Lent II
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Our school spring musical program was today. Simon is checking is watch, anxiously awaiting the start of the show.
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Spring arrived last week along with the Spring Ember Days. It was a difficult delivery. Chilly at times, then oppressively humid, dark mostly, wet, inconstant and windy. You wonder what the charm of it is? We had a real blinding St. Scholastica rainstorm Thursday evening as I was offering Mass, with noise such as I have never heard before. But it passed quickly, as wrath sometimes will, and left a rainbow in its wake. It is sad that the enemy has co-opted even this. Never mind, nature will wear green if not today for St. Patrick, then surely soon. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
“But all of her glory is within,” the Psalmist says of Our Lady, Mother Church, and a soul in Sanctifying Grace. The same is true of our church these days of Lent. Come on in! How stately and sober is the sanctuary, all hung in penitential purple. How varied and nourishing the offerings of feasts and devotions, of altars and shrines. The music! The different Stations, the Scourged Christ, St. Joseph’s altar, the Sorrowful Mother. Daily Mass. Many sermons, touching prayers. Come in out of the cold.
Well, a good number of children and parents did just that last Wednesday. Fr. Lehtoranta, the principal speaker this year, admits he was a little disappointed at the sparse showing for the opening talk. But like a day in Spring, things warmed up with time, and by closing Stations and Benediction, the number of children exceeded the biblical forty, to everyone’s satisfaction. Many parents came for Mass or Stations which rounded things off nicely. The beautiful new “Fatima Way of the Cross” has been a wonderful discovery, and is very well received.
Our first Friday Evening of Recollection was a surprising, gratifying success. So many Communions, such a line for the Supper, and more for the Way of the Cross. Ditto for the Sunday Stations. If you look within it looks like a good Lent. But do look within, to your soul, your life and habits. Don’t just add a thing or two, but ask Jesus to rearrange everything in your life according to His good will.
The McFathers were able to arrange to give ashes at just about all of their missions at the start of Lent, despite a blizzard or two. All of the Fathers will be with us on Tuesday or a Solemn Mass which honors St. Joseph and St. Patrick. Again this year the Mass will be for our dear ladies: Katie and Sharon, Pat Patton and Bee and Connie and Thelma and Paulina and Jane Donadio, and anybody else I missed. After Mass is the blessing of bread (which includes Fr. Cekada’s favorite kind of bread, flat, with tomato sauce and cheese, i.e., pizza) and the St. Joseph’s Table, which receives your Lenten alms in the way of food for the poor. It’s a real Lenten exercise. Be generous. Be with us if you can. There’s Hot Cross Buns and some pizza waiting for you.
We’re all looking forward to our School St. Patrick’s Day program. I wish you a very happy day indeed. May the faith of the Irish flourish still in West Chester, Ohio…and in your hearts.
–Bp. Dolan