pastor’s corner
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Hello folks,
The Lord be with you!
Several items this week: a word on the readings, Our Lady’s month of May, this Thursday’s HOLY DAY OF OBLIGATION, a novena to the Holy Spirit, and request to pray for our First Holy Communicants and their families.
In the first reading today we get just little snippets of the greater story of God’s action in bringing salvation to the household of Cornelius, an upright, generous, God-fearing Roman (and Gentile) centurion. The fuller story (found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 10 and chapter 11, verses 1-18) is worth reading and rejoicing in whenever you might have the opportunity. It is an extraordinary revelation of how the Holy Spirit can work in the lives of those who love God, and are willing to live for God. Much of the lives of the holy people in this story were spent doing ordinary, not extraordinary, things, although they learned to do them with great love and with a clarity of connection with God. Many people now think that we are living in a time that is comparable to that of the early Church and it is not implausible that we will occasionally experience similar extraordinary happenings as we strive to more completely follow the Lord. The extraordinary does run great risks of error and even risks of damaging subterfuge, and therefore there is a need to be vigilant in remaining in the Lord to bear the fruit He desires. Nonetheless, with bold zeal, we can ask the Lord to serve Him more wholeheartedly, and in our thoughts, words and actions become more effective instruments of His grace.
The month of May is dedicated to the Blessed Mother. It is a great month to commit to praying the Rosary. If praying five decades of a Rosary is intimidating, do what you can to start, perhaps one decade (that is one “Our Father,” ten “Hail Marys” and one “Glory be to the Father” meditating on a particular mystery of Our Lord’s life and that of His Blessed Mother. We have leaflets explaining at the exits of the church this weekend. Additionally, we will be crowning a statue of the Blessed Mother following Mass this Sunday.
This Thursday is Ascension Thursday, a holy day of obligation, and the day that marks the beginning of the original novena of the Church: the nine days of prayer following our Lord’s Ascension and awaiting the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. For the Holy Day of Obligation, we will have three Masses:
- Wednesday, May 8, at 5pm at Saint John’s in Townsend,
- Thursday, May 9, at 8:30am at Saint James in Groton,
- Thursday, May 9, at 7pm at Saint Joseph in Pepperell (following the usual 6pm Holy Hour with confessions).
At the end of the Ascension Thursday Masses we will pray a prayer to the Holy Spirit (which can be found on page XX of the bulletin) to begin our novena. We will continue the novena by praying this prayer at the end of Mass every day. In addition to the regularly scheduled daily Masses (and regularly scheduled Eucharistic Adoration), we will add evening Adoration at 6:30pm and Mass at 7pm on Friday at Saint James, Monday at Saint Joseph, Tuesday at Saint John (Adoration and confessions having already begun at 6pm that day), Wednesday at Saint James, Thursday at Saint Joseph (Adoration and confessions having already begun at 6pm that day), and Friday at Saint John. Consider yourselves all invited to attend this novena. If we knew the greatness of the Mass, we would long to attend it every day, not just on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. Perhaps that can be part of your prayer: to understand and love more what Our Lord does at Mass. However, the main thrust of our prayer will be to become more effective instruments of His grace through our cooperation with His Holy Spirit.
Finally, I want to commend to your prayers, as I did last week, those who received the Lord for the first time in Holy Communion on Saturday, as well as their families. Perhaps you will see some of them in their First Holy Communion dresses and suits at Mass on Sunday again.
God bless,
Father Maher