Pentecost XII
Thanks to everyone who helped out with our boys and girls camps this year.
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✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Friday, feast of the Curé of Ars, patron saint of parish priests, saw much clergy coming and going, as Fridays often do. Fr. Lehtoranta departed for Milwaukee, and another “in absentia” funeral on Saturday. Father will be returning here towards the end of August, after serving many of our Midwestern missions, Milwaukee, and even New Mexico.
Last Friday, I had a funny trip to Milwaukee, a cancelled flight leading to a roundabout way to my destination via “the cities” (Minneapolis/St. Paul). I had just enough time before First Friday Exposition and Mass to get over to the hospital and give the Last Rites to Delores Martin, and say the Prayers for the Dying with this devout soul, so long faithful. Her family is burying her the new way, a short Ordo service in the funeral home. It’s all about convenience anymore. The Mass no longer matters.
Bishop Sanborn stopped by Friday night on his way to Detroit. Fr. McGuire and Fr. McKenna returned from vacation as well, refreshed after their sojourn in the woods of New England. Fr. McKenna continued on to Louisiana for today, our monthly Mass. Fr. Francis Miller, OFM tells me he is visiting the last of †Fr. Eldred Leslie’s sedevacantist faithful near Cape Town, South Africa. There is no good Mass in all of Africa. It’s very far to go for one soul (there may, of course, be more), but how far did Our Lord go for one soul?
As the Rev. Mr. Bede Nkamuke completes his priesthood training, which will one day enable him to be “Africa’s priest,” he has been accompanying Fr. Lehtoranta on his sick calls, a true “on the job training.” The Smiths, Angela Segrist and Bee Lutkehaus, Margaret Sutton and mother Nellie were all very happy to see him.
We all were so happy to hear the good news about Janet Clementi. She moved out here from the East a few years ago, but has been in a nursing home for a while, quite sick and unable to communicate or receive. Well, that lifted and she devoutly indicated her desire to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion the other week. Nathalie Andreotta has been faithfully visiting her all the way through. God love them both!
How much God would love to have a visit from you some lonely weekday! The other day we honored St. Cajetan, reformer of priests and friend of the poor. “I shall never be content until I see Christians flocking like little children to the priest to be fed on the Bread of Life with eagerness and delight,” he once said. I agree.
But if we truly make our Sunday Communion “with eagerness and delight,” surely we would yearn to receive Him, source of all our strength, font of grace, sometimes during the week, “just because….” “We are able to possess Christ, the Son of the Virgin Mary, and we do not desire Him.” St. Cajetan concludes with a warning: “Trouble comes to the one who does not care to receive Him.” Let us trouble ourselves, rather, to get to Him when we may. Soon enough we will be helpless, in this life or the next. Come to Him when you can.
Well, this week will be different, for the Holy Day summons us all away from work and play to hear Mary’s Assumption Mass that day. There will be rejoicing among the Assumption angels, I know, to see so many joining in their praise. Bring some produce and garden flowers to the grotto at 9:00 AM for the blessing, and process with us into church for Our Lady’s great Mass.
Doby Curran has been helping us lately with the grounds, as have Brendan and several others – thank you! Many hands tackled the overgrown euonymus ground cover by our new sign. My Butterfly Bush is overgrown, too, but I don’t mind. The coolish Summer must agree with it. I even saw a Monarch butterfly (rare nowadays) enjoying the blossoms, having them all to itself.
I hope you are considering a memorial stone or two for the cloister garden. You will thus remember in stone some loved one or beloved saint, even as you contribute to the cloister’s completion.
Heaven’s brave little champion of Christ and great miracle worker, St. Philomena, comes today. She especially protects children and schools and the Children of Mary. May she oversee the new school season which will soon be upon us, and bless her Rosary children for Tuesday’s procession for peace.
Tuesday and Thursday this week, the Rosary and the Mass, and both for Our Lady…and for us. May your week be a blessed one!
– Bishop Dolan