Bulletin column from March 19, 2023

March 20th is a welcome break from out Lenten penances because it is the Solemnity of Saint Joseph.
I would like to personally invite everyone to a candlelight Mass on March 20th at Saint Frances Cabrini at 7:00pm. Some of you may remember the candlelight Mass which was done at Saint Mary’s in Barton for the Feast of the Holy Family. We had a wonderful turnout and I received many positive comments about the beauty of the Mass. We also had a terrific turnout of young adults which is an encouraging sign for our parish. Being in seminary in my late twenties and early thirties, I have discovered that many younger Catholics really enjoy reverent and beautiful Masses rooted in Tradition. I think one reason for this is because the world is so counter-cultural to Catholicism. For a young person to be Catholic requires substantial courage and a depth of spirituality to face the world. Therefore, many young Catholics look back in time to our Traditional Catholic practices. Just as these practices preserved the faith of our ancestors, so now, it continues to preserve the faith of many young Catholics in a hostile world. In reflecting upon my own life, I came through the Church in a period of ‘watered-down’ Catholicism. Like virtually everyone else in my Confirmation class, I ceased attending Mass after Confirmation. What ultimately brought me back to Catholicism was our Tradition. A Tradition which too often we seem to be ashamed of, and allergic to. This need not be the case. Those Traditional devotions, prayed in a Traditional language, sung in a treasury of traditional hymns, bearing fruit in a Traditional Mass, helped to build and maintain the greatest mystical body of believers which the world has ever seen.