wrote down:

On December 8th, 1823, while I was doing my meditation with the Community, and I approached my argument—the Mystery of the day—with my rational viewpoints as usual, suddenly I was led to believe in Mary, Immaculate in her conception. Speculation and effort were united effortlessly in this Mystery.

I felt a sweet joy in my consent; without rapture, with a gentle peace and sincere conviction. Mary deigned to transform me with her blessed hands, without anxiety, without vehemence: one nature disappeared to leave room for another. I did not say anything to anyone, especially because I did not imagine the significance that this revelation would have for me. I was undoubtedly overwhelmed; but today I am still overwhelmed, when understanding the scope of the favor that the Holy Virgin deigned to grant me that day.

Advent Greetings from Father Salako in Africa

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 06:09:52 GMT

I recently received e-mail greetings from Fr. Desiré Salako, S.M.A., which I share with you:

Bonjour, Pere:

I’m very fine. I was in Niger for one month. I have just come back. The faithful, People-ofGod are fine. The catechists continue to hold our communities where we priests cannot stay because of insecurity [i.e. lawlessness, Islamist terrorism, danger of kidnapping]. In other places we continue to spread the Good News of salvation. All our seminarians have started their studies due to your help. God bless you! I have opened a new mission in the north of Benin in the Diocese of Natitingou. The Bishop and the People-of-God were very happy. Continue to pray for us. I have just left you but I have already missed you. See you soon, all of you! Union de priere. [i.e., united-in-prayer]

Fr. Desiré Salako, S.M.A.

Father Provincial for Benin/Niger

Societé des Missions Africaines (S.M.A.)

The "Peace Belll"

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 04:43:01 GMT

On the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the parish in 1970 a committee of parishioners put together a beautiful and interesting Centennial Yearbook. Its last page was dedicated to the Prayer of the Angelus. I quote from this commentary:

The Angelus developed over many centuries. During the early Middle Ages, bells were used for many purposes including the calling of people to prayer. An early intention for such prayer at the evening bell was for peace, which is why the bell itself is called the peace bell. Beginning in the year 1269 with the Franciscans, three Hail Mary’s were recited at this prayer bell with some variations up until the sixteenth century when the versicles were added to separate the Hail Mary’s….
Shortly before his death Pope Pius XII [+1958] said, “Revive the practice of reciting the Angelus at noon each day as a prayer for world peace and for aid to the Church, which finds itself confronted with many problems.” In the morning, noon, and evening the Angelus rings out from the lovely campanile tower of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Church, a message of hope from the bells of peace to all in the parish.
To pause for a few moments to say the Angelus is an excellent means of spiritual recollection. It can be recited anywhere in private—at the office or factory, in the home or even while walking along the street. By the daily recitation of the Angelus we can bring peace to our souls, and to the world, as well as assist the Church in her divine mission—to bring all to Christ.

The Prayer of the Angelus After the Sunday Latin Mass

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 06:53:41 GMT

As a follow-up to last Sunday’s Pastor’s Note on Pope Paul VI’s exhortation to Catholics to pray the Angelus three times each day (morningnoon-and-evening) I want to lay out the Latin text of the Angelus Prayer which we chant congregationally each Sunday at the end of the 11 AM and 5:30 PM Latin Masses.

V. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae.
R. Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.
[V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary...
R. And she conceived of the Holy Ghost.]
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus
tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus et
benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis
peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis
nostrae. Amen.
[(Hail Mary, etc.)]
V. Ecce ancilla Domini.
R. Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.
Ave Maria, etc .
[V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord...
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word. ]
(Hail Mary, etc. )
V. Et Verbum caro factum est.
R. Et habitavit in nobis.
Ave Maria, etc.
[V. And the Word was made flesh...
R. And dwelt amongst us. ]
(Hail Mary, etc.)
V. Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix.
R. Ut digni efficiamus promissionibus
Christi.
[V. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the
promises of Christ.]
Oremus:
Gratiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine,
mentibus nostris infunde: ut qui, Angelo
nuntiante, Christi Filii tui
incarnationem cognovimus, per
passionem ejus et crucem, ad
resurrectionis gloriam perducamur. Per
eundem Christum Dominum nostrum.
[Let us pray:
Pour forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, Thy grace
into our hearts, that we to whom the
Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made
known by the message of an Angel may by His
Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of
His Resurrection. Through the same Christ
Our Lord. Amen.]

The Prayer of the Angelus

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 00:58:46 GMT

In his Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus “For the Right Ordering and Development of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary” (February 2nd, 1974) , Pope Paul II highlighted two Marian Devotions which he considered to be of especially enduring value and relevance to Catholics’ faith-life in the wake of the reforms of Vatican II. They are the Angelus and the Rosary.

Of the Angelus the Pope said the following:

What we have to say about the Angelus is meant to be only a simple but earnest exhortation to continue its traditional recitation wherever and whenever possible. The Angelus does not need to be revised, because of its simple structure, its biblical character, its historical origin which links it to the prayer for peace and safety, and its quasi-liturgical rhythm which sanctifies different moments during the day, and because it reminds us of the Paschal Mystery, in which recalling the Incarnation of the Son of God we pray that we may be led "through His Passion and Cross to the glory of His Resurrection .

The prayer of the Angelus (in its traditional wording) recalls the Angel’s Gabriel’s Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. (St. Luke 1:26-38):

V. And the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…

R. And she conceived of the Holy Ghost. (Hail Mary, etc.)

V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord…

R. Be it done unto me according to thy word. (Hail Mary, etc.)

V. And the Word was made flesh…

R. And dwelt amongst us. (Hail Mary, etc.)

V. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God…

R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ .
Let us pray: Pour forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an Angel may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

The Angelus is said three times a day: at morning, noon, and evening. (The bells of our parish church toll the Angelus at 9 AM, 12 Noon and 6 PM). The Morning Angelus is associated with the Resurrection of Christ, who rose before dawn on Easter Sunday. The Noon Angelus belongs to His Passion: at the “Sixth Hour” Christ was nailed to the Cross on Good Friday. The Evening Angelus recalls the Incarnation itself, as pious tradition holds that it was in the evening when Our Lady received this vision of the Angel Gabriel.
I can only encourage the spread of this daily devotion. It is a simple and practical means of keeping ourselves mindful of God and of the central mysteries of our Christian faith —Incarnation, Passion-and-Cross, Resurrection—over the course of our day.

Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2022

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 05:35:47 GMT

This Sunday copies of the Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2022 are available to you in the pamphlet rack of the front vestibule of the Main Church. There are two separate reports: one for the Parish Cemetery of St. Mary’s (1 page, double-sided) and one for the Parish Church (2 pages—one double-sided, one single). I encourage you to take these reports home so as to help you be adequately informed on the economic realities of the Parish.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who observed ruefully back in the 1800s: “Can anyone remember when times were not hard and money not scarce?” These words seem particularly apropos to me as we consider the difficulties we face to keep our parish open in these our times.

Last year, I was able to present to you an Annual Report that showed our Parish Church revenues showing a slight surplus. This was due in large part to the strong, faithful giving of you the parishioners in spite of the unending disruptions caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic. When the chips were down your collective sacrificial giving carried the day.
This year’s Annual Report, however, shows a revenue short-fall of $137,471.00 . The shortfall was mitigated by us coming in lower on actual expenses to budget by $24,342.00 .
I am well aware of the heavy pressures on your household economies. I am not advocating a providentialist approach: I am not saying you should just give to the Church in amounts untethered to what you can actually afford to give and still meet all your other obligations. I am, however, asking you to please support your Parish at a stewardship-level of giving.
What do I mean by “stewardship-level giving”? I mean a commitment to supporting the Church out of your substance, not your surplus, in accordance with your means. I am not asking anyone to give money you don’t have: but I am asking everyone to give the Lord His portion out of what you do have.

Many Catholics seem to equate giving for Church support with giving to charity. Church support and charity are not the same. Charitable giving is an alms-deed and comes out of what is over and above our living expenses. We use some of what is left over for good works and relieving the wants of the neediest. It is a very important part of Christian living.
Church support, however, is distinct from charitable giving, even if the U.S. tax-code conflates it. It is part of our basic religious duties. It is a recognition that God is the 100% owner of all the worldly resources we have and we give Him back a portion in token of gratitude. This is what is expressed in the verses from the Book of Sirach which I often place in our weekly Stewardship column:
Glorify the Lord generously, and do not stint the first fruits of your hands. With every gift show a cheerful face, and dedicate your tithe with gladness. Give to the Most High as He has given, and as generously as your hand has found. For the LORD is the One who repays, and He will repay you sevenfold.—Sirach 35

I see the donor lists for this Parish. It moves me very deeply to see the level of sacrificial giving that is being made in so many of our households. It is a testament to your own personal faith and to your love for God that you make such sacrifices.
I want to use this occasion of the Annual Report to say thank-you to all who given to the support of this parish of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in the last Fiscal Year. May God bless you for the sincerity of your gifts and sustain you in all your needs.

SAINT MARY'S CEMETERY

Our Annual Report for our Parish Cemetery of St. Mary’s shows a solid financial footing. The net income from FY 2022 was $46,824.00 . I want to thank our parishioner and Superintendent Ron Goguen and the members his family-run company Guardian Estate Management for taking such excellent care of St. Mary’s and for making sure that it retains its character as a Catholic Cemetery. It is now one decade since Guardian Estate Management took over the running of St. Mary’s. I want to commend also Margie Bibbo who wears two hats at the rectory, running both the parish and the cemetery office, and who always extends herself for families in their time of loss. Finally, I want to thank our Business Manager Sharon Hogan for the excellent financial reports and her work as the parish accountant, which gives us the clear picture of our financial standing as we try to “navigate the waters”.

"Marialis Cultis" and the Rosary

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 04:30:29 GMT

In the later part of his reign as Pope, Paul VI issued an Apostolic Exhortation on the Feast of Candlemas, February 2nd, 1974. It was entitled Marialis Cultus, “For the Right Ordering and Development of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary” . In the third and final part of this document, he singled out two Marian Devotions which he considered to be of especially enduring value and relevant to the prayer life of Catholics in the wake of Vatican Council II. They are the Angelus and the Rosary.

Among his praises for the different ways in which the Rosary may be prayed, Pope Paul cited the following custom: As is well known, at one time there was a custom, still preserved in certain places, of adding to the name of Jesus in each Hail Mary reference to the mystery being contemplated. And this was done precisely in order to help contemplation and to make the mind and the voice act in unison.

What does this mean? The custom he refers to is observed in the following way (beginning with the First Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary):
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, JESUS—whom thou, O Virgin, conceived by the Holy Ghost—Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.

This line of reference is continued throughout the decade.

Here follows the tables of these pious insertions for the fifteen decades of the traditional Dominican Rosary.

The Joyful Mysteries

The Annunciation: “Whom thou, O Virgin, conceived by the Holy Ghost.”

The Visitation: “Whom thou, O Virgin, took to St. Elizabeth.”

The Nativity: “To Whom thou, O Virgin, gave birth.”

The Presentation: “Whom thou, O Virgin, presented in the Temple.”

The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple: “Whom thou, O Virgin, found again in the Temple.”

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The Agony in the Garden: “Who sweated Blood for us.”

The Scourging at the Pillar: “Who was scourged for us.”

The Crowning with Thorns: “Who was crowned with Thorns for us.”

The Carrying of the Cross: “Who bore the heavy Cross for us.”

The Crucifixion: “Who was crucified for us.”

The Glorious Mysteries

The Resurrection: “Who rose from the dead.”

The Ascension: “Who ascended into Heaven.”

Pentecost: “Who sent us the Holy Ghost.”

The Assumption: “Who took thee, O Virgin, into Heaven.”

The Coronation of Our Lady: “Who crowned thee, O Virgin, Queen of Heaven.”

For the Luminous Mysteries composed by John Paul II, we might use these inserts:

The Luminous Mysteries

The Baptism of the Our Lord: “Who was baptized for us.”

The Wedding Feast at Cana: “Who changed the water into wine.”

The Proclamation of the Kingdom: “Who proclaimed the Kingdom of God.”

The Transfiguration: “Who was transfigured for us.”

The Institution of the Holy Eucharist: “Who gave us His Body and Blood.”

Sixtieth Anniversary of the Opening of Vatican Council II

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 04:50:55 GMT

This past week we marked the 60th Anniversary of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council. Convoked by Pope John XIII, the Council opened with the pageantry of a painting of this Grand Procession.) grand religious procession into St. Peter’s on October 11th, 1962, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of Mary the Mother of God.

(The picture below is a painting of this Grand Procession.)

Pope John had chosen this date to underscore the entrustment to Our Lady’s patronage of the Council’s whole project. Just before the Council’s opening the Pope had made a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Our Lady of Loreto. Years before, while still a seminarian, he had made a pilgrimage to the Holy House.

The two photos here to the right show the young seminarian Angelo Roncalli, seated in the center and then the old man as Pope John XIII at the shrine of Loreto in October of 1962.

In the two photos on the opposite page you see a photo of the same Grand Procession which opened the Council. The second photo captures a thrilling moment on the night of October 11th. Boys and girls from Catholic Action came to St. Peter’s Square carrying burning torches. They formed themselves in the shape of a burning cross below the Pope’s window. Pope John opened his window gates and addressed them with familiar discourse.

Pope John’s well-known metaphor for the Vatican Council II as an “opening the windows” of the Church has to be understood according to the concrete way in which he used it. The windows he referenced are the shutters used to close against the sun. The Council was to figuratively open the shutters to the world in order that “they can see in and we can see out.” He did not use it in the sense that the Church was a place of stale, unhealthy air and someone needed to throw the windows open to the world in order for the “world” to air us out!

(PHOTO above: The Grand Procession which opened the Second Vatican Council on October 11th, 1962. PHOTO below: The torch-light procession of Catholic Action that same night.)

The event of the Second Vatican Council, which closed on December 8th, 1965, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, was, for our Catholic Church, what historians call a “watershed event”. It ushered in a new era of church-life. We have become used to making of Vatican Council II a chronological divider: the Pre-Conciliar Church and the Post-Conciliar Church. What does the Council ultimately mean? What are its real fruits? We are still too close to the event to have enough perspective. It is good for us to affirm, however, that God’s Providence is in all things, and that an event so explicitly entrusted to Our Lady’s Patronage will show itself in the long-run to have been a fountain of grace.

POPE FRANCIS’ MESSAGE OF CONDOLENCE TO KING CHARLES III AND THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY ON THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

“Deeply saddened to learn of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I offer heartfelt condolences to Your Majesty, the Members of the Royal Family, the People of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. I willingly join all who mourn her loss in praying for the Queen’s eternal rest, and in paying tribute to her life of unstinting service to the good of the Nation and the Commonwealth, her example of devotion to duty, her steadfast witness of faith in Jesus Christ and her firm hope in His promises….”
Pope Francis received Queen Elizabeth II at the Vatican in April of 2014. The occasion was the Centenary of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Holy See in 1914. On that occasion the Queen presented Pope Francis with the gift of a food hamper filled with local delicacies and a bottle of Balmoral whiskey.

The Voyage of Columbus and Columbus Day

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 03:14:12 GMT

On August 3rd, 1492, an Italian navigator Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain with a squadron of three ships: his flagship the Santa María , and two smaller ships, the Niña and the Pinta . These three ships together carried 120 men. Under the patronage of Pastor’s Note Isabella, the Queen of Spain, their mission was to sail west in the expectation that a sea trading route from Europe to the Far East could be found.

The very launching of this expedition represented an astonishing turn of fortune for Columbus. For years he and his brother Bartholomew had been trying to interest nobleman and monarchs in a scheme to discover the Far East by sailing westward. In January of 1492, Christopher Columbus and his son Diego (who was then 16) showed up outside a Dominican friars’ convent on the road from Granada, begging hospitality for the night. They had come from the military camp of King Ferdinand who been engaged in the final battle against the Muslims in Spain. The King and his council had had no interest in the sea-farer’s costly and dreamy scheme. So now, his last best chance destroyed (Bartholomew Columbus had already been rejected by Henry VII of England and Charles VIII of France), the father and son were out on the road, in poverty, and without a real plan.
While Columbus was trying to talk the porter of the convent into letting at least his son stay the night, the Prior, Father Juan Perez, was standing by and listening. Something about this man intrigued him. He had both of them admitted to the convent as guests. Later that night, Fr. Perez invited Christopher to his cell where he heard of the grand design and was won over to it.

Fr. Perez was the Father-confessor to Queen Isabella. He took it upon himself to go to the Queen and try to get her to take a personal interest in Columbus’s proposal. The Queen was persuaded and she in turn persuaded her husband King Ferdinand to give the man another hearing. Columbus was called to court at once. On April 17th, 1492 the first agreement with the Crown was signed and on April 30th the second.
At the point of departure, the new Admiral Columbus received the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist from Fr. Perez, who had been the catalyst for the realization of this voyage. The crewman followed Columbus’s example and also took the Sacraments.
On the night of October 11th, Columbus perceived a light which indicated land. The next morning, October 12th, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas and christened it “San Salvador” (“Saint Savior”, for Jesus Christ). The natives of the island were friendly. Thus began the European discovery of the American continents, a great moment in history which we celebrate with our national holiday of Columbus Day.

Saint Therese and the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 05:28:54 GMT

Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”) died on September 30th, 1897, in her Carmel in Lisieux, Normandy, France. She was only 24 years old. Upon her canonization, her feast-day was set on October 3rd. In the 1970 Calendar Reform of Pope Paul VI, however, her feast was transferred to October 1st.

There exists a significant connection between St. Thérèse and the Carmelite martyrs of the French Revolution, July 17th, 1794, which offers, in a way, “the rest of the story.”

The story with its providential co-incidences may be outlined as follows.

During the German invasion of 1870 the Carmelite Sisters of Lisieux had joined the flow of refugees. At Rennes, they had encountered Carmelites from the storied Compiègne Carmel, also refugees. There began a union fraternelle between the two Carmels from that time. This special relationship was sealed when the Lisieux Carmel wrote to the Compiègne Carmel, asking prayers for two gravely ill Sisters, through the intercession of the Martyrs of Compiègne. The two Sisters received a healing.
On the occasion of the Centenary of the Martyrs in 1894, St. Thérèse and another Sister were charged with making chapel decorations for the occasion. The other Sister later testified with what zeal Sr. Thérèse went about their task. “What good fortune,” she said to the other Sister. “if we were to have the same end. What a grace!”
In September of 1896 (a year before St. Thérèse died) the Abbé Roger Teil came to the Lisiuex Carmel to give a conference on the Carmelite Martyrs: he was the postulator for their process of beatification. St. Thérèse had been inspired by his conference and her enthusiasm for their cause had increased. Thirteen years later this priest would be assigned as the vice-postulator for her cause of beatification.

It was on the Martyrs’ anniversary, July 17th, 1897, when St. Thérèse, now confined to her sick-bed, spoke the prophetic words surrounding her own posthumous mission:
My mission is going to begin, my mission to make the good God loved as I love Him, to give my “Little Way” to souls. I want spend my heaven by doing good on earth until the end of the world.
St. Thérèse’s sister, Mère Agnès de Jésus, who was writing down her words made a note to herself: “I note that July 17th is the feast of the Blessed Martyrs of Compiègne.”

The Month of Our Lady of Sorrows and Pius VII

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 07:08:20 GMT

The designation of Our Lady of Sorrows as the chief devotion for the month of September has its poignant origins in the tribulation of the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of Pope Pius VII. In 1809, a few months after the Pope had erected the new diocese of Boston in the mission territory of the United States of America, Napoleon Bonaparte annexed Rome to his French Empire. The Pope was arrested and deported to Paris. From 1809-1814 the governance of the Church from the Apostolic See lay in a state of suspension. When Pius VII was at last able to return to Rome in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat, he instituted a new liturgical feast to be observed on the third Sunday of September: a second feast of the Seven Sorrows of Mary (the first being on Passion Friday, before Holy Week.) He saw it as a fitting that the Church should have a new memorial of Mt. Calvary, since the Church had just undergone a long experience of Calvary. This Seven Sorrows Sunday remained in place until the liturgical reform movement introduced other changes in the 20th Century. But it is good for us to be aware of the historical background.

Beatification of the "September Pope"

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by The Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world!”

The Ember Days of September

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 06:09:25 GMT

Following Holy Cross Day on September 14th, we observe the three Ember Days of September which sanctify the coming autumn season. In them we find traces of our Jewish origins as they evoke much of the spirit contained in the Jewish High Holy Days which begin with Rosh Hashana and include the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. This year our autumn embertide begins on Wednesday, September 21st, which is also the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. On Ember Friday, September 23rd, we are joined to the feast of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who bore the stigmata for half-a-century. Then, on Ember Saturday, September 24th, we coincide with the feast of Our Lady of Ransom (also know as Our Lady of Mercy). Special days of grace lie ahead for us this week. Let us enter into them with the prayer of thanksgiving, petition and penance.

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by The Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world!”

Holy Cross Day: Titular Feast of Our Archdiocesan Cathedral

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 05:38:07 GMT

On Wednesday of this week, September 14th, we celebrate the annual feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross or “Holy Cross Day”. Contained within the liturgical feast is the commemoration of two historical events: the Finding of the Holy Cross by St. Helena and the dedication of the basilicas consecrated at Jerusalem on September 14th, A.D. 335, on the very site of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mount of Calvary, and the recovery of the Holy Cross in A.D. 629 by the Byzantine Roman Emperor Heraclius from the Persians, who had carried it off as war booty from their sack of Jerusalem fifteen years earlier.

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by The Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world! ”

Thank You for Your Generous Support to Father Salako's Mission Appeal

Sat, 03 Sep 2022 04:02:01 GMT

We received a tremendous outpouring of support in response to Father Salako’s Mission Appeal last Sunday. As of the beginning of this past week the Collection had surpassed $30,000.00, including the proceeds which the children of one our parish families raised from their lemonade stand sales. Father Salako has arrived back safely in Africa and expressed his gratitude to you for all your love and support.

Missionary Co-operative Appeal envelopes are still available at the entrance tables to the church which may be used to designate a gift to “Fr. Salako’s Missions”.

PLEASE MAKE OUT ANY CHECKS PAYABLE TO MARY IMMACULATE OF LOURDES AND NOT TO FR. SALAKO PERSONALLY NOR TO THE S.M.A./ SOCIETY OF THE AFRICAN MISSIONS.

We process the donations through the parish and send them on to the S.M.A. headquarters in Tenafly, New Jersey, together with a cover-letter designating this money for “Father Salako’s Missions”.

Return of the Iraqi Chaldean-Rite Catholic Community to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes

I am happy to announce that the Mission of the Iraqi Chaldean-Rite Catholic Community will be returning to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes this month. The Iraqi Catholic Mission in the Archdiocese of Boston was part of our parish from 2012-2019, when they re-located to another parish church in the hope of expanding the Sunday participation of their members. Due to change of circumstances, the community leaders have asked to return here. We are all too ready to welcome them back and to support their continued development as fellow Catholics who are striving to preserve their own liturgical traditions in the Chaldean Rite—which Rite, like our own Roman Rite, is of Early Church origin.

At present, they do not have a priest who can say Mass for them every Sunday. The immediate plan is to have a Sunday Mass twice a month at 1:00 PM in the Main Church of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes. Their first Mass of return, however, will be next Saturday night, September 10th . On this occasion they will celebrate their festive traditions from Iraq around the Finding of the Holy Cross. Deacon Sermed Ashkouri serves them as their community leader and we look forward to Deacon Sermed’s diaconal help with the whole of our parish as well.

BLESSING OF SEEDS and SEEDLINGS in Honor of the NATIVITY of OUR LADY
(Saturday, September 10th, 2022, at the beginning of the 9 AM Mass)

This coming Saturday the appointed Blessing of Seeds and Seedlings in Honor of the Nativity of Our Lady (Feast-day, September 8th) will be offered just prior to the 9 AM daily Mass. You are invited to bring seeds and seedlings to be placed on the blessing table. The text of the Blessing according to the Roman Ritual is as follows:

BLESSING OF SEED AND SEEDLINGS
On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

O holy Lord, Father Almighty, everlasting God, we beg Thee to look with friendly countenance and benevolent eyes upon these seeds and seedlings. As Thou didst proclaim to Moses, Thy servant in the land of Egypt, saying: “Tell the children of Israel that when they enter the land of promise which I shall give them, they are to offer the first-fruits to the priests, and they shall be blessed”; so too at our request, O Lord, bless these seeds in Thy benevolence, and let them germinate and grow. Let neither hail nor frost destroy them, but keep them unharmed unto a finest maturity and abundant harvest for the service of body and soul, Thou who livest and reignest in perfect Trinity forever. Amen.

O Almighty, everlasting God, Sower and Tiller of the heavenly world, Who dost cultivate the field of our hearts with heavenly tools, hearken to our prayers, and pour forth bountiful blessings upon the fields in which these seeds will be sown. By Thy protecting hand, turn away the fury of the elements, so that this entire fruit may be filled with Thy blessing, and may be gathered without hindrance into the granary. Through Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forevermore. Amen.

Father Salako's Mission Appeal, Today, August 28th

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 05:18:17 GMT

As Fr. Salako prepares to return to Africa this week, he shares with us on this Sunday some of the particular projects he is working on and also the spirit of the mission of “primary evangelization” which is the charism of his congregation, the S.M.A., the Society of African Missions (“ Societé des Missions Africaines ”). Our Second Collection will go to the support of these missions. A special envelope marked “Missionary Co-operative Appeal” is available to you at the entrance tables to the church if you wish to use it for this collection.

Please Support Father Salako's Mission Appeal, August 28th

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 22:41:40 GMT

It has been such a joy to have Fr. Desiré Salako, S.M.A. back with us for the first time since the summer of 2019. His stay with us, however, has been all-too-brief and next Sunday, August 28th, will be his last Sunday with us before he returns to Africa. As we have been doing since Fr. Salako’s first summer with us in 2015, he will preach a Mission Appeal to us on his last Sunday with us and we will take up a Second Collection which will go to Fr. Salako’s Missions with the S.M.A. (“Societé des Missions Africaines). Please give us as generously as you have in our past years’ collections for Fr. Salako, in the Christian spirit of mission and charity-forour-neighbor.

More About the Story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne, 1794

Sun, 24 Jul 2022 04:04:14 GMT

Last Sunday for our bulletin and also in my preaching I drew attention to the Martyrdom of the Sixteen Carmelite nuns of Compiègne who went to the guillotine on July 17th, 1794.

There is even more to the account, however, than the dramatic action of their imprisonment, their show trial before the revolutionary tribunal, and their noble deaths on the scaffold.

The back-story begins in the Carmel with a vision-dream of one of the nuns, who was considered by her fellow religious to have the gift of prophecy. This vision occurred in the year 1693. In it the nun perceived that the entire Community would one day be called to a collective act of martyrdom, to “follow the Lamb”, “except for two or three”. Thus, a tradition was founded within this Carmel and kept as their Community secret.

In the event, this vision dream was exactly fulfilled. The Community was called to a collective act of martyrdom, and, on account of particular circumstances, three of the nuns were away from the Community at the time of the mass arrest and so survived. One of these survivors, Sister Marie de l’Incarnation, lived until 1836 and collected a great many artifacts to document the martyrdom of her Community.

After their expulsion from their Carmel in midSeptember, 1792, when they were dispersed among four residences but clandestinely living out their religious lives, the Prioress Sister Thérèse de Saint-Augustin suggested that they recite daily an act of consecration, offering themselves to God, body and soul, as expiatory victims for the sake of bringing to an end the evils presently afflicting France and the Catholic Church. The Sisters then were conscious co-operators with what seemed to be the actualization of the mystic vision which had been revealed within their Carmel a century before. In other words, these nuns accepted the invitation to “follow the Lamb”, to join their own life-blood to the Precious Blood of Christ. There is an agency here to which we Catholic believers of today need to take notice.

Exactly ten days after the Carmelites’ martyrdom, the master-mind of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Maximilian Robespierre, was overthrown and himself ended up on the scaffold of the guillotine. With his fall, the bloody killing-frenzy came to an abrupt end. The common interpretation among Catholics in its aftermath was that the Sixteen Carmelites, by their offering, had obtained the grace from God for the Reign of Terror to cease.

(Source: La relation du martyre des seize Carmélites de Compiègne, Soeur Marie de l’Incarnation— “Les documents originaux inédits publiés par William Bush”, Cerf, Paris, 1993)

RETURN OF FATHER DESIRE SALAKO, S.M.A:

I am happy to announce that Fr. Desiré Salako, from the Society of African Missions, will be able to return to us for the Month of August. He is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, August 2nd, and will be able to stay the month through August 28th. For the past two summers Fr. Salako was impeded from making his customary summer visits to us on account of the COVID-19 travel restrictions. We very much look forward to our re-union! As we have, since Fr. Salako’s first visit to us in the summer of 2015, we shall conduct a Mission Appeal for Fr. Salako’s Missions on the last Sunday in August, August 28th.

NEXT SUNDAY, JULY 31st, 2022: MISSIONARY CO-OPERATIVE APPEAL on behalf of the Marist order.

Next Sunday we will welcome a guest missionary preacher on behalf of the Marist order. Our guest preacher will speak at all of our parish Sunday Masses about their work and we will take up a Second Collection for their support.

Thank You for Your Synod Reponses

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 03:56:22 GMT

I want to express my thanks to all those who submitted a Synod Response as requested by our Regional Bishop, His Excellency Robert Reed. The large packet with all of the responses from Mary Immaculate of Lourdes was hand-delivered to Bishop Reed’s rectory this past week.

We received a variety of responses from both the Novus Ordo and the Latin Mass communities. Some were direct and brief: others wrote at length. The age-range of the respondents was from 18-years to 80+.

In organizing the responses to send to Bishop Reed it was most edifying to me to read them. There was nothing formulaic about them. They were your own personal testimonies, sometimes accompanied by details of your own personal histories and faith-journeys.

If I were to try to characterize them in a general way I would say two things:

One, how completely these thoughtful responses put to shame the negative-stereotyping and caricaturing of Catholic lay-faithful who find spiritual fulfillment in the traditional liturgy of the Church.

And two, what comes through in the diversity of perspectives and backgrounds, whether attending the Novus Ordo Mass or the Traditional Latin Mass, is your encounter with Christ, and particularly Christ in the Eucharist. By your own testimonies, that is why you are here, and what brings you to Mass. It is no vague “sense of mystery” nor a desire to find emotional security in “old things”.

Your testimonies manifest to me as your Pastor that I am dealing with a lay-faithful who are educated, informed, understand the content of their Catholic faith, and are sticking with the Church in spite of all the scandals and all the disorders and disappointments because, in the words of the Greek pilgrims who approach the Apostle Philip in the Jewish Temple on Palm Sunday: “ Sir, we would see Jesus.” (John 12:21b) In fact, your collective response gives evidence of the kind of well-formed Catholic laity that Vatican II was calling for.

As we mark the 1st Anniversary of Pope Francis’ Motu Propio Traditiones Custodes I feel anew the weight of the injustice and the pastoral violence directed against faithful Catholics whose Christian lives find nurture in the traditional liturgy of the Church. In the words of St. Augustine, “L et charity glow for correction! ”

Here in the Archdiocese of Boston we have a truly pastoral Bishop and father in Cardinal Seán, who—in a best case scenario in light of the 2021 Motu Propio—has judged that there will be no changes in the pastoral practices regarding the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass within his ordinary jurisdiction.

Let us persevere in the ways of faith and pray that we may continue to live our religious lives untroubled by the kind of controversies which are roiling at the top of Church governance.

Your dignified and thoughtful Synod Responses deserve to be respected and heard by the ecclesiastical powers that be. As your Pastor I will certainly do my part to ensure that they are. Thank you!

Excerpts From the Statement of Sean Cardinal O’Malley on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Dobbs v. Jackson, June 44th, 2022

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:11:54 GMT

For all of us who have spoken, written, worked, marched and prayed to reverse Roe v. Wade, today’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson is deeply significant and encouraging. This decision will create the possibility of protecting human life from conception; it calls us to recognize the unique burden faced by women in pregnancy; and it challenges us as a nation to work together to build up more communities of support—and available access to them—for all women experiencing unplanned pregnancies.

[The Catholic Church is not imposing its religion on American society by advocating against abortion in the public square.]

During the past half-century, as the abortion debate continued, the Catholic Church has often been accused of imposing a religious belief on our pluralistic society. It is indeed the case that, when addressing the Catholic community, the Church used both religious and moral arguments to oppose abortion. But when engaging the wider American civil society, elected officials, and our legal system, the Church has defended human life from its inception as a matter of human rights. Our continued efforts in advocating our position on the protection of unborn children is consistent with our advocacy for issues affecting the dignity of all persons at all stages and in all circumstances of life. The Church employs this principle of consistency in addressing issues of race, poverty, and human rights generally. It is a position that presents a moral argument as a foundation for law and policy to protect human life.

[Looking ahead, two important principles for Catholics to follow.]

First, we must adopt a wider vision of the multiple threats to human life in our society today. The recognition that human life begins with conception and continues through natural death. All human life deserves moral and legal protection at all times. Protection of life should be comprehensive, not selective. The Church, in its own positions, should reflect this wider vision, and we are called to engage our civil society around this more holistic view of the value and dignity of human life. It is commonly recognized by those on both sides of the abortion debate that conditions of poverty and injustice have been and are a major factor contributing to abortions. Those who have opposed and supported Roe can and should find common ground for a renewed commitment to social and economic justice in our country.

Second, protecting human life at all times can only succeed if we rediscover the value of civility in discourse, in protest, and in policy advocacy. Respect for life calls for mutual recognition of and respect for our common dignity as persons and citizens. In recent years, the idea of civility and respectful discourse has suffered from neglect, as has the respect for human life. The renewal of both is possible and urgently necessary.

As a bishop and a citizen, I hope and pray we can create a culture that protects the most vulnerable at the beginning of life and at any time life is threatened in any way.

[Cardinal Seán’s complete text may be found at the Archdiocesan website: bostoncatholic.org ]

Corpus Christi

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 06:44:02 GMT

Many thanks to Patti Strom for sharing with us some of the pictures she took of our Parish Corpus Christi Procession last Sunday, June 19th. It was a wonderful Feast of Faith. Special thanks to our Schola under the direction of Mrs. Bobbie Hoffmann, to our Masters of Ceremony and altar servers of our parish Society of St. Tarcisius, and to our flower girls who strewed the entire path of the Procession with rose petals from their baskets. It was truly a Procession which fulfilled the exhortation from St. Thomas Aquinas’s Lauda Sion Sequence:

Full and clear ring out thy chanting, Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting, From thy hearts let praises burst.

THE PROMISES OF OUR LORD

to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque for Souls Devoted to His Sacred Heart

1.“I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.”

2. “I will establish peace in their houses.”

3. “I will comfort them in all their afflictions.”

4. “I will be their secure refuge during life, and above all in death.”

5. “I will bestow a large blessing on all their undertakings.”

6. “Sinners shall find in My Heart the source and the infinite ocean of mercy.”

7. “Tepid souls shall grow fervent.”

8. “Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection.”

9. “I will bless every place where a picture of My Heart shall be set up and honored.”

10. “I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.”

11. “Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart, never to be blotted out.”

12. “I promise thee in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all those who communicate on the First Friday in nine consecutive months the grace of final penitence; they shall not die in My disgrace nor without receiving their Sacraments; My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.”

Corpus Christi

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 04:56:20 GMT

Today we happily resume the custom of our Parish Corpus Christi Procession, the first since 2019. It is also the close of the extended jubilee of the Year of the Eucharist in our Archdiocese of Boston. Today’s Procession will follow directly from the conclusion of the 11 AM Mass (for those attending another Sunday Mass who wish to come for the Procession only, the Procession should be getting underway at approximately 12:30 PM).

The first hymn of the Procession as the Eucharistic Canopy makes its way through the nave of the church is the Pange Lingua . Upon the return to church, the Solemn Te Deum is sung as the Blessed Sacrament is borne back to the high altar. We will conclude with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

SYNOD RESPONSE

I thank those of you who have responded already to the request for a comment on the Synodal Process Question:

Particularly with regard to the Sacred Liturgy [i.e., the Mass] what does the Church, in the broadest sense, need to hear from you?

Again, I would like to ask for individual responses from you the lay faithful to this question, and present these responses to Bishop Reed. Any young adult Catholic who has received the Sacrament of Confirmation is included in this general invitation.

What would be helpful is a written response, delivered either by paper letter to the rectory parish office or sent by email to the parish email address. In addition to the response to this Question, the Synod compilers are asking for the following information from you:

-Gender (Sex)

-Age Range

-How would you describe your ethnic/cultural background?

-How would you describe your socio-economic background?

-Please provide any additional information about yourself you wish to share.

Actual names and personal contact information will not be sent on to the Bishop’s office: only the content of your responses will be.

I would ask that any responses reach me by Wednesday, June 29th, the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Thank you for considering responding to this request. After all, it won’t do to complain that our voices aren’t heard and our views aren’t taken into consideration inside today’s Church if, when we’re asked to give input, we don’t.

Synodality: Would You Please Help Us?

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 03:06:20 GMT

We are being asked by our regional Bishop the Most Rev. Robert Reed (who was here only a few weeks ago to confer the Sacrament of Confirmation) for a collective response from our parish to the Synodal Process which has been promoted by Pope Francis.

The Question under consideration is this:

Particularly with regard to the Sacred Liturgy [i.e., the Mass] what does the Church, in the broadest sense, need to hear from you?

I would like to ask for individual responses from you the lay faithful to this question, and present these responses to Bishop Reed. Any young adult Catholic who has received the Sacrament of Confirmation is included in this general invitation.

-Gender (Sex)
-Age Range
-How would you describe your ethnic/cultural background?
-How would you describe your socio-economic background?
-Please provide any additional information about yourself you wish to share.

Actual names and personal contact information will not be sent on to the Bishop’s office: only the content of your responses will be.

I would ask that any responses reach me by Wednesday, June 29th, the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Thank you for considering responding to this request. After all, it won’t do to complain that our voices aren’t heard and our views aren’t taken into consideration inside today’s Church if, when we’re asked to give input, we don’t.

Please join us next Sunday for our Parish Procession of Corpus Christi. Weather permitting, we will process outside the Blessed Sacrament, following our usual route out the main doors of the Church, down Elliot Street, right on Linden Street, and then right into the Linden Street parking lot through the parish gardens on our way back to the Church. We will conclude with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The Procession will begin as the conclusion of the 11 AM Mass (approximately 12:30 PM).

Memorial Day Thank You and Recognition

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 03:12:12 GMT

This past Monday on Memorial Day we had a most beautiful outdoor Mass at our Parish Cemetery of St. Mary’s with a time of hospitality and fellowship afterwards. Fr. LeBlanc and I would like to extend our thanks and recognition on behalf of the whole parish to several individuals.

First to our Cemetery Superintendent Ron Goguen and the Staff of Guardian Estate Management who take care of St. Mary’s throughout the year. They are our “Guardians” not only in the physical upkeep and the work of burials but also in the spirit of their Catholic faith in this important work of burying the dead and in treating the cemetery as the sacred ground that it is. I want to thank individually these “Guardians”: Nick Keough, Patrick Goguen, Kevin Goguen, Peter Goguen, Brett Mansour and Dan Hughes .

Next, I wish to express thanks to Margie Bibbo who, in addition to being the Parish Secretary, is also the Cemetery Office Manager. As Pastor, I see the hard work she does throughout the year and the dedication she has to it, always available to the undertakers and to families when there is an urgent need at the death of a loved one.

Margie once again co-ordinated the logistical set-up of the Memorial Day event and took care of the hospitality, assisted by parishioner volunteers Jean Johnson and Rose DelGrosso . (Many thanks to Patti Strom for her gift which funded most of the refreshments.)

I want to thank and recognize Sharon Hogan our Business Manager, for her important role in the business end of our Cemetery management.

To our Music Director Mrs. Bobbie Hoffmann and her team of professional guest musicians, Jason Fisher on the viola, and singers Jason McStoots and Martin Near , thank you! For the beautiful music which lifted us all up on this solemn occasion.

While honoring our nation’s war-dead, Memorial Day is also the day we remember our own beloved dead, visit and tend their graves, and in the season of the Resurrection and Ascension to affirm in our hearts that Christ indeed is risen, and if we keep faith with Him here on earth, we shall rise with Him one day to the Life of Heaven.

Memorial Day and Thoughts of Peace

Sat, 28 May 2022 02:07:15 GMT

When I was in elementary school I remember how around Memorial Day each year a veteran of grandfatherly age would come and speak to a school assembly in order to explain the significance of this holiday (that it wasn’t just a fun day off from school). I particularly remember the year a man who was a veteran of World War I spoke to us and said that when he was a boy Memorial Day was the day to remember those who had died in the Civil War. Then he added matter-of-factly, “But since then we’ve had many other wars.” That image of war following upon war made a deep impression on me.

The spectre of war is before as we prepare once again to honor the memory of our nation’s wardead on Memorial Day. This is the first Memorial Day since the Taliban’s re-conquest of Afghanistan last summer, bringing a close to the 20 years of U.S. intervention which, considered as a foreign policy venture, ranks as an abject failure. The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, now four months old, rightly fills the world with fear for what wider effects it might unleash. Once the “dogs of war” have been let loose, it is not so easy to call them back. Warmaking has its own terrible internal laws of selfperpetuation and escalation.

This is a good moment of the year then to review our Catholic teaching on the moral duty of avoiding war and of working for peace. We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Injustice, excessive economic or social inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging among men and nations constantly threaten peace and cause wars. Everything done to overcome these disorders contributes to building up peace and avoiding war. (Par. 2317)

The Catechism then goes on to cite Par. 78 from the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World)

Insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until Christ comes again; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and these words will be fulfilled: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaias 2:4)

On October 4th, 1965, Pope Paul VI addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He uttered the memorable words: “No more war! War never again!”

What the Pope said that day to the UN delegates are words to hear for all leaders and those who have a say in crafting public policy, as well as to all men of good will:

If you wish to be brothers, let the weapons fall from your hands. One cannot love with offensive weapons in his hands. Those weapons, especially the terrible weapons that modern science has given you, long before they produce victims and ruins, cause bad dreams, foster bad feelings, create nightmares, distrust and somber resolves; they demand enormous expenditures; they obstruct projects of solidarity and useful work; they falsify the very psychology of peoples. As long as man remains that weak, changeable and even wicked being that he often shows himself to be, defensive arms will, unfortunately, be necessary. As for you, however, your courage and your work impel you to study ways of guaranteeing the security of international life without recourse to arms. This is an aim worthy of your efforts; this is what the peoples of the world expect of you; this is what you must achieve.

Statement of Cardinal Sean on the Leak of the U.S. Supreme Court Decision Draft

Sat, 21 May 2022 19:02:53 GMT

Cardinal Sean:

“The leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion on abortion has brought many voices into a conflicted question now almost fifty years old. Throughout those years, from the Roe v. Wade decision until today, the Catholic Church has been part of the abortion debate in this country. Two characteristics have marked our position. First, while Catholic moral teaching has opposed abortion since the apostolic era, the case we have made to our religiously pluralistic nation is that abortion is fundamentally a human rights question. Such questions are argued in rational terms: the right in danger is the right to life. Its defense in the public arena can and should be articulated in ways which those of any faith or no faith can analyze and understand. We have tried to make that case and will continue to do so whatever the final decision of the Court will be. Second, the human rights argument means that human life must be protected before birth and after birth. A pro-life position does not end at birth; it must extend to a public vision which encompasses the common good of our society. The child whose life is protected by the moral and civil law deserves the support of a society which will provide the socio-economic conditions in which life can flourish.”

“A draft opinion will not settle our long national debate. As it goes forward, before and after the final decision is made, my hope is that all participants will respect the dignity of others; on a question as deep as the one we seek to decide this attitude is essential.”

(Our Archbishop Seàn Cardinal O’Malley released this statement at the end of last week, May 13th.)

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Fr. Higgins:

I think it is important for us to be aware of this public statement of Cardinal Seàn, and to note its measured and restrained tone. Since the leaked draft hit the news there has been a hurricane of public hatred directed at the pro-life position and at the Catholic Church in particular. This public hatred has been amplified by the media outrage culture. Last week’s Boston Pilot gave news coverage to the calls for disruption of Catholic Masses around the U.S. between May 8th-14th, and of actual incidents of disruption or vandalism of churches.

It shouldn’t be necessary to say, but it has to be said and Cardinal Seàn has said it in his Statement—the Catholic Church’s witness against the wrongness of legalized abortion in this country is not an attempt to impose a “theocracy” or a peculiar religious dogma on a religiously pluralistic and secular society. It has been framed, and will continue to be framed, as a human rights issue which is accessible to reason and can be argued in rational terms. Moreover, as the Cardinal says, “A pro-life position does not end at birth; it must extend to a public vision which encompasses the common good of our society.” It is a libelous falsehood to say that the Catholic Church cares only about stopping abortions to the detriment of a larger social vision for the children actually born. If the U.S. Supreme Court actually does overturn Roe v. Wade it would remove only what has been the chief legal obstacle to protecting unborn life in this country for the last half-century. In so many important ways, however, the Pro-life work will have just begun.

May Devotions

Sat, 14 May 2022 04:23:06 GMT

We have had two joyous Sundays in a row with our Children’s First Communions and our May Processions. Many thanks again to our Latin Mass Children’s Catechism Director Patti Strom for sharing with us more pictures from these occasions. The photo below shows me and Fr. LeBlanc with the Children of the First Holy Communion Class after the Crowning of Mary as Queen of the May. The photos on Page 5 show the crownings. Mairead Gavin crowned Mary at the May 1st Procession and Lucy Monahan crowned Our Lady on May 8th.

The May Devotions are one of the high points of a parish’s life each year, especially so for us as we are dedicated under the parish title Mary Immaculate of Lourdes. One of the boyhood memories of May Devotions I have is of my mother setting up a May shrine to Our Lady in our home each year which we children would decorate from the flowers which grew in our yard. The home May shrine is a worthy tradition which I heartily encourage for all of our parish households.

Mother's Day Greetings

Sat, 07 May 2022 04:19:41 GMT

A very Happy Mother’s Day to all of our mothers here in church today—including all aunts, godmothers, and all women who have mentored the young in a motherly way. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein, +1942), wrote that “God redeems the world through the maternal love of women.” This is a great mystery, which we discern especially by consideration of the rôle of Mary as Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Church.

In the PHOTO below you see a picture of Bishop Robert Reed with the sixteen young Confirmandi presented to him for the Conferral of Confirmation at the 4:00 PM anticipated Mass for Divine Mercy Sunday on April 23rd, 2022. Many thanks to Patti Strom for providing this picture, together with others of the Confirmation Mass and last Sunday’s 9:00 AM First Communion and May Procession. Today, at our 11:00 AM Mass, we will have another Children’s First Holy Communion and May Procession.

Easter Greetings from Fr. Salako in Africa

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 00:58:20 GMT

I share with you the following Easter Greetings from Fr. Desiré Salako, S.M.A., in Africa with accompanying photos.

Dear Fr Higgins and Parishioners,
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” 1: Peter 1: 3 Just wanted to share these words of joy and wish you blessings at Easter!
This same joy of Easter, I shared and experienced with our people in Niger Republic, I spent some weeks there. There, we had adult baptism and also the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the Easter celebrations were joyful despite the difficulties the people are facing.
The situation in terms of security is very bad, people live in fear but we trust in God’s protection. There is also famine in the land, and the war in Ukraine is felt, for there is a lack of wheat and maize that usually come for the Ukraine.
The temperature has reached 45° C, here the heat is really very unbearable.
The people are very grateful to you all for your support and your prayers. They also pray for you!
My prayer for you is that you may feel your faith renewed and your heart made new with the hope Easter brings! God bless you all.
Fr Desiré Salako, S.M.A.

Welcome, Bishop Reed

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 23:34:16 GMT

We welcome His Excellency Most Honorable Robert Reed, our Regional Bishop to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes to confer the Sacrament of Confirmation on the youth candidates sponsored by our

parish. The Sacrament will be conferred during our 4:00 PM anticipated Mass for Divine Mercy Sunday, (Saturday, April 23rd). Please pray for the special intentions of our Confirmandi—their parents, their sponsors, and their families. They will need all of the graces they can get to face the challenges of our contemporary world in such a way that they will grow in their Christian lives.

Confirmandi

Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Parish: April 23rd, 2022 A.D.

Cora Constance Charron

Christopher

(Sponsor: Bridie Vail)

Deirdre Charron

Patrick
(Sponsor: Adrianne Richard)

Kelsey Angelina Cruz

Angelina
(Sponsor: Joanne Fuentes)

Charles Sebastian DeMatteo

Luisa Grace DeMatteo

Seth James Frye
John Bosco

(Sponsor: Carmen Pisaturo)

Ciaran Battles Gavin

Bernard of Clairvaux

(Sponsor: John Gavin)

Liam Vincent Gavin

Isidore of Seville

(Sponsor: Mary Novak)

Meghan Eilese Gavin

(Sponsor: Aine Raiger)

Eamon William Gormley

Peter
(Sponsor: Ann Gormley)

IsabellaVictoria Linscott

Mary
(Sponsor: Cathy Manzelli)

Joseph Raphael Juhasz

Ignatius Loyola

(Sponsor: Cameron MacKenzie)

IsabellaVictoria Linscott

Mary
(Sponsor: Cathy Manzelli)

Hugh Russell Reynolds

Sebastian
(Sponsor: John Lohan)

Isabella Delmaschio Tancredo

Giuseppe Mascati

(Sponsor: Hide Tancredo)

Astrid Marie Viollet

Philomena
(Sponsor: Constance Viollet)

Calixte Marie Viollet

Michael Archangel

(Sponsor: Theodore Viollet)

Easter Greetings

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 03:57:15 GMT

The front cover of our Easter Sunday Bulletin shows the Saint Patrick window of our parish church. The historic scene depicted is Easter Sunday, March 26th, A.D. 433, when Bishop Patrick, the Missionary Christi. Apostle to the Irish, first preaches the Gospel to the High King of Ireland at Tara. On this occasion he used the three-leaf shamrock to try to convey an idea of the mystery of the Trinity-inUnity of God. (PHOTO by Paul Eldridge.) We now begin the Great Day of Easter which will go on for the next Fifty Days to Pentecost, and reverberates all the way to the Feast of Corpus May all the adversities of life give place to the great weight of glory which is the hope we have in our Risen Lord Jesus Christ! Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Indeed He is Risen! Alleluia!

PARISH LENTEN MISSION for A.D. 2022 CONFERENCE VI: A MARIAN “GOLDEN AGE”

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, April 8th, 2022)

The title of this our final Conference tonight is: A Marian ‘Golden Age’. Both the Lourdes of the Apparitions to Bernadette in 1858, and the development of the “Lourdes of Pilgrimage” after 1872 occurred within a period of the Church’s life which we may characterize as a Marian “ Golden Age ”, a Golden Age of Mary, where popular devotion to Our Lady among the Catholic faithful and theological interest in further “plumbing the depths” of Mary’s rôle in the economy of salvation converged in some very beautiful, and light-some, and emotionfilled ways.
We might set the markers of this Golden Age as the two Solemn Dogmatic Definitions around Mary. The first: the Definition of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in1854, and the second: the Definition of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven in 1950. The Assumptionist Fathers who inspired and led the National Pilgrimage of France to Lourdes each summer to coincide with the Octave of Mary’s Assumption, August 15th - 22nd, prayed, among their intentions, for a Solemn Definition of Mary’s Assumption as Pius IX had done for the Immaculate Conception. In this, their prayerrequest was exactly fulfilled!
By another reckoning, we might broaden our Marian Golden Age to begin with its prelude in the Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Catherine Labouré at the Rue de Bac in Paris, 1830, and then end it with a coda in Pope Paul VI’s Proclamation of Mary as “Mother of the Church” at the conclusion of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1965.
What followed upon the close of Vatican II, however, was a sharp anti-Marian reaction from within the Church herself, resulting in such things as the diminishment of Marian feasts in the Liturgy and even, in some particular cases their elimination, the setting up of opposition between the “Renewal” of the Church and the Prayer of the Rosary, Fatima devotions, May Processions and all things Marian.
The very things which had heretofore been greatly honored in the Catholic Church were now considered suspect of “Mariolatry” (i.e., a false, exaggerated worship of Mary in place of the honors due to God). This period, as we know, was the cause of a great deal of pain and confusion among Catholic people.
This anti-Marian reaction has abated somewhat within the Church—there has been a corrective of this post-Vatican II “corrective”—but it does, nonetheless, mark a breach between us and this previous Golden Age of Mary, which the mass gatherings of the Assumptionists’ National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in the 1870s, 80s, and 90s epitomized so well.
What conclusions then can we make from our consideration of the “Lourdes of Pilgrimage” over these past Lenten Fridays? I would suggest three.
The first conclusion is a deeper understanding of how God answers prayer. The National Pilgrimage to Lourdes began as a prayer-request mobilization of loyal French Catholics. In the course of events the chief prayer intentions such as the Restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy, the Recovery of the Pope’s temporal powers, the transformation of France into an unabashedly Catholic Christian Commonwealth did not receive a favorable answer from God.
On the other hand, other prayer intentions were favorably answered, such as the prayer for the Solemn Definition of the Dogma of Mary’s Assumption. And looking at the miracles, the growth of the popularity of Lourdes world-wide, the realization of so many acts of charity–who would dare to say that God did not give unction to the prayers of the pilgrims at Lourdes?
Looking at this from our vantage point, we can see that the more time-bound and in-thismoment specific the prayer-petition was–such as the Restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy and the Coronation of Henry V–the less likely it was to be fulfilled, whereas the more openended and the more spiritual value contained in a prayer-petition, the more God outdid Himself in generosity. This is a lesson we can all apply in how we formulate our own prayer-requests to God.
The second conclusion: The Lourdes of Pilgrimage and the unbelieving world’s reaction to it offer a template for understanding the world we presently live in. In this world Science and Reason are set up as the polar opposite to Religion and Faith. In this world Religion and Faith are always on the defensive. Science and Reason, divorced from all religion, have the cultural upper hand. It is the world Pope Paul VI spoke of at the end of the Vatican II, 1965, where “ the religion of the God-made-Man has met the religion of the man who makes himself God. ”
It was during the latter decades of the 1800s, precisely during the decades when the Pilgrimage to Lourdes was such a phenomenon, that this modern-day mass unbelief we are so familiar with emerges into history. Therefore, we shouldn’t be dismayed by the reality. It is our destiny to live in these times. We should instead always be learning how to maneuver as Catholic Christian believers in this reality in order to build up our “spiritual immune system”.
And now the third and final conclusion. Our Marian Golden Age, of which the “Lourdes of Pilgrimage” was a part, has ended as an historical time-period. It lasted a long-time, between 96-135 years, but it has receded. Nevertheless, all times and seasons are Christ’s and Mary has no other office but to draw men closer to Christ. And when there has been a particular surge of divine manifestation in a given era, it is not just meant for the people of that time. It becomes a treasure-trove of spiritual riches for those who will be living after that era (which means us).
Thus this Marian Golden Age of yore continues to speak to us and inspire us as a living memory, a living force. It is the extension of Our Lady’s Magnificat onto the plane of time and space. It is a foretaste of heaven on earth. And the Lourdes of Pilgrimage, which still goes on, is a gateway to divine grace.
Father Higgins

Father Timothy J. Danahy (T. J. Danahy) was already the Pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Newton/ Needham when he made a pilgrimage to Lourdes in the early 1890s. He received a miraculous cure of his damaged eyesight after bathing in the pool of the Lourdes spring. He then made a vow that he would one day build a church in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes, as an offering of thanksgiving. He fulfilled that vow when this church of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, November 24th, A.D. 1910. This church in which we are worshipping today is a votive offering of a miraculé of Lourdes.

Holy Week 2022

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 03:52:35 GMT

St. Augustine described Holy Week as “Great Week”, for it is indeed the greatest week of the Year when we see the whole drama of our Redemption re-presented before us in the magnificent liturgical Offices. Today we have both the events of Christ’s Royal Messianic Entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and Jesus’ Passion on Good Friday brought before us. We are meant to be struck by the contrast—the cheering crowds on Palm Sunday vs. the angry mob shrieking for Jesus’ Blood on Good Friday. It is a reminder that humanity cannot be neatly divided into the good and the bad. We all harbor both good and evil within us.

Our Front Cover picture shows the Seven Sorrows of Mary: 1) The Prophecy of Simeon in the Temple, 2) The Flight into Egypt, 3) The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple after 3 Days, 4) The Meeting of Mary and Jesus on His Way to the Cross, 5) Mary Standing at the Foot of the Cross, 6) Mary Receiving Jesus’ Dead Body into her Arms, and 7) Mary Laying Jesus’ Body in the Holy Sepulchre. The Flemish artist is Simon Bening (ca. 1525-1530).
Friday in Passion Week is the day when Mary’s Seven Sorrows are honored, in anticipation of Good Friday eight days later. This memory of the Compassion of Our Lady is a help to us in approaching the Passion of Our Lord during these days of Holy Week. May Mary’s prayers come to our aide as we begin this “Great Week.”

PARISH LENTEN MISSION for A.D. 2022 CONFERENCE III: “LES MIRACULÉS”

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, April 1st, 2022 )

What we see at Lourdes today is the legacy of the National Pilgrimage of France which the Assumptionist Fathers began in 1873, on the heels of the first national Pilgrimage of Penance in 1872–150 years ago. The extravagant public religious devotions were part of the manifestation de foi which the Assumptionists made use of August after August. The prominent place of the sick in the Pilgrimage to Lourdes, tenderly cared for and fervently supported by the prayers of the Christian faithful around them, this was the signal work of the Assumptionists.
The Assumptionists believed that through the intercession of Notre-Dame de Lourdes, Mary the Immaculate Conception, a great spiritual renewal of France, of Rome, and indeed all of Christendom would come about. The working of miraculous signs of healing among the poorsick, carried to the baths at Lourdes in the same way that the people in the Gospels carried their sick to Christ, was to be the visible sign of the Divine Power channeling through Mary’s prayers.

In 1897, the 25th Jubilee of the National Pilgrimage, the Assumptionists sought to bring large numbers of the miraculés back to Lourdes for a procession of thanksgiving. Eighteen pilgrim trains set out from Paris and other regional cities to Lourdes that summer, totaling over 30,000 people, 1,000 of whom were the sick in the “white trains”. There was, however, in addition, a special train car painted in the papal colors of white and yellow. This car was reserved for the 325 miraculés .
At Lourdes, the Jubilee Year procession of the those who had received a miraculous healing at Lourdes moving between the lines of the sick and the dying in front of the Basilica, stirred up great emotion in the throngs of people gathered. Then Père François Picard, the Assumptionist who had been the leading organizer behind the National Pilgrimage for the last quarter-century, addressed the crowd in these words:
Well! My dear invalids, the procession is finished; we have fulfilled our duties, we have glorified Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, the Pope; it is for you to do the rest. I have been asked to suggest invocations; I do not tell you to cry aloud. I ask you to listen to the voice that you hear within you, and faithfully to obey the supernatural impulses that you feel. Look at these, who have been cured; see the examples that you have before you; these are your models; believe as they do; like them you will be cured! Now, invalids, if you have faith, arise!
And then, what happened? Well...
At this remarkable command a few of the dying began to get off their stretchers and to walk away from the nurses. Spontaneously, the crowd began to sing the ‘Magnificat’, and the emotion reached unprecedented heights. Before long there were more than forty ‘malades’ walking towards Picard, with the priests doing their best to organize a path so this procession of the newly risen could evade the groping hands of onlookers .
(From Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age , 1999, pp. 281-282 )
Did the occurrence of miraculous healings of the sick at Lourdes, especially in manifestations like this one in 1897, convince the anti-religious and the anti-clerical, or at least soften their attitudes? It did not. In fact, it had the opposite effect. For such people, the “men of science”, the “men of learning” in the Third Republic, Lourdes was a trigger–it unhinged them! They were like loose doors banging in the wind!
At Lourdes they saw only the Dark Ages of superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism.
They did not believe in the reality of the miracles. In true male chauvinist fashion, they dismissed the preponderance of cures among women as female hysteria and womanly weakness. These dames , they weren’t really cured of anything, or if they were, it was only a condition which their weak, unstable womanly emotions had caused them in the first place.
Most notorious among the nay-sayers was the brilliant writer Emile Zola, whose 1893 novel Lourdes was a frontal attack on the Shrine. Zola also misrepresented the real-life individual women miraculés on whom he had based his principal characters. In real life, these women had received lasting cures. In Zola’s fictional world, however, they were drawn as pathetic pawns of Catholic clerical power, who had only gotten temporary relief from their hysterical conditions by the combination of Lourdes water and auto-suggestion.
The establishment of the Lourdes Medical Bureau in 1883 was an attempt to establish the “scientific” basis for the self-reported cures among the miraculés . It did not then, nor has it ever since, convinced those who are biased against any explanation of the miraculous . If anything, it has acted as a self-imposed handicap on what the Church herself can officially call “miraculous”. This is why the number of official “cures” recognized by the Lourdes Medical Bureau is so paltry compared to the vast number of people who have given thanks to God for having received a miraculous cure through Notre-Dame de Lourdes over these past 150 years.
One such miraculé was Fr. Timothy J. Danahy, (T.J. Danahy), who was the pastor of this parish from 1890 until his death in 1923 (this year will be the 99th Anniversary of his death). In the early 1890s he made a pilgrimage to Lourdes and he received a miraculous cure of his damaged eye-sight. He made a vow then and there at Lourdes that, in thanksgiving, he would one day build a church in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes. So this church of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes, in which we are praying tonight, is the votive offering of a Lourdes miraculé .
Father Higgins

The Most Precious Blood of Jesus: The Price of Our Redemption

Sat, 02 Apr 2022 02:55:38 GMT

As we move into Passiontide the actual sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to the fore. When Jesus died on the Cross as the Lamb of Sacrifice He literally poured out every drop of His life-blood as a sin-offering for our salvation. Therefore we hail the Most Precious Blood of Jesus as the “Price of Our Redemption”.

The picture here from our front cover shows Christ as the Mystic Lamb with the Blood flowing from His side which makes the lilies (the Christian faithful) grow and flourish. The inscription in English translation reads as follows:
To Him who loves us and who washes us of our sins by His Blood and who has made us kings and priests of God His Father: to Him be the Glory and the Power. Amen.

+BETTY WHITNEY, R.I.P.
We mourn the passing of long-time parishioner Betty Whitney. Betty gave of herself very generously for the parish. For years she took charge of funding and decorating the front planters of the church with the most beautiful arrangements, but she wanted to do it anonymously. Now, however, I can give her the due recognition.

PARISH LENTEN MISSION for A.D. 2022 CONFERENCE IV: “CHRIST THE DIVINE LEPER”

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, March 25th, 2022)

As the political situation for French Catholics deteriorated after 1879, with the proclamation of the Third Republic and the ascendancy of an explicitly anti-Catholic, anti-clerical political establishment, the Assumptionist Fathers audaciously ratcheted up the contest. They would make the Shrine at Lourdes a great stage where God’s divine power would show itself in miraculous healings, healings which all alikethe good and the bad, the believers and the unbelievers–could perceive with their own senses.

And what better candidates for miracles than the poor, sick people whom science had failed? The people for whom the much-vaunted medical science of the day could do nothing? This was the motivation behind the tremendous organizational effort to load up the “white trains” of desperately ill people and bring them to Lourdes.
In order to sufficiently appreciate what this involved we have to consider how immense were the practical difficulties that needed to be overcome. First, there was difficulty of physically bringing sick people to Lourdes itself, then getting them in and out of the baths, all the while caring for their basic needs. Many people were on stretchers. Other who could walk could not walk far and needed constant assistance. All of this heavy work fell upon the lay volunteers, the men’s Hospitallers and the well-to-do Ladies of Notre-Dame de Salut, and the women religious of the Petites-Soeurs de l’Assomption. To say this work was exhausting barely begins to convey what the helpers of the sick pilgrims had to do. Not to mention the fact that in these years the Lourdes Shrine was not at all prepared to take care of sick pilgrims. The sick were sometimes housed in the local people’s private homes, or in the Hospice of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers where Bernadette had once lived.
Another difficulty was the prevalence of infectious diseases among the sick. When we think of all of the protocols we have endured over these last two-plus years during the COVID-19 pandemic it is shocking to us to hear that you had masses of infectious people with all kinds of terrible diseases there in the Shrine, all in close quarters, and that you had the healthy care-givers of the sick moving among them, attending to their most personal needs, and clearly putting their own health and lives at risk to do so.
A third difficulty was the baths themselves. The guardians of the Shrine were concerned that the spring-fountain might run dry on them with all of the new demands being made for “Lourdes Water”. Therefore, the baths were filled with clean, fresh water only twice a day. A sick pilgrim had to make an act of faith upon an act of faith: first that they might receive a miraculous cure through Our Lady’s prayers, and second that they didn’t get something else left behind by all of the sick who had been placed in that dirty bath before them.
To many contemporaries, particularly the “men of science” who rejected all religion as superstition and psycho-pathology, this manifestation of the sick at the Lourdes National Pilgrimage was a scandal for its danger to public health alone. To the Assumptionists, however, the apparent fact that the baths at Lourdes were not vectors of contagion, despite all probability, added to their assurance that their work at Lourdes was especially pleasing to Heaven.
One thing which the integration and the elevation of the poor-sick at Lourdes demonstrably achieved in these early years was the realization and the revivifying of the ideal of the charitable works of Christianity as a way of serving Jesus Christ Himself under the guise of the unfortunate persons being helped. To serve and love the poor-sick at Lourdes was a means of serving and loving “Christ the Divine Leper”. He was the One they were really waiting upon.
Such a high-minded ideal born of faith and love was necessary in order to persevere in this exceedingly difficult, fatiguing and risky rôle of service at Lourdes. How else could you overcome your personal repugnance, especially if your normal conditions of life shielded you from these sights?
The people, women and men, who accompanied the sick to Lourdes on these pilgrimages did look to that higher view. And so, others seeing it were drawn to join them. This then was the real vector of contagion at Lourdes: it was the contagion of charity.
Fr. Higgins

The Five Glorious Wounds of Christ

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 03:22:09 GMT

The fore-taste of Easter in our Mass of Laetare Sunday is an important marker on our Lenten journey. Next Sunday we will be in the time of Our Lord’s Passion (Passiontide), which is the most intense and somber time of the Church’s Liturgical Year. It is helpful for us to consider the mystical meaning of Christ’s Five Wounds on the Cross. The Five Wounds are His two hands, His two feet, and His wounded side. The illustration below is a representation of the mystical meaning.

As you see the Wounds are represented with glorious crowns and depicted as well-springs of graces, namely—the Well of Mercy, the Well of Grace, the Well of Comfort, the Well of Pity, the Well of Life. Meditating on the Five Wounds of Cross we can find strength and courage for facing life as we think of them in these terms.

PARISH LENTEN MISSION for A.D. 2022 CONFERENCE III: “NOS CHERES MALADES”

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, March 18th, 2022)

In 1873 the Assumptionist religious order in France promoted a National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in order to mobilize French Catholics to be (as we might say today) “prayer warriors” for the renewal of France as a truly Christian commonwealth. Looking back upon this 150 years later, it all looks to us like a very political agenda, a “kingdom of this world” twist to a professedly “kingdom-not-of-this-world” religion. But the Assumptionists would not have seen it this way: they would have seen themselves as promoting a “kingdom come” agenda, as in the prayer petition of the Our Father– “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” The whole world needed to be renewed according to the Mind of Christ and their “political” points were but the necessary spearhead for Christ’s Kingdom on earth to come. It was out of this idealism that the prominent place of the poor-sick at Lourdes developed.

Père d’Alzon, the Founding Father of the Assumptionists, had a close collaboration with Mère Marie-Eugenie Milleret, the Foundress of another order, the Sisters of the Assumption. Out of this collaboration came a new lay organization of women who dedicated themselves to works of charity and prayer. Their organization was called Notre-Dame de Salut (Our Lady of Salvation). Their membership was drawn from the higher echelons of society. In short, it was for rich Catholic Frenchwomen.
In 1865, one of Père d’Alzon’s Assumptionist priests co-founded with Antoinette Fage, who took the religious name, Mère Marie de Jésus yet another order for women. It was called l es Petites-Soeurs de l’Assomption, the “Little Sisters of the Assumption”. Their mission was not to proselytize but to convert by good example. To this end they went out into the poorest parts of Paris to tend the sick at home without charge, even in the neighborhoods of their enemies, where revolutionary, antireligious ideology and sentiments held sway.
These two organizations of women–the wealthy lay women of Notre-Dame de Salut and the Petites-Soeurs de l’Assomption with their evangelical counsel religious poverty–were the instruments for transforming the Lourdes National Pilgrimage of the Assumptionists into a movement where the sick people who were also poverty-stricken had the place-of-honor.
After 1873, the Assumptionists continued their endeavor by making the National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in the summer an annual event. At first in very small numbers, but then in ever increasing numbers throughout the 1870s, they organized the transportation of the poor-sick to Lourdes in order that they might bathe in the spring-fountain which Our Lady had opened to Bernadette from the rock of the Massabielle. Together with the Assumptionist Fathers’ bold political agenda was an even bolder agenda for the working of miraculous signs after the manner of Christ’s healings in the Gospels. They believed that God would work many miracles of healing through Mary’s prayers at Lourdes and that these public signs would be an encouragement to the faithful and a rebuke to the scoffers. In order for this to happen, however, you needed to have lots of horribly, incurably ill people at hand.
And so the rich Ladies of Notre-Dame de Salut and the poor nuns of the Petites-Soeurs joined forces. The wealthy Catholic ladies raised the funds necessary for the undertaking and those who were able and willing among the Dames also accompanied the sick pilgrims on the specially chartered train carriages to Lourdes.
The Petites-Soeurs, who had the experience of caring for the sick, were the ones who bore the brunt of the work as the gardes-malades , that is, as the care-ers, the nurses of the sick.
Think of the social world depicted in Victor Hugo’s famous novel Les Miserables . Now imagine an alternative plot-line. Think of that poverty-stricken and humanly degraded world of Paris on the “white train cars”, cared for by the wealthiest women of society, now performing the most menial, stomach churning chores on their behalf. Think of the nuns of the Petites-Soeurs who watched over them and tried to ease their added suffering from the difficult journey in the August heat. Think of the effect these trains had on the public as they moved slowly through France–the deference, the silent, emotionally moved expressions of the onlookers. Think of the young French gentlemen who–seeing what these women were doing for the sick– begged to be allowed to help in some way, and so there was formed an organization of men to help with the extremely exhausting physical work of attending the sick to Lourdes, Think of this and imagine it if you can. Only, this is what really happened. But the end of the decade of the 1870s the National Pilgrimage gave pride of place to the poor-sick pilgrims, indeed they were honored by the expression “ nos chéres malades ”–our dear, our cherished sick.
And were there miracles, after all? Yes, there were. Many? Yes, many. And so the pilgrimage of the sick went on.

Catholic Relief Services Collection for Ukraine

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 23:26:12 GMT

Cardinal Seán has authorized a special emergency Second Collection this Sunday for the humanitarian relief efforts on behalf of the people of Ukraine, so beleaguered by the war of Russian aggression. The proceeds from this collection will be directed to Catholic Relief Services.

Ninth Anniversary of Pope Francis's Installation 2013/2022

Within the prayers of our Sunday Mass today we remember the special intention of our Holy Father Pope Francis on the Ninth Anniversary of his Installation. Pope Francis was elected in the Conclave on March 13th, 2013 and installed on March 19th. Since March 19th is always the Feast of St. Joseph, the observance of the Pope’s Anniversary is perpetually transferred to March 20th.

Parish Lenten Mission for A.D. 2022

Conference II: The Two Kingdoms

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, March 11, 2022)

The first National Pilgrimage to Lourdes was the “Pilgrimage of the Banners”, October, 1872. Its success inspired Père Emmanuel d’Alzon, the charismatic founder of a new religious order in France, the Assumptionists, to repeat the event and re-shape it according to his mind.

The Assumptionists, based in Paris, called for a second National Pilgrimage under their auspices, to be held between July 22nd-August 22nd (the Octave Day of Our Lady’s Assumption), 1873. In this Pilgrimage there were to be two national rallying points for loyal Catholics to gather in great numbers: La Salette in the southeast and Lourdes in the southwest. With better train access and a less anti-clerical spirit among the local population, Lourdes proved to be a more successful gathering spot for French Catholics.
Père d’Alzon and his religious order family had what we might call “ une certaine idée de la France .” The France they wanted to see brought back to life was the France of Clovis, King of the Franks, whose Baptism together with his chieftains on Christmas Day, A.D. 496, by the Bishop St. Remy was behind the designation of France as the “eldest daughter of the Church” (la fille ainée de l’Eglise) . They longed for the France of Charlemagne (crowned Holy Roman Emperor in A.D. 800), the France of King St. Louis IX, the Crusader King (+1270). It was a mythic, romantic view of French identity, built upon the idealized images of Throne (royal kingly power) and Altar (the sacred power of the Catholic Church).
To this end they wanted to see three concrete things established, and they conceived of the National Pilgrimage of 1873 as a means of gathering Catholics together in great numbers in order to “storm Heaven” for their actualization.
The first was the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty’s rightful heir to the Throne of France. (In 1873, this was the Comte de Chambord, 53 years-old, who sought to be crowned as Henry V.) Only such could be the legitimate King: all other would be claimants were usurpers. Hence, the political term legitimistes (“legitimists”) was applied to those French who were Bourbon monarchists.
The second was the restoration of the temporal power of the Papacy. The Pope’s temporal sovereignty had been erased altogether when the Kingdom of Sardinia sent its troops into Rome in September, 1870.
The third was the harmonious re-establishment of the social order based upon the alliance of Throne and Altar. Royal power would protect the rights of the Church while Sacred Power would re-enforce the divine basis for Catholic Kingship.
The sufferings of the people caused by the disorders and miseries of Revolution and Napoleonic wars would thereby be redeemed, as France was granted a new dispensation of peace under a restored Christian commonwealth.
As we know, none of these things—so fervently prayed for by so many—ever came to pass. If anything, things went the other way! How to interpret?
In the midst of His Passion, Christ is asked by Pontius Pilate if He is a King. Christ answers Him: “ My Kingdom is not of this world. ” Nonetheless, we His followers have great difficulty in accepting the full implications of this. Even at the moment of Christ’s Ascension, after all they had just lived through, there are some who ask Him: “ Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) They have been promised the Kingdom of Heaven, but they’re still thinking in terms of a restored political Kingdom of Israel in this world.
They...we!...can’t help ourselves. We say that we believe in the Kingdom of Heaven not-of-this- world, but at the same time, after all, we do expect some level of “wins” in the earthly sphere. And when it doesn’t happen, as we’re sure God must want this too, then we become downcast and lose our fervor. “Why pray? God doesn’t hear me anyways?”
We need to remember then that God has not promised us any level of the Kingdom in terms of this world. Christ’s words to Pilate are absolutely true: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” In terms of the this-world special intentions for which the Assumptionists first organized a National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1873, it was a total failure. None of it happened. But who would dare to say that God has not given unction to the Pilgrimage to Lourdes when He has shown so many other fruits, and so many other things of great moral and spiritual value which are still being realized in our day?

Father Higgins

Two Great Feasts in the Midst of Lent

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 06:49:28 GMT

Two great Feasts on the Calendar occur this coming week which mitigate our Lenten Observances. The first is the Feast of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, March 17th , who is the Principal Patron Saint of our local church, the Archdiocese of Boston. The second is the Feast of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Patron of the Universal Church, March 19th. St. Joseph’s Day has a particular sweetness for us following the Jubilee Year of St. Joseph we have just observed.
In his weekly general audience on February 9th, 2022, Pope Francis spoke beautiful words regarding St. Joseph as the “Patron of the Good Death”, some of which I quote here:
I would like to underline a real social problem. That “planning”—I don’t know if it is the right word—but accelerating the death of the elderly. Very often we see in a certain social class that the elderly, since they do not have the means, are given fewer medicines than they need, and this is inhuman; this is not helping them, it is driving them towards death earlier. This is neither human nor Christian. The elderly should be cared for as a treasure of humanity: they are our wisdom. And if they do not speak, or if they do not make sense, they are still the symbol of human wisdom. They are those who went before us and have left us so many good things, so many memories, so much wisdom. Please do not isolate the elderly, do not accelerate the death of the elderly. To caress an elderly person has the same hope as caressing a child, because the beginning of life and the end are always a mystery, a mystery that should be respected, accompanied, cared for. Loved.

“THE LOURDES OF PILGRIMAGE and the LIFE OF THE CHURCH”
PARISH LENTEN MISSION for A.D. 2022

INTRODUCTORY CONFERENCE

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, March 4th, 2022)

Ruth Harris in her 1999 book Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age draws the distinction between the “Lourdes of the Apparitions” and the “Lourdes of the Pilgrimage.” It is an interesting distinction and, I think, a valid one. The more we scrutinize the Lourdes phenomena the more we can see the separation. What happened between Bernadette’s visions in 1858, the official Church approval of them in 1862, and the building of a shrine at the Grotto of the Massabielle: this is its own stand-alone story. Then what happened in the 1870s and beyond, the organized movement of a “national pilgrimage of France” to Lourdes, this is another story, super-imposed on the earlier story of the Apparitions.
This year 2022 is the 150th Anniversary of the first National Pilgrimage to Lourdes. It was organized as a Pilgrimage of Penance in the wake of France’s 1870 surprise defeat at the hands of the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies among the German states, and in the civil war which followed. For many religious French Catholics, the events seemed to have the character of a Biblical chastisement. God had punished France, the “eldest daughter of the Church”, for her sins, just as He had punished His Chosen People Israel in the Old Testament. Therefore the All-holy, Just God had to be appeased by penance. Recourse to the prayers of the Mother of God in this was of the utmost importance in order to win a favorable hearing from the Divine.
The 1872 Pilgrimage to Lourdes occurred in October for the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary. It became know thereafter as the “Pilgrimage of the Banners” because the pilgrims had brought their parish banners from all across France and had left them there in the Church at Lourdes as votive offerings. The success of this Pilgrimage was the seed of inspiration for the head of a religious congregation called the Assumptionists to launch a movement for a recurring national pilgrimage each year to Notre-Dame de Lourdes . It is therefore to the Assumptionists and their lay co-operators that we owe the shape and character of the pilgrimage experience at the shrine of Lourdes as it is to this day, 150 years later.
But I want us to plumb the depths a little further here in considering the distinction between the Lourdes of the Apparitions and this Lourdes of the Pilgrimage . Can we detect providential lines and purpose, standing as we do, a centuryand-a-half out?
I would like to suggest this one. The Lourdes of the Apparitions is the Christian Redemption Story. The two outward signs given to the world in the course of the Apparitions–Mary’s identification of herself with her privilege of the Immaculate Conception and the underground spring appearing from the side of the rock–may be summed up in two Scripture verses: 1) Genesis 3:15, the Proto-Evangelium: “And God said [to the serpent]: I will put enmities between thee and the woman and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” and 2) John 19:34: “But one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side: and immediately there came out blood and water.” And in these two verses we have the essential sketch of the Christian Redemption Story: the beginning, Mary, the “Woman” of the Prophecy, singularly preserved from all stain of sin (the Immaculate Conception) on account of the foreseen merits of Christ, brings forth the God-Man Jesus Christ, and provides Him the Body for the Sacrifice; and the consummation, Christ on the Cross, the water and blood flowing from His side already the sign of the sacramental graces for His Church in the Baptismal Regeneration.
So if then the Lourdes of the Apparitions is the Christian Redemption Story, therefore we may interpret the Lourdes of Pilgrimage as the image of the Church herself in the course of human history—the pilgrim Church and its pilgrim People of God. And in this Lourdes of Pilgrimage , imaging as it does the life of the Church, we find the mysterious blend of the human and the divine. There are shades of light and dark; there are sure and striking signs of God’s divine activity intervening in human affairs; but there is also the “human element”, with all of the heaviness which that term implies.
These are some of the themes which we shall be considering as we gather here in our parish church of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes over the next few weeks. The Lourdes of Pilgrimage is indeed the story of the Church and therefore it is very much our story too.
Father Higgins

The Seven Feasts of the Passion and the Apparitions at Lourdes

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 06:31:51 GMT

Embedded within the Lenten liturgies of the Roman Missal there used to be seven special Masses related to the Passion of Christ which were celebrated as feasts on particular days each week from Septuagesima to the Fourth Week in Lent. They were not included in the 1962 Roman Missal. Formerly, these feasts were reserved for particular places and congregations where the Bishop allowed them. Before the growing Liturgical Movement revived an appreciation for the importance of the older Lenten daily Masses, these Passion Feasts enjoyed a wide popularity. They were observed, for example, in the diocese where Lourdes was at the time of the Apparitions in 1858.
The Feasts and their appointed days were as follows:
The Prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ (in the Garden of Gethsemane)—on the Tuesday after Septuagesima Sunday.
The Commemoration of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Votive Mass of the Passion)—on the Tuesday after Sexagesima Sunday.
The Sacred Crown of Thorns of Our Lord Jesus Christ—on the Friday after Ash Wednesday.
The Sacred Lance and Nails of Our Lord Jesus Christ—Ember Friday in Lent (1st Week of Lent).
The Most Sacred Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ—on Friday of the Second Week in Lent.
The Five Sacred Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ—on Friday of the Third Week in Lent.
The Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ—on Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent.

These Feasts were capped by the observance of the Compassion of Our Lady (The Seven Dolours of Our Lady) on Friday in Passion Week—1 week before Good Friday.
In this way the Mystery of Christ’s Passion was continually kept before the eyes of the faithful as they journeyed through Lent.
Three of these Passion Feasts coincided directly with Bernadette’s Visions:
Friday after Ash, February 19th, 1858/ (First Apparition of the “Fortnight”)/ Feast of the Crown of Thorns .
Ember Friday in Lent, February 26th, 1858/ (Discovery of the Lourdes Stream coming out of the side of the rock, the day after the Lady had told Bernadette to drink from the stream which had then only been dirt (February 25th)/ Feast of the Lance and Nails.
In his best-selling book Notre-Dame de Lourdes (1869) Catholic author Henri Lasserre saw this coincidence as being key to understanding the meaning of Lourdes. As he wrote:
The spring we are talking about, whose memory is glorified by special services in the diocese, was that great and divine spring that the spear of the Roman centurion, piercing the right side of the lifeless Christ, caused to gush forth like a river of life to regenerate the earth and save mankind.
Friday of the Second Week in Lent, March 4th, 1858/(Last Apparition of the “Fortnight”)/ Feast of the (Burial) Shroud of Christ.
These Passion Feasts (now considered “historic” feasts of the Roman Missal) help us to appreciate just how closely tied in the events of Lourdes are to Christ’s Paschal Mystery.

In Memoriam: Matthew and Mary Higgins, February, 1920

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 07:30:14 GMT

In an essay in the New York Times Sunday Review for February 6th, 2022 entitled “How Does a Pandemic End?”, John M. Barry, author of a book on the history of the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1920: The Great Influenza : The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History , writes of the “fourth wave” of this pandemic which hit the United States in 1920:
A variant that emerged in 1920 was lethal enough that it should have counted as a fourth wave. In some cities—among them, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Kansas City, MO—deaths exceeded even those in the second wave [fall of 1918], responsible for the vast majority of the pandemic’s deaths in the United States and elsewhere. This occurred even though the U.S. population had plenty of natural immunity from the influenza virus after two years of infection and after viral lethality in the third wave [winter of 1919] decreased.
Nearly all cities in the United States imposed restrictions during the pandemic’s virulent second wave, which peaked in the fall of 1918. That winter, some cities re-imposed controls when a third, though less deadly, wave struck. But virtually no city responded in 1920. People were weary of influenza and so were public officials. Newspapers were filled with frightening news about the virus, but no-one cared. People at the time ignored this fourth wave; so did historians. Deaths returned to pre-pandemic levels in 1921, and the virus mutated into ordinary seasonal influenza, but the world had moved on well before.
The reference to this forgotten “fourth wave” struck a chord with me because of one of the life-stories in my own family tree: Matthew and Mary Higgins, a great uncle and aunt, who were carried off by this flu within 9 days of each other in February, 1920, leaving two orphaned sons, Joe and Charlie.
Boston’s newspapers on February 16th carried the headline news story of the death of Matthew J. Higgins, president of the Boston Carmen’s Union, of influenza, nine days after his wife.
Matthew J. Higgins, who was serving his fifth term as president of Boston’s Street Carmen’s Union, died at his home, 44 Weld St., Jamaica Plain, shortly after noon yesterday, after a week’s illness from influenza.
He leaves two children, Joseph, aged 3, and Charles, 6 months. His wife died a week ago yesterday after a short illness from the same disease. He was stricken shortly before her funeral and was confined to his bed while her burial was being held.

[He was not yet 40 years old. He was one of my great-grandfather Jeremiah Higgins’s younger brothers. They had emigrated from Cork, Ireland, as children with their parents in 1890, and settled in Pittsfield, MA.]
Mr. Higgins was one of the best known leaders of organized labor in the country...Some years ago he came to this city and obtained employment as a conductor with the Boston Elevated, being attached to the Jamaica Plain, Roxbury and Brookline stations during his entire period of service. He was elected president after the 1912 strike and, with the exception of three terms has held the office since. He was recently re-elected by an overwhelming vote.
The executive board of the Boston Street Carmen’s Union, the members of which had gathered yesterday afternoon to attend the funeral of Henry B. Endicott, decided to postpone the special election of a new secretary...When it was reported at the meeting of the Boston Central Labor Union yesterday afternoon that President Higgins had died, the delegates suspended business and stood with bowed heads for one minute in respect for his memory. —Boston Traveler

He was one of the best known members of organized labor in the country, despite the fact that he has been affiliated with unionism for a comparatively brief period, since the organization of the Boston Elevated employees as the Boston Street Carmen’s Union, Local 589. Known as a conservative in the labor movement, he had nevertheless led the organization to many brilliant victories, the most recent being the wage increase granted the men last summer, making them among the highest paid street carmen in the country. —Boston Post
Matthew Higgins was buried with a Requiem Mass out of St. Andrew’s Church in Forest Hills and laid to rest beside his wife, Mary, at Mount Calvary Cemetery.

Of the two orphaned boys Joe and Charlie, the baby was also sick with the flu and not expected to live. He did, however, survive. The boys’ maternal grandfather, a widower, decided to adopt them himself. He hired a nanny to help him take care of them and, eventually, he married the nanny.
The brothers Joe and Charlie Higgins grew and lived out their lives in Boston, dying in their old age. They too are buried in Mount Calvary Cemetery.

Looking Forward to Lent as the Church’s “Sacred Spring”

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 20:31:09 GMT

Sexagesima Sunday marks nine weeks and (approximately) 60 days from Easter Sunday (April 17th this year). Sexagesima Week is also a very important element in the Apparitions of Mary Immaculate to Bernadette at Lourdes. It was on Thursday of Sexagesima Week, 1858 (February 11th) that Bernadette had her first vision of the beautiful young lady.
Lent will soon be upon us. A week from Wednesday is Ash Wednesday (March 2nd). Now is the time for us to be preparing our personal Lenten program for this year.
The outlines of good Lenten practice are given us by the Church for everybody who has reached the age of reason. Lent should be a time when we practice our Catholic Christian faith with extra effort. While it is certainly true that we should always be praying, always be offering up personal, hidden sacrifices as penances and means of self-discipline, and always be doing deeds of mercy through almsgiving and good works, nevertheless during Lent we should make extra effort to pray, to fast, and to give alms. During Lent we should make extra effort to purify our motives of any self-seeking or caring too much about what kind of a figure we cut in front of others.
And as we go on in life, our Lenten experience changes with us, doesn’t it? A young adult Catholic, for example, in the exuberance of vitality, may try something very ambitious in terms of fasting or spiritual reading. Parents of a growing family, however, may want to use the Lenten days as an opportunity to organize more family prayer and devotion. Mature senior Catholics may not have the strength for very austere Lenten practices anymore, but they have been well-seasoned by the trials of life and they can approach Lenten days with that perspective on the Mystery of the Cross which only “living life” can give you.
So, don’t approach Lent with a sense of dread— ”Oh no, hear we go again! Let’s just get through this! What am I going to give up this year?”
The Church’s Lent each year is likened to a “sacred spring”, a “ver sacrum”. Although we readily associate Lent with austerities and penitential practices— “giving things up”—its primary purpose is the renewal of the Christian soul, analogous to the ways in which the earth is prepped and cultivated for its future fruits in the later springtime and into harvest time. Seeing and feeling the world of nature coming alive again always lifts our spirits and gives us hope. Just so, approaching the Lenten Season as a “sacred spring” ought to lift our spirits as we think of the supernatural hope we have in Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Lent, our “sacred spring” is the chance for renewal, the chance to grow closer to Jesus Christ our Living Lord as Christians signed and sealed by the waters of Baptism.

Welcoming in Septuagesima

Sat, 12 Feb 2022 23:01:17 GMT

Today is Septuagesima Sunday on the old Roman Calendar. It ushers in the brief 17-day space of pre-Lent known as Septuagesima. Ten weeks from today is Easter Sunday (April 17th). Septuagesima is the Latin word for “seventieth”: from today Easter is (approximately) seventy days away.
In the Missal Reform of Paul VI, Septuagesima was eliminated as a liturgical piece. We go right into the “deep-end” of Lent on Ash Wednesday, without any preparation.
It is a loss and among liturgists themselves the decision to eliminate Septuagesima in the Missal reform was controversial. Perhaps at some future date we may see it re-inserted?
Even so, whether we find it in the Roman Missal or not, Septuagesima still offers us as Catholics a very profitable spiritual exercise. It is an opportune space of “pre-Lent” for us to think on how we might make a good Lent this year. These are the days for us to make our good resolutions, lay out a practical plan, and pray for the grace to carry it out. Then, when Ash Wednesday comes on March 2nd, we are ready to “hit the ground running”, so to speak.
Even so, whether we find it in the Roman Missal or not, Septuagesima still offers us as Catholics a very profitable spiritual exercise. It is an opportune space of “pre-Lent” for us to think on how we might make a good Lent this year. These are the days for us to make our good resolutions, lay out a practical plan, and pray for the grace to carry it out. Then, when Ash Wednesday comes on March 2nd, we are ready to “hit the ground running”, so to speak.
During Lent we are invited to place ourselves, in spirit, in the state of un-redemption and then, over the course of the Lenten discipline, purify our hearts of earthly-mindedness and halfhearted, “ho-hum” ways of being a Christian. Conversion is a continuing process: we are never done with it as long as we live upon this earth.
So then, let us make good use of our days of Septuagesima now to prepare our personal Lenten program for Easter, 2022. Every stage of earthly life is so precious for eternity. The Lourdes’ Apparitions themselves in 1858 were re-enforcements of the Early Church’s Baptismal Catechesis and the Message of Redemption.
“The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent! And believe in the Gospel!” (Mark 1:15 )

The "Helping Saints"

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 04:59:35 GMT

The Blessing of Throats in honor of St. Blaise invokes a Saint who is part of a larger group of special Saints designated as “The Fourteen Holy Helpers”, or the “Helping Saints”.
The terrible plague called the “Black Death”, which ravaged Christendom in the late 1340s, was the occasion for the grouping of 14 particular Saints as intercessors.
St. George

St. Blaise 

St. Pantaleon

St. Vitus
St. Elmo (Erasmus)

St. Christopher 

St. Denis 

St. Cyriac
St. Achatius 

St. Eustace

 St. Giles 

St. Catherine of Alexandria

St. Margaret of Antioch
St. Barbara
The “Black Death” was so-called because among the terrible symptoms of this disease were the turning black of a person’s tongue, extreme dryness of the throat, violent headache, fever and sores on the stomach. The sickness came on suddenly, took people out of their minds, and caused death within a few hours. Many people died without the Last Sacraments.
People were panicked everywhere and that led to violence and the overthrow of the normal ties of family and community. In the midst of this calamity people turned in humble faith towards their Saints who were associated with deliverance from particular ailments.
For example: St. Christopher and St. Giles against the Plague; St. Denis against headache; St. Blaise against all disease of the throat; St. Catherine against all disease of the tongue; St. Elmo against stomach ills; St. Barbara against fever; St. Vitus against epilepsy. St. Pantaleon was the patron of physicians. St. Cyriac was a patron Saint to be invoked against terrible temptations, especially in the hour of death. St. Achatius was the Saint to be prayed to in the last agony preceding death; SS. Christopher, Barbara and Catherine were Saints for protection against a sudden and unprovided death. St. Giles was prayed to for the grace of a good confession. St. Eustace was invoked in time of family troubles. Since domestic animals, too, were coming down with the Plague, people had recourse to the prayers of SS. George, Elmo, Pantaleon and Vitus.
Thus we can trace the development of the devotion to the “Fourteen Holy Helpers” out of their joint patronage in helping the people in times of contagion.
We should hardly look down on the pious confidence of our forebears on the smug assumption that we have “science” and they didn’t. They made use of whatever knowledge of the natural world they had, just as we do. It is a negative stereotype to imagine religious believers of the past ages of faith as just superstitious and clueless, not at all practical. We should admire, rather, their faith-borne trust that God would come to their help in situations which were beyond them and in miraculous ways if necessary.
Therefore, let us invoke St. Blaise today together with all of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, especially to deliver us from this scourge of pestilence which is now in its third year.

The Reality of Actual Persecution

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 16:33:56 GMT

I remember as a young boy (early 1970s) hearing of a Catholic priest in Albania who had just been executed by the Communist government. His crime? Baptizing a child.
It was impressed upon me that there were Christians in the world, in my lifetime , who were dying for the faith just as the early martyrs who had been fed to the lions did. In those days of the protracted Cold War the persecution was centered in the countries ruled by revolutionary Communist regimes.
In the January 20, 2022 edition of The Wanderer there was a Catholic News Agency story on the death of an Albanian nun who had secretly baptized babies during the Communist years ( “Nun Who Secretly Baptized Babies Under Communism Dies at 92” ).
Her name was Sr. Marije Kaleta. She entered the convent of the Stigmatine Sisters as a young girl in the 1940s. When the Albanian Communists suppressed all religion her convent was closed and she returned to live with her parents. After her parents died she lived alone and learned “ to keep the faith alive in the hearts of the faithful, although secretly. ”
“ Thanks to the consent of the priests, I kept the Blessed Sacrament in a cabinet at my home and brought it to the sick and dying. ”
Another important secret office she performed was the baptism of children which was strictly forbidden by the Communists. It was this work which particularly moved Pope Francis when he met her in Albania in 2014.
“ I baptized not only the children of the villages, but also all those who showed up at my door. ”
Once a woman stopped her alone on the road.
“ It was a woman with a baby girl in her arms who came running towards me and asked me to baptize her .”
Sister Kaleta felt fear because she knew the woman was a Communist.
“ I told her I didn’t have anything to baptize her with because we were on the road, but she expressed so much desire that she told me there was a canal with water nearby. I said I didn’t have anything to collect water with but she insisted that I baptize that child, and seeing her faith, I took off my shoe, which was made of plastic, and I filled it with water from the canal and baptized her. ”
When the Communist regime in Albania finally collapsed Sister Marije Kaleta she was able to make her final vows as a Religious in 1991. Reflecting back upon the long years of persecution, she said:
“ When I think of it, I wonder how we were able to endure such terrible sufferings, but I know the Lord gave us strength, patience, and hope. The Lord gave strength to those He called, in fact, He has repaid me from all my sufferings here on Earth. ”
The testimony of Sr. Marije Kaleta, who died on January 2nd of this year, in the Season of the Divine Infancy, impresses upon us the reality of what an actual persecution looks like.
It is melodramatic and histrionic, not to mention unseemly , to hear Christians in the United States talk about how they’re being persecuted on account of vaccine mandates or face-covering mandates during a pandemic. Persecuted? Far from it!
May God in His mercy preserve us from the test of an actual persecution for the mere name of Christ. Without special grace we could not stand it.
How fortunate we are to live under conditions which are only normally difficult for Christian living. We should make good use of the opportunities to offer things up and do penance in our present circumstances.

1973/2022 49th Anniversary of “Roe v. Wade”: Witnessing to the “Culture of Life”

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 04:20:45 GMT

Yesterday, January 22nd, 2022 marked the 49th Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision “Roe v. Wade” which legalized abortion based on a constitutional right to privacy. While this history might be the peculiar path our own nation took to legalizing abortion, it ends up in the same place as the world-wide movement for abortion-advocacy. As columnist George Weigel pointed out in his essay No Optimism, Much Hope (Boston Pilot, January 7th, 2022):
[In 2022] the European Union will continue to insist (as it did recently) that limitations on the killing of unborn children constitute “genderbased violence” because abortion-on-demand is a “fundamental human right” that “cannot be subordinated to cultural, religious, or political considerations.”
Abortion as a “ fundamental human right ”… that is the state of affairs we have come to at this moment in history .
Against this we as Catholics must witness to the “ fundamental right-to-life of the human person ” which takes precedence over this asserted “ right ” to abortion.
Perhaps it would be helpful here to re-iterate some of the basic teachings regarding the right-to-life and the Culture of Life as we find them in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Human Life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstances claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being. (PAR 2258)
Since God alone is the Lord of life, once a human life has begun we do not have the right to un-person that human life.
Human life must be respected and protected ABSOLUTELY from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person–among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life. (PAR 2270)
Since the First Century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:... (PAR 2271)
Even a secular state cannot ignore or abrogate its duty to protect the right-to-life of every innocent individual human being. Here is what the Catechism teaches us about this duty in civil law.
The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death. (PAR. 2273 [a])
The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the services of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined... (PAR 2273 [b])
These citations are touchstones of the Church’s Culture of Life, which is itself the application of the Moral Law from the Ten Commandments and the ideals of the Gospel. We have a duty to make the effort not just to know it but to internalize it so that it is second nature to us. Who will take us seriously if they do not see us living it precisely when it is very costly to us and maybe even requires an heroic sacrifice?

Is it Really Immoral to Take the COVID-19 Vaccine?

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 08:33:36 GMT

This Pastor’s Note is directed especially towards those among us who are convinced that it is immoral to take a COVID-19 vaccine, the assurances of the Church’s Magisterium notwithstanding.
Such a position is succinctly found in the words of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, suffragan Catholic Bishop of Kazakhstan, who is unalterably opposed to the COVID vaccines:
[Taking this vaccine] is in itself immoral and not pleasing to God. We can never do something consciously that will displease God. We have to be ready as Christians to lose all temporal advantages and even our short temporal life, rather than offend God and participate in the chain of criminal acts, of which the manufacturing and testing of abortion tainted vaccines is also a part.
… The use of abortion tainted vaccines brings us to a close collaboration with the fetal industry and their products, a use which is because of this proximity immoral, and furthermore it gives a scandal since by such a use we are de facto supporting that immoral industry.
Because of Bishop Schneider’s good reputation as an orthodox bishop and a man of integrity, these words can seem, at first glance, unassailable to earnest Catholics who want to do the right thing. For that reason, I recommend a lengthy essay which appeared in the January 6th, 2022 edition of The Wanderer (hardly a liberal Catholic voice on the scene) by Fr. Brian Harrison, OS, who also has a good reputation as an orthodox priest and a man of integrity. The essay is entitled: Bishop Schneider’s Critique Of Church Teaching on COVID-19 Vaccines . It is a dense and well-argued rebuttal of Bishop Schneider’s position. Furthermore, it explains the larger context of what the Church’s Magisterium means by distinguishing between direct, proximate material co-operation in sin and remote and passive material co-operation.
Fr. Harrison points out first of all that Bishop Schneider, in taking an unduly strict position, is actually rejecting the conclusions of the Church’s Magisterium which require the religious assent of mind and will of every believing Catholic. He is rejecting not only the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDF) Note on the morality of using some antiCOVID-19 vaccines, December 21st, 2020 approved and ordered by Pope Francis, but also the CDF’s Instruction Dignitas Personae, September 8th, 2008 , approved and ordered by Pope Benedict XVI as well. These two CDF documents teach that, under certain conditions, it is morally acceptable for Catholics to receive medications which involved the use of cell lines from aborted infants in their development process. Furthermore, these two CDF documents are “fully in line with the traditional moral theology taught in all seminaries long before Vatican II, which is also reflected in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
Fr. Harrison then goes on to cite a number of approved Catholic moral theologians, who tend to be on the stricter side of things, in refutation of Bishop Schneider’s absolutist position. For example:
While Bishop Schneider is telling devout Catholics they must sacrifice even their lives, if necessary, rather than ‘take the jab,’ the great Spanish Thomist theologian Antonio Royo Marin is not nearly so severe. He teaches that material co-operation in even ‘a grave injustice’ against the human person (which would include abortion) can be justified in order to avoid ‘very grave harm’ to oneself or one’s family, such as ‘loss of employment, the complete ruin of one’s business.’
...Therefore it stands to reason that since the traditional theologians we have cited allow even that kind of material co-operation that helps cause an abortion, much more would they allow (if asked) the kind of after-event co-operation that in no way does so. No doubt this point was taken into account by the CDF in coming to its successive decisions that receiving the abortion-tainted vaccines under certain conditions is in accordance with the Church’s existing doctrine and tradition.
… It needs to be said, in conclusion, with all due respect to Bishop Schneider, that his absolute opposition to any acceptance of the current anti-COVID vaccines is seriously mistaken and pastorally harmful. Because of his great prestige among devout traditional Catholics, his undue rigorism is contributing to, or reinforcing, unwarranted and unjustified moral scruples in the minds of many of them, and leading them into dissent from magisterial teaching that is perfectly orthodox and based on sound, traditional Catholic moral theology. Tragically, this is making some of these faithful feel obliged in conscience to sacrifice their jobs, homes, and livelihood rather than accept the vaccine, thereby unnecessarily causing great hardship for themselves and their families.
It is fervently to be hoped that Bishop Schneider will revise his position, and that if he does not, other Catholics, at least, will follow the Church’s authentic teaching rather than His Excellency’s dissident personal opinions.

Christmas Greetings From Fr. Salako in Africa

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 15:20:12 GMT

Dear Fr. Higgins and Parishioners in Christ:

May the peace, love, and joy that the birth of Christ brings be with you all during this Christmas season! It is with great joy that I write this message to you all! I hope that despite the pandemic, the joy that Christ brings at Christmas remains with you all.
Here in Benin and Niger we are still in the second year of the pandemic. With the pandemic, our way of life has been turned upside down, the end result of this for our people here is that poverty is on the increase. This, because people cannot move freely for their business.
But we are people of hope, and so, we must not give up, we must keep on hoping and trusting in the goodness of God, the source of all prosperity and good health.
Here in Benin, the pandemic is still very much present. Not even ten per cent of the populace is able to get COVID-19 vaccines because the solidarity between us (rich countries and poor countries) is not working as it should be and our government cannot provide them for everyone.
In our missionary’s life, God has been so good to us: we organize, time to time, charity for the neediest. We have also opened another mission territory in a remote area of the country. This is a sign of hope for the faithful, for they believe and trust that they have not been abandoned by the Church. Despite the pandemic the Church is still spreading, and His message is being preached in every corner of the world.
I wish also to say a big thank you to you all for your support and generosity to the missions here, and also to out dear people of Benin. For the past years you have been contributing to the spread of the Gospel here by your prayers and financial support. May the Light that is Christ shine upon you, and may the peace of the Christ Child be yours this Christmas season and forever!
I wish you and your loved ones a very happy Christmas and happy New Year!

Fr. Desiré Salako, S.M.A.
Father Provincial Benin-Niger

Three Prayer Petitions for 2022

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 02:02:04 GMT

As we begin this new Civil Year of 2022, I would like to propose three specific prayer petitions for us to be making as a parish community.
The first petition is: For the Preservation of the Free Exercise of the Latin Mass (and with it all of the other Sacraments) in the Life of the Catholic Church . This has been the first petition in the collective primary Mass intentions for our 11 AM Traditional Latin Mass each Sunday since Pope Francis’s Motu Propio Traditiones Custodes several months ago. It is, to say the least, a distressing experience for loyal Catholics to find themselves directly attacked by their own Pope for their finding solace in and drawing inspiration from the patrimony of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.
The second petition: That God may deliver us from the pestilence which has come upon the whole world . This is indeed a time of “Visitation”, as such events have always been understood in the biblical sense: God permitting a calamitous misfortune while at the same time offering men abundant grace for repentance and conversion of life. As Christians we should be seeking to co-operate with that grace for ourselves and also enduring in a spirit of penance and patience which we offer up to God.
The third petition: That as Catholic Christians we may be free of all spirit of perfectionism , which is the very opposite of the single-heartedness and freedom from sin Christ enjoins upon us by His words: Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48) . The spirit of perfectionism is an utterly worldly attitude towards self-improvement and “not making a mistake” in the eyes of the world. Christian perfection is a grace of continuing conversion which gives us a calm self-awareness while drawing us closer to God.

The Rorate Mass

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 21:10:21 GMT

Our fourth and final Sunday of Adventide, which brings us to the threshold of Christmas, is a summary of the whole message of Advent: the Prophecies of Isaiah, the preaching of John the Baptist as the Herald of the Lord, the Mystery of the Incarnation in Mary’s virginal womb. The event of the Christ-Child’s Birth reveals at last the mysterious meaning of Isaiah’s prophecy. As we read in the following Missal note:

The “Rorate caeli” of Isaias, a piece of marvelous lyric poetry and at the same time a text of unrivalled educative value, makes a fitting refrain for the whole course of Advent. The “earth” which opens to receive the “dew” and “bud forth the Saviour” is Mary. (St. Andrew’s Missal, 1952 edition)

CARDINAL SEAN’S MASK-MANDATE
Our Cardinal Archbishop has imposed a universal mask-mandate, regardless of vaccination status, for all churches and shrines in the Archdiocese until at least January 17th, 2022. For us here at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes this mandate merely reinforces the mask-mandate which has been imposed on us by the City of Newton since September. At the same time Cardinal Seàn has also urged everyone who can be vaccinated against COVID-19 to do so.

Co-operation with these double mandates from State and Church is necessary for the continued freedom to keep this parish church open for worship and accessibility to the Sacraments during a time of contagion.

I urge everyone to make use of the opportunity to practice virtue by co-operating with the mask-mandate inside the church, namely the virtues of penance, patience, self-control, denial of self-will, respect for authority, obedience to our bishop, social duty and social charity.

The Herbs of the Manger

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 21:10:18 GMT

Recently a friend of mine shared with me this beautiful Legend she had read regarding the herbs and plants of Christ’s Nativity. I hope that you find it interesting too.

LEGEND OF MANGER HERB PLANTS
(Several Christmases ago, I wrote an article about the plants of the manger. I still get asked about it, so here it is again. Hope you enjoy it.)

Herb plants of the manger, or Nativity, are not often written about or talked about, even though there was vegetation all around the Bethlehem area, including in Jesus’ birth stable.

My favorite legends tell of lady’s bedstraw (gallium verum), pennyroyal (mentha pulegium), horehound (marrubium vulgare), thyme (thymus vulgaris), rosemary (rosmarinus officinalis) and lavender (lavendulan agustifolia) as the herbs of the manger.

Legend tells us that while Mary rested, Joseph gathered herbs and grasses to line the manger. Among his gatherings was bedstraw, a common stable plant easily found in fields and along roadsides. Farmers fed it to their milk cows to sweeten the milk. It was also used to stuff mattresses and pillows.

Legend points out that it was nothing more than a common weed with white flowers that had no fragrance. However, when the baby Jesus’ head touched the lowly weed it was forever changed. The flowers turned to a golden yellow color, and instantly the foliage had a sweet fresh scent.

Pennyroyal is another plant that Joseph is thought to have gathered for the manger bed. It was considered a weed that was low-growing and did not bloom.

According to legend, Joseph picked it to line the manger because of its minty smell. The little herb burst into bloom at the moment of Jesus’ birth and since then, has bloomed a bright purple flower—the color of royalty. It’s believed that the scents of these flowering herbs were pleasing to Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Among the herbs Joseph gathered was horehound, with its soft and velvety leaves. It was believed to have healing powers, but also meant sorrows were to come. It was one of the bitter herbs placed on the Passover tables to commemorate the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Horehound is thought to have symbolized Jesus’ roots and foreshadowed a future betrayal.

It’s said that Mary wept when she found the horehound among the manger plants. Supposedly, she tried to remove the herbs, but it was too tightly woven among the other plants and her efforts were unsuccessful. As she picked through the plants, she also found thyme, a symbol of courage and endurance.

Two other herbs of the manger that were to later have a role in this story were lavender and rosemary. When Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus fled Bethlehem to escape King Herod’s orders, they ran through a thick field with rosemary to escape the murderous soldiers.

As they made their way through the dense vegetation, legend says that other shrubs crackled and whispered as the family ran through them and tangled their feet. But rosemary shrubs silently parted, then closed the path behind them, preventing soldiers from seeing them.

Being a grateful mother, Mary offered a blessing and spread her cloak over a rosemary shrub. Instantly, the pale flowers were turned to a heavenly blue color.

Once the family was safely beyond Herod’s reach, Joseph and Mary stopped to rest beside a stream. While the baby Jesus slept, Mary rinsed her cloak and Jesus’ clothing in the stream. She then laid the laundry on two shrubs to dry. Both shrubs, lavender and rosemary, were so honored to serve the family that they both stood tall and gave off a fragrance that penetrated and remained in the fabrics the family wore. Again, Mary blessed them, and to this day the plants have a sweet fragrance.

Even today, rosemary is used indoors to freshen the air and to add a holiday scent to rooms. Some families add it to their Advent wreathes as it is still thought to bring good luck throughout the year.

For all you herb gardeners, take a walk through your herb garden this Christmas Eve. Listen closely, and maybe you’ll hear the plants whispering a Christmas blessing to you and your loved ones.

Until next time, let’s try to garden with nature, not against it, and maybe all our weeds will become wildflowers.

(by Laurie Garretson, a Victoria, Texas, gardener and nursery owner)

+Angelo Christopher Edward Nicoloro

Born, December 12th, 2019

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Born again in Baptism in the Octave of Christmas, 2019.

Born to Eternal Life, June 19th, 2021

Second Sunday of Advent: Jerusalem

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 17:00:32 GMT

On the First Sunday of Advent, the Roman Church gathers around the Crib at Bethlehem, greeted by Mary, as she prepares that Crib for the Divine Birth of Jesus. Symbolically, it represents the preparation of our hearts to receive the Birth of Christ by His coming in grace.
On the Second Sunday of Advent, the Roman Church would have us journey to Jerusalem. (The Roman Stational Church for today is that Roman Church called “The Church of the Holy Cross at Jerusalem”, see the note on pg. 6).
The city of Jerusalem, as a place and as an idea, has several different meanings. It is, of course, the physical place on earth where the Jews had established their holy city. At the time of Our Lord, the Temple in Jerusalem was the only place on earth where sacrifice could be offered to God, hence, even as the Jewish nation dispersed widely, the Jews came back to Jerusalem as pilgrims for their major feasts (e.g., Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of the Dedication/ Hanukkah). It was in Jerusalem that Jesus Christ completed the act of our Redemption by dying a sacrificial death on the Cross. It was also in Jerusalem where the Church began, on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Our Lady, the Apostles, and the other disciples gathered there in the Upper Room.
Jerusalem is also an image of the Catholic Church, the “New Jerusalem”. Here the Lord dwells in His holy Temple where the one perfect sacrifice of Christ is re-presented on the altars at Mass. Here the grace of Christ in His Sacraments is dispensed. Here the word of God and the words of Christ are proclaimed and preached. When we are in church at Mass We are, in a beautiful sense, in Jerusalem.
The emblem of the Jerusalem Cross, which is associated with the Crusaders’ Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187 A.D.), expresses this New Jerusalem of the Catholic Church.
The Five Crosses signify the Five Chief wounds of Christ on the Cross: two hands, two feet, and the wound which pierced the Sacred Heart. Out of Christ’s wounded side flow the Blood and Water of the life-giving Sacraments: therefore, the Cross of His Heart is the largest in the Jerusalem Cross configuration. The Five Crosses may also be interpreted in reference to the Four Gospel Books of the Bible. Each of the four small crosses represents one of the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The large cross is Christ Himself. Their accounts draw from and point back to the Living Lord Jesus.
Jerusalem furthermore represents the Eternal Life of Heaven. This is the “new Jerusalem” of St. John’s vision in the Book of the Apocalypse, an eternal Jerusalem: “And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God with men: and He will dwell with them. And they shall be His people: and God Himself with them shall be their God (Apoc. 21:2-3). Finally, we may see “Jerusalem” as a term for the soul in a state of sanctifying grace. That soul—regenerated by Baptism, nurtured by the worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, walking on the way of the Commandments, seeking to die to the selfish, egotistical self in order to be free to live for God and thereby experience one’s true self—is also Jerusalem.
It would therefore be a good consideration for us in these Advent days to look to making our souls “Jerusalem”, in order to be open to the mysterious ways of grace stirring up in our souls.

+Barbara (Devito) Bowers R.I.P., aged 93 years

On Saturday, November 27th, one of our oldest parishioners Barbara Bowers was laid to rest. The priest-celebrant of her funeral Mass was her grandson, Fr. Robert LeBlanc, who is a parochial vicar at St. Mary’s Church, Brookline. Barbara was a life-long parishioner of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes—baptized and married here. She and her husband Fredson Bowers (d. 2010) raised their six children in her family home. Now that she has laid down the burden of her years, she has been born to eternal life, and hers is the new and eternal Jerusalem of Heaven. Please remember her in the charity of your prayers. She was a lovely, kind, Christian woman and her memory is a benediction.

Purgatory, Purification and Advent

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 17:09:10 GMT

This year, as often happens, the close of November, the Month of Remembrance for the Dead, coincides with the beginning of Advent. Indeed this coincidence re-enforces the over-lap of the liturgical mystery itself. The Year of Grace closes with the portents of the End of the World and Christ’s Second Advent: the Season of Advent for the new Year of Grace opens with the portents of this Second Glorious Coming of Christ and the passing away of the form of this world. The end is the beginning: the beginning is the end.
It is interesting to note that the Sequence Dies irae, so important a part of the Catholic Requiem Mass before the Pauline Reform of 1970, was originally used in the liturgy for the First Sunday of Advent. If we read the text of the Dies irae as a beginning-of-Advent prayer we can see how well it fits. All the pretensions of human self-will, all the wrongness of sin, melt before the overpowering manifestation of Christ the Divine Judge. Our only appeal is to His mercy, for in justice we cannot bear it.
This is a good moment to consider the Mystery of Faith which is Purgatory, particularly through the revelation to St. Catherine of Genoa, which is preserved in her Treatise on Purgatory. The times we live in are distinctly times of un-faith, where YOLO (“You-Only-Live-Once!”) is the default attitude towards our brief existence on this earth. To the extent that people believe in, or consider as a possibility, the prospect of life after death it’s “instant heaven”. St. Catherine’s Treatise on Purgatory therefore is a particularly good source for us to help us understand why, in the divine economy, this is not even possible.
It is not possible because a human soul cannot approach the divine goodness with any trace of sin or moral imperfection and this the soul itself experiences:
Hell and Purgatory manifest the wonderful wisdom of God. The separated soul goes naturally to its own place. The soul in the state of [mortal] sin, finding no place more suitable, throws itself OF ITS OWN ACCORD into Hell. And the soul which is not yet ready for divine union, casts itself voluntarily into Purgatory.
Heaven has no gates. Whoever will can enter there, because God is all goodness. But the divine essence is so pure that the soul, finding in itself obstacles, prefers to enter Purgatory, and there to find in mercy the removal of the impediment.
Their greatest suffering [in Purgatory] is that of having sinned against divine goodness, still finding those rusty “remains of sin”… These souls enjoy inexpressible peace, compounded of joy and pain, neither diminishing the other… These souls would not in any way lessen their sufferings they have merited...To conclude, only God’s omnipotent mercy can cure human deficiency. This transformation is the work of Purgatory.

(Source: Fr. Reginald GarrigouLaGrange, Life Everlasting , 1952, TAN reprint edition, 1993.).

St. Catherine of Genoa

1447-1510 A.D.

Who was St. Catherine of Genoa, to whom Our Lord entrusted such revelations regarding the Mystery of Purgatory? Her own life-story seems to have been a story of a Purgatory-on-earth. Even as a young child she received great graces of prayer, at only 8 years old choosing to sleep on straw and using a piece of hard wood as her pillow. At 16, she consented to her parents’ choice of marriage for her: Giuliano Adorno. This arranged marriage, so perfect from a worldly point of view, was a disaster in every way. Giuliano was a violent and immoral man who squandered his wife’s patrimony and left them in financial straits. In great discouragement and dejection, Catherine took the advice of her sister, who was a nun, to go to confession. As she knelt down in the confessional she received a powerful grace of conversion: “She received suddenly a wound in her heart, the wound of an immense love of God, with deep insight into her own misery, but also into God’s goodness. In sentiments of contrition, love, recognition, she was purified, nearly fell to earth, had to suspend her confession which she finished on the morrow. Jesus appeared to her carrying His Cross.” She did heroic penance until Christ revealed to her that she had satisfied divine justice. By prayer and penance she also obtained the conversion of her wicked, ne’er do well husband. He joined her in caring for the sick in the chief hospital of Genoa. “She led at that time a life of intense union with God, and suffered much for the deliverance of souls from Purgatory. A fire, mysterious and supernatural, tortured her frame and made her feel a hunger and thirst quite abnormal. During this time she had ecstasies of pain, during which she dictated her Treatise on Purgatory, which is as pithy as it is brief.”

(Source: Fr. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, Life Everlasting , 1952, TAN reprint edition, 1993.).