Fifth Sunday after Easter
16-22 May 2004
Mass Intentions
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Adrienne McDade Pro populo Brandon Gish † Stephanie Senus † William Lapin † Kevis Santiago Juan Daniel Jaranillo David Penner Catherine Roehm † Lois Nichols † Karhla Santiago Fr. J.K. O'Connor † Juan Daniel Jaranillo Nick & Deborah Keswani Eric Culberson † |
Life in the Sheepfold
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During Mass, to dress becomingly for God and neighbor, and in keeping with the reverence due to the Blessed Sacrament, kindly refrain from wearing shorts, tee-shirts, tank-tops, sleeveless or backless dresses; let your dresses and skirts fall below your knees. Naturally, we applaud whatever is decorous and befitting sacred and divine worship, and frown upon lewd, suggestive, or vulgar dress.
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Prospective parishioners: To register, please fill out the form provided on the table in the vestibule and mail them to the pastor.
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All parishioners are welcome to come to the parish hall after Mass for coffee and cake. The door by the confessional in the front leads to the parish hall.
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A reminder: when receiving Holy Communion in the traditional Latin rite, the communicant does not say "Amen."
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We continue with our exposition of modesty–the forgotten virtue–based on a conference given by the late Fr. John Hardon, S.J. Last week, we covered four of the eight elements of the virtue of prudence, the better to understand its connection to the practice of modesty and Christian chastity. Fr. Hardon now treats the next two elements:
Fifth, prudence implies practicality. All the moral doctrine of Christianity is useless unless I apply the Church's moral principles to the particular situations that arise hour after hour, day by day, especially when I associate with other persons.
Sixth, prudence entails foresight; indeed, the very word means foresight; that is, being able to provide or foresee how something should be done. Applying this to modesty, a modest person will consistently, almost instinctively, foresee how he or she should act in order to preserve his own chastity and that of others. We said earlier that modesty avoids any bodily movements that would be offensive to the eyes of others. We should immediately add that modesty also avoids anything that would be offensive to the ears of another person. In the modern West, and certainly in American society, it is almost part of our culture to arouse sexual thoughts and images through sight and sound. Our communications media not only seem to be, they are diabolically possessed with a desire to incite the sexual passions.
A whole science has come into existence called sexology. Its advocates have deeply influenced our entire system of education, from pre-school children right through secondary schools and to the universities.
I thought I would have a heart attack when a priest friend of mine, who was taking graduate courses at a university for a doctorate, told me that he was specializing in sexology. Somewhere, near the center of this ideology, we find a virulent opposition to what the sexologist calls religious moralizing. According to the sexologist, the moral teachings of all religions, but especially that of Christianity, are repressive. Christianity, they claim, inhibits the natural expression of the sexual instinct, even within the bond of marriage. Needless to say, many clergy and laymen have embraced these notions propounded by sexologists and championed by Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, the institution that she founded. When, as we've said before, Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humanę Vitę, the Episcopal conferences of almost all the nations of the world met in solemn session to pass judgment on the Vicar of Christ, and about half of the world's Episcopal conferences voted against the teachings of the Bishop of Rome, while tacitly acknowledging with Sanger and her ilk that the Church's teaching on contraception was repressive, and could in good conscience be rejected.
Let's be clear. In today's world, a Christian believer cannot remain chaste without practicing heroic prudence. What do I mean? I mean what Our Lord taught: we cannot love both Him and the world. Either accept Christ and reject the world or, more graphically, love Christ and hate the world. Knowing the world as well as we do, we have no choice. We shall only be as chaste as we are constantly on guard against the enemies of Christ, who deny the very existence of chastity. In their vocabulary, chastity is a form of psychosis. Sexual pleasure in every form should be available to every normal man or woman-indeed, to every child. To be continued.
Announcements
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Many of you will be happy to know that Archbishop Donoghue has graciously given us his permission to celebrate the feast of the Ascension this Thursday and observe the Sunday within Ascensiontide as provided for in the missal. While Ascension Thursday is not a holy day of obligation in this Archdiocese, we will nevertheless offer an extra Mass at 8 p.m. (at least a Missa cantata). That way, as many persons as possible will be able to avail themselves of the graces of Holy Mass, to take advantage of the Archbishop's indult, and to show that he did not grant it in vain.
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Our twelve windows all have sponsors. For those who have not done so already, please let me know which saint you wish to be depicted in the window. A deposit would also be appreciated.
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The Altar Society needs more members! If interested, please call Mrs. Gwen Powderly: 770.955.6047. Many thanks to all members, new and old, for the wonderful work that you do to adorn our altars.
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This Sunday's second collection is for Catholic Communications. The next second collection is scheduled for 27 June (Peter's Pence)
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Last Sunday's Offertory: $4,061.
Offertory collection for the month of May: $13,197
Expenses for the month of May: $15,281
Sundry Thoughts
Excerpts from The Liturgical Year by Dom Guéranger
Our Jesus has organized His Church, and confided to His Apostles the sacred deposit of the truths which are to form the object of our faith. We must now follow Him in another work, of equal importance to the world, to which he gives His divine attention during these forty days: it is the institution of the sacraments. It is not enough that we believe; we must, moreover, be made just–that is, we must bear upon us the likeness of God's holiness; we must receive, we must have incorporated within us that great fruit of the redemption which is called grace; that thus being made living members of our divine Head, we may be made joint-heirs with Him of the kingdom of heaven. Now it is by means of the sacraments that Jesus is to produce in us this wondrous work of our justification; He applies to us the merits of His Incarnation and Sacrifice, but He applies them by certain means, which He Himself, in His power and wisdom, has instituted.
Being the sovereign master of His own gifts, He can select what means He pleases whereby to convey grace to us; all we have to do is to conform to His wishes. Thus, each of the sacraments is a law; so that it is in vain that we hope for a sacrament to produce its effects, unless we fulfill the conditions specified by our Redeemer. And here, at once, we cannot but admire that infinite goodness which has so mercifully blended two such widely distinct operations in one and the same act–namely, on the one side the humble submission of man, and on the other the munificent generosity of God.
We were showing, a few days back, how the Church, though a spiritual society, is also visible and exterior, because man, for whose sake the Church was formed, is a being composed of body and soul. When instituting the sacraments, our Lord assigned to each an essential rite; and this rite is outward and sensible. He made the Flesh, which He had united to His divine Person, become the instrument of our salvation by His Passion and Death on the Cross; He redeemed us by shedding His Blood for us: so is it in the sacraments; He follows the same mysterious plan, taking physical things as His auxiliaries in effecting the work of our justification. He raises them to a supernatural state, and makes them the faithful and all-powerful conductors of His grace, even to the most intimate depths of our soul. It is the continuation of the mystery of the Incarnation, the object of which is to raise us, by visible things, to the knowledge of things invisible. Thus is broken the pride of Satan; he despised man because he is not purely a spirit, but is spirit and matter unitedly; and he refused to pay adoration to the Word made Flesh.