Sunday within the Octave of the Sacred Heart
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Congratulations and celebrations continue this Sacred Heart Sunday. As we graduate three of our own St. Gertrude the Great High School students, we remember, honor and pray for all of this year’s graduates, some fifteen in number, and all of them achievers, from grade school to college. I would like especially to mention Julia Richesson who achieved the special distinction of “all A’s” all of her four years in our High School. Congratulations to you all on a job well done.
The numbers tell a happy tale, don’t they? Eleven First Communions and fifteen graduations demonstrate our continued growth, the goodness of God’s protection even in the midst of the Plandemic.
Last Sunday’s long and solemn First Communion Mass and Corpus Christi Procession ended with pictures, and just a sprinkle of rain on my biretta. That evening five days of cloudy, humid rain began. Well, at least they silenced for a bit the bug-eyed flying noise machines, the cicadas. There’s always a sunny side. Fr. McKenna noted that these diving, drizzling drones landed on himself and the altar boys, but never on the bishop or the precious Treasure he carried, the Blessed Sacrament safe under the canopy.
I wonder what Fr. Cekada would make of the cicadas? He’d be sure to have a funny line or two. We will be thinking of him Tuesday as we begin the Thirteen Tuesdays of St. Anthony, his patron saint. For two years these devotions were offered very much for his healing. He did pull through the first part, but it was only remission. Still, those were blessed months of happy memories and final achievements granted him. He was not meant to suffer through the struggle which occupies us today. Another, and final struggle was his, and now we pray to his patron for new needs, and this priest’s eternal rest.
A busy Summer continues, and some of our home schooling graduates head up the Girls Camp, brimming with fresh ideas and great enthusiasm. This, too, will be our intention on Tuesday. God bless our girls. Fr. Lehtoranta, who conducts the Sodality all year round for their benefit, will be with them as chaplain.
Special thanks to singers and servers who persevered last week through the heavy weather to keep up the daily Corpus Christi Masses. Congratulations to a talented new, if ad hoc choir I’ve named the Levitical Duet. All help welcome!
You’d be welcome to find your way over to West Chester this evening for the June Fatima Rosary Procession… for peace. Prayers are heard. Swell our numbers! God bless you, and our graduates!
– Bishop Dolan