Lent VI – Palm Sunday


Gloria, Laus et Honor Tibi Sit. We wait in the cold, for the symbolic doors of Heaven to be opened by our Savior’s passion and resurrection.
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Our side-chapel altar, as decorated for Lent.
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Daily Sermons
March 14 – Fr. Lehtoranta – Penance Gives Hope for Pardon
March 15 – Fr. McGuire – Courage, Servants of God!
March 16 – Bp. Dolan – The School of the Stable
March 17 – Bp. Dolan – St. Patrick
March 18 – Fr. McKenna – The Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary
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zelusdomustuae
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Three great feasts in a row ended our Passion Week due to our early Easter. St. Patrick came first, the green glowing against the purple for this great missionary saint of the Irish. Then we donned silver and black to mourn with Mary, Mother of Sorrows, concluding our nine weeks of Fridays, her annual novena. St. Joseph’s feast goes well with sorrows, as he had seven of his own. But Holy Week will end and Easter come, all in March, and his darkened shrine will shine again. But the great feast of the Passion itself is all of this week which we rightly call holy, holiest of the year.

Today we gloriously anticipate Christ’s Triumph, and take home our little souvenir of victory, the palm, even as we offer reparation for those who did not persevere. Perhaps it was because they reduced everything to politics, and national liberation and hatred of the Romans, and had no room left for genuine religion. It never changes. For all of them we offer our humble gestures of reparation, as well as for our own cowardice and infidelity.

See all of Holy Week in the light of reparation, and we will see you often, very often, these days. A Communion of Reparation to start and end the holy three days, the Triduum? Holy Thursday Morning Mass, and all day all night adoration gives everyone a chance to repair, just by being there.

And so with Tenebrae’s three night wake for our murdered Savior, Good Friday’s three hours, our Tre Ore. Finally Holy Saturday’s long vigil watch at the tomb ending with Mass, and another Communion of Reparation.

This Good Friday is a solemn day, especially so; for it falls on the most sacred day of the calendar, March 25, Annunciation Day. This is the day of the Creation, of the Incarnation, and the actual date of our Redemption, the original Good Friday. Be with us for as much as you can for this great feast of the Passion.

Fr. Lehtoranta has departed for Milwaukee, where he will conduct Holy Week before departing on Easter for a quick visit to his native Finland to take care of his visa, and briefly see his parents. We pray for a safe trip for him, and expect to see a fatigued Finnish Father home with us for Low Sunday.

Fr. McKenna reports that he was privileged to see Our Lady of Good Success in Quito. This image usually comes out but once a year for a procession on Feb. 2, which our altar boy Simon Brueggemann witnessed this year. But Fr. McKenna was allowed into the cloister to venerate both the miraculous image and the incorrupt body of Venerable Mother Marianna.

It seems there was a kerfuffle on Candlemas, with the St. Pius X Society trying to elbow out the TFP in arranging the procession. The Novus Ordo then told the nuns to have nothing to do with the Society. Sound advice. When the mother superior learned Fr. McKenna was not Pius X, and indeed had relatives from Our Lady of Good Success Apostolate people among his faithful, all doors were opened to him with a big smile.

It seems there are only a handful of Catholics left in Quito, everyone else being Novus Ordo. No one has ever started a regular Mass there, but we hope to do so, with the cooperation of Catholic priests and Our Lady’s intercession.

Some Hungarians wrote last week to say they were hoodwinked by the Society into accepting Bergoglio as a Catholic Pope, but have read their way back into Catholicism. Some 3,500 people have viewed Fr. Cekada’s video, “Archbishop Lefebvre, Sedevacantist.” Even at this late hour, eyes are being opened. Hosanna to the Son of David!

Let us unite together in offering reparation as the best way to secure the blessing of peace. “All in reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” as Fr. Martin used to say. What an opportunity the next seven days afford us!

Blessed Holy Week!

–Bp. Dolan