Pentecost XV
THE SUMMER NOVENA
TO OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP
WITH THE THIRTEEN TUESDAYS OF ST. ANTHONY
JUNE 14 – SEPTEMBER 6, 2016
Download Prayers
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Daily Sermons
August 15 – Bp. Dolan – Our Lady’s Assumption
August 19 – Bp. Dolan – St. John Eudes
August 20 – Fr. Lehtoranta – St. Bernard and His Family
August 22 – Fr. Lehtoranta – The Heart of Mary and the Heart of Joan
August 26 – Fr. Lehtoranta – St. Zephyrinus, The Crusher of Heresies
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✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Today we honor the great St. Augustine, Doctor of Grace. The Gospel of our Sunday Mass prefigures his mother, St. Monica, and so many faithful souls who never give up on their mothering, following, weeping and beseeching the spiritual rebirth of some poor sinner of a son. Our lovely prayer for the Perpetual Help Novena each Summer is in this same spirit. It comes from Villedieu, France, and was once prayed faithfully by the people there.
Thank you for your faithful and persevering novena prayer this summer, at home or at church. Tuesday is the twelfth week, and next week will see us at St. Anthony’s thirteen. What a Summer it has been. I am grateful for all of the prayer, and the many graces, little and large, already granted.
Fr. Arnoldo Villegas of Tijuana, Mexico had a quick visit with us last week. He is otherwise quite isolated in his post, and it is important to see and visit with a bishop and his brother priests from time to time. Father’s main church is in Tijuana, and dates back twenty-five years. Recently some of Fr. Ahern’s Canadian faithful, alternative cancer treatment seekers, (border towns specialize in these clinics) were able to find Holy Mass with Fr. Villegas. He also serves missions in Enseñada and La Paz, as well as a growing congregation in Mexicali whose church is half finished. Their devoted people remind me of our own in the early days, lovingly bringing and setting up everything for Holy Mass.
But while Mexico is liberal about medicine, their Masonic government is death on Catholic education, stricter even than militantly secularist France, which has been fining ladies this summer who don’t sufficiently undress on the beach. Catholic schools are officially forbidden in Mexico, so even private schools must present an officially secular façade. But being Latins, everybody is used to quietly contravening the law. Fr. Villegas teaches Religion and even offers a weekly Mass in such a high school. They have prayers before and after class, a crucifix on the wall and good textbooks they actually use instead of the government ones. It is an interesting system. The school even has two names, one secular, one of a saint.
How blessed we Americans are to enjoy our liberties. But how our masters, both left and right, are trying to propagandize the peasants into voting for the loss of these liberties, our livelihoods, and life itself by means of perpetual war, and the cruel war on the womb in particular. And such lies! Never have the media, almost with one voice been so openly partisan in their propaganda, the entire media machine grinding out falsehoods so as to crush what may be our last chance at preserving at least something of what made America great.
Nor is the Church faring much better than our country. How many of our fellow Catholics are being herded back into the Conciliar corral, thanks to the efforts of Bishop Fellay, leader of the largest “traditional movement” in the world. In effect, a deal with Bergoglio has been made. Fellay must sell it.
The message everywhere seems to be the same: get with it, be respectable, join the establishment, and take your place with the one world, or…? But we love our native land, and will be true to the Faith of our Fathers ’til death. And still warns the Apostle we “have not yet resisted unto death.”
Pray for our good Cajun Catholics who suffered in the Louisiana floods this month. Fr. Lehtoranta brings them Mass today. And the poor Italians, with that earthquake which symbolizes what the Modernists in Rome have done to the Church. They have very few Masses in Italy. More prayers.
As August and Summer wind down, a new season is bring readied here at home. School, catechism classes are being prepared, and the picnic and our cherished processions and Forty Hour Prayer as well. Fr. McKenna has headed north, Fr. McGuire is visiting our sick, and Fr. Lehtoranta is preparing a full teaching schedule at St. Gertrude’s School. Fr. Cekada “woke well” the other day, as the Mexicans say, following his final chemotherapy. We’ll see how he does this week.
We are grateful to Brendan and Doby, his faithful assistant, who have been keeping up with the recent rains and their ensuing grass and weeds. Last week we were back to our oppressive hot weather, but they were out working in it to keep the church grounds presentable. It’s a big job.
Will you make some requested Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary this coming weekend, and pray with us all night long for our schools and teachers and homes and church—and don’t forget our country!
Yours in Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners,
– Bishop Dolan