Septuagesima
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Septuagesima, the Church’s Easter countdown, marks the first stirrings of “Holy Spring,” and our penitential response as we begin to prepare for the Feast of Feasts. Start your Lenten planning now, so that when March and Ashes come in like a lion, you may be ready for the combat.
It’s only February, but Spring keeps on popping up, doesn’t it? I don’t know what the Protestant groundhog did on February 2 in Pennsylvania, but here in West Chester Candlemas dawned “dark and grey, which means that winter will go away.” Attendance has continued strong despite both seasonal and new afflictions, and of course the ice and snow. Tim Hopkins, who manages Mass on crutches, could not risk the ice, so warmer weather is a blessing for him and others, for us all.
Speaking of blessings, the Christmas put away was done on First Saturday almost entirely by our young people, some of them too young even to be “young adults.” Behold the next generation at St. Gertrude the Great. Some of these dystopian days, so dark and heavy, we all need a bit of hope. That same cheering spirit warmed us on a dark Candlemas, with its beautiful Mass, the fine articipation. Our Lord allows thus far our life to go on, and even seems to be granting us another breather, a bit of respite from the antics of the Scamdemic.
Speaking of hope, our young adults are now welcome to register for July’s YAG. This comes just in time for St. Valentine’s Day. By a curious route, this early Roman priest and martyr has come to be honored as the patron of courtship. May he bless our youth and our not so young who feel themselves called to the married state for God’s glory and their own salvation. Courage!
We are cheered as well to be celebrating the tenth priestly anniversary of Fr. Stephen McKenna, our tireless missionary whose rounds take him each month from relatively balmy Texas to deeply frozen North Dakota. Happy trails to you, dear Father, with every blessing and great spiritual fruit for your labor in the Lord’s vineyard.
Help for this Covid crazy world seems to have unexpectedly come from the North, the quiet Canadians quietly rising up with their trucks to refuse the New World Order. God’s speed to them as they stay put, and all who resist the insanity. But Our Lord Jesus Christ is the King, and He the Key to victory.
With a prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes for all of our sick and dying today, especially for those still slowed by this lingering illness.
– Bishop Dolan