Christ the King
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
This weekend, indeed this week, we are doing what we do best at St. Gertrude the Great, we are praying. Our so powerful prayer before the Blessed Sacrament Exposed, the Forty Hours Devotion, concludes this evening with a short service at 6:45: Procession, Litany and Benediction. Come, and bring the children. Stay this morning after Mass to make your proper visit. Did you know that Pope St. Pius V both organized and personally participated in the Forty Hours at the time of the Battle of Lepanto? He attributed the Christian victory both to the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the Rosary. The Moslems threaten us and the West is crumbling under its own iniquity, but who is there to pray, to go out of his way to pray? Why, that would be you.
We are so happy this weekend to welcome our own Fr. Nkamuke back from Nigeria for an extended visit through my own consecration anniversary on November 30. Our guest preacher this morning is a seminarian, the Rev. Mr. Caleb Sons, a son of the South. This deacon will be ordained to the holy priesthood in June. Keep him in your prayers. It is a fine tradition, going back to the old days in the parishes, to have visiting clergy to assist during Forty Hours. How Catholic is the Catholic Church!
Tomorrow is the saint of hopeless cases. Come if that’s you. St. Jude is honored with his lesser known partner, St. Simon. Halloween, All Hallows Eve, is Wednesday. Our calendar lists it as a day of fast and partial abstinence, but the history of fasting days in America is tricky. It seems finally that the fast and abstinence were dropped from this day well before the changes, even though the Vigil was still observed until the modernists subverted it in the 1950’s. So, purple Mass but no fast or abstinence for the Vigil of All Saints.
But not so fast! Halloween has become increasingly creepy over the years, not only commercial but pagan and even demonic. Make reparation by keeping it in a wholesome way. Remember the door to door business was originally a way of praying for the Poor Souls, a little treat (“soul cakes,” low key cookies) being given as a reward to the children who sang or prayed.
All Hallows Eve should lead into the Holy Day of All Saints, a very great feast. All Souls, Poor Souls, are not forgotten, and you may gain many plenary indulgences for them starting at noon on All Saints, until the evening of All Souls. All Souls is First Friday this year with many Holy Masses, and closes with customary evening Benediction and Sacred Heart Devotions.
But we are back at it on First Saturday morning with Masses and Benediction. The “children dressing up in costumes” part of Halloween is deferred until next Sunday’s little procession of the little saints and High Mass, followed by a really entertaining party. Be there!
Well, you can see why we used to call this week our Autumn Holy Week at St. Gertrude the Great. Let it serve as our defiant, triumphant answer to a world which is quickly collapsing all around us. The glory of this world will one day be consumed by flames, but Christ will reign as King forever. If you’re on His side, don’t keep it a secret.
I close with a customary but heartfelt thanks to our faithful crew who made this week, and its “all for God” glory, possible.
May Jesus Christ reign as King not only in your heart but in your home. Bar the door against the beasts.
–Bp. Dolan