Recently in St. Edward Parish, Newark Category

The site "St. Gaspar House" has received the Fidelity Green Light Award for a site that has exhibited Fidelity to the teaching Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

This is what they list as strengths:

Homilies, articles, letters by Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, C.PP.S.
The History of the Province of the Pacific
The Seven Essentials of a Precious Blood Parish
Forty Days with the Cross of Christ
The Charism of St. Gaspar
in Parish Ministry and in Retrouvaille
CPPS Spirituality in the USA
On St. Gaspar
Community in the Bond of Charity
Gaspar's Mission
MInistry With The Laity is Central to our Identity
On Prayer
Lectio Divina
Novena to the Holy Spirit
Eucharistic Devotion
Morning Prayer
Precious Blood Chaplet
Seven Offerings
The Rosary
On Mary
Devotion to Mary in the Second Century Fathers
Mary, Woman of the New Covenant
Madonna of the Precious Blood
On Saints
St. Ignatius of Antioch
St. Catherine of Siena
St. John Fisher
St. John Chrysostom
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
St. Paul
The Writings of St. Gaspar del Bufalo

The homily is here. It was the last Do This In Memory Mass of the Season, and so the first part of the homily was with some children gathered around me in front, and then after sending them back to their parents I gave the rest of the homily, total about 12 minutes.

We put our bishop's response on the front page of our parish website.

...can be found here.

Well, It is that time of year again. Things have been improving. I remember with sadness my first year here. There were some seven different first communion celebrations. I would have to search my archives to see if I ranted about the zoo-like atmosphere at all of them. In the recent past the CCD team has been more cooperative and the only over-the-top liturgies were in Spanish or for our parish school.

I long for the day when we all know the difference between doing something at the liturgy or doing the liturgy.

This year, these kids are doing nothing except participating in the liturgy, the liturgy itself. Even the school may have a adopted some attitude of reverence when it comes to the sacred liturgy. We shall see and I shall report later.

At any rate, it starts this weekend. There will be five celebrations over three weekends.

Here is the program for this coming Sunday. It will be very similar to what we do every Sunday at 10:00am. I eliminated a few things for copyright concerns, but you can see the essence of what is in the program, mostly ritual music.

I would be curious to see if there is any other parish in the country that even approached this kind of celebration for first Communion. Let me know.

Make this new fire holy, and inflame us with new hope.

A flame divided but undimmed.

I baptize you in the name of the Father….

Receive the light of Christ!

Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Here are Jason, Clara, Marion and Victor with me at the Preparation Rites on Holy Saturday. They were Baptized, Confirmed and received their first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil.

Today, a quiet day. Two Masses, one solemn with choir. A great way to begin the new year. Today is also filled with rememberance of last year celebrating new year's day with Benedict XVI.

Blessings to all on the New Year

It is Priesthood Sunday and the people here at St. Edward have been very affirming. Many have stopped to wish me a happy anniversary whuch happiliy coincides with the event, and members of the Team have informed me that I needed to relinquish the last page of the Sunday bulletin so they could celebrate Priesthood Sunday there too.

But probably the most affirming letter I have gotten in a while came by email. The correspondant has graciously allowed me to post the letter, but I have removed the signature to protect their privacy. The letter is here.

My favorite part of the letter:

At St. Edward’s you have proven that, despite some problems, the dignified, prayerful, and truly artistic celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not beyond the reach of the contemporary Church. Despite some difficulties, you have avoided allowing the assembly to determine the way a liturgy should be celebrated, but instead have demonstrated, that “Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church”.

It is apparent that he/she reads several blogs and is well educated on the liturgy. It is a joy to celebrate Mass with such generous and faith filled parishioners.

My dear children, there are two things I want you to remember about our patron, St. Edward.

First, is the Church we see him holding. St. Edward had a great devotion to the Church. It was more than the money he gave to have the Church built, but it was also his devotion to the people he was sent to serve. The Church is where we meet Jesus and coming to Sunday Mass is the most important thing we could ever do.

Second, I want you to remember the ring that is part of the St. Edward story. The ring he gave to feed and clothe the poor. It stands as a symbol of his generosity and his ability to see what needed to be done, and then to go and do it.

So we are the people who have St. Edward as our patron. So we too will have a devotion to this church and especially to the Most Holy Eucharist which is celebrated here. And we too will see to serve the poor, most of all, to see what needs to be done, and to do it with great generosity of heart. That is what will make us the people of St. Edward.

We had three celebrations of First Communion last weekend and will have three more next weekend. These celebrations are getting better. There is a great focus on the child and the sacrament now after three years of trying. We are doing our best to eliminate the phlanx of parents with their cameras. This year we hired a professional photographer to record the event. These people were exceptional. They made a minimal impact on the liturgy, and they were available before and after for portrait sessions in the Hall. In the picture each child appears in front of the altar with all its Easter decorations, a picture that was taken a few weeks ago. So the Church, before and after the ceremony, is preserved as a sacred space. The ushers are getting better at ridding the aisle of camera bearing parents, and they are now free to enter into the experience of the sacred mysteries.

Here are some of the pictures that were taken.

First Communion Pictures

Next week is three more First Communion celebrations, then we have two Confirmation celebrations on the following Saturday. The following weekends will see an increase of wedding celebrations, along with the School Graduation.

Yes, as promised last year, the Exsultet will be chanted in Latin. The Homily will be about Mother bee, very prominent in the Latin but unfortunately missing in the dreadful English translation. The program will have a literal translation into English, along with the Spanish translation.

There will be six baptisms tonight, and one recieved. They will all be confirmed and I have recieved faculties to confirm the husband of one of the newly baptised, the fiance of the one recieved, and two who are receiving their first communion tonight.

Homily Notes:

Fratres Carissimi, Queridos Hermanos, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus our Risen Lord. At the beginning of this night, with ancient words and melody dating back to the first years after the resurrection, the church surrounds a significant candle, and invites it to embody the praise of the people of God, the church, as it chases away the darkness of this night and fills it with a glowing light.

This ancient song makes special mention of the work of human hands and so it is fitting that in this church we place this hand-made candle and praise the work of the artist that gives us such a gift. But the song also makes special mention of the work of the bees. The fire of this candle, although it is divided into parts, knows no loss from its light being lent out, divided and spread afar. As the light is given to each one of you, the intensity of the light in this place glows evermore intensely. The chant praises the melting streams of wax, which the mother bee has produced for the substance of this precious candle, and for the power and energy it gives for the increase of light.

Mother bee has produced no ordinary light. This light banishes a culture of darkness and now mingles with the lights of the heavens, and joined with the morning star praises the rising sun that breaks like a peaceful dawn upon a broken world.

O truly blessed night, in which heavenly things are joined to those of earth. This is the wedding night of the marriage feast of the lamb. This is the marriage of heaven and earth. In any marriage two opposites become as one, and in this marriage the Creator of the universe has invested each and every part of our creation with a capacity for the divine. God has taken up our flesh and our humanity even to the experience of death, and in his rising he has conquered death forever.

There is an old expression, "If you think you are too small to make a difference in this world, try sleeping with a mosquito". I would invite us to think like this: "if you think you are too small to make a difference in this world try living as a Christian." If the tiny bee can nourish a light that can compete with the stars of heaven, how much more can our small flesh and blood, when immersed in the great mystery of the of the death and resurrection of the Son of God and filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit, spread the light of his resurrection to every corner of this world.

My dear Elect, this is the night of your rebirth in Christ Jesus. This night is not about anything we can do or anything we can feel. It is all about Jesus Christ our Lord and what he has done, in us and for us. It is he who has shed his most precious blood for us and invited us into the holy of Holies, to stand with confidence before the Father as his beloved children. We shall remain in our weak and sinful human flesh, but he will clothe us with his glory and change us into his likeness. And when we remain in him no darkness can ever overcome us because we shall always have the light of his resurrection to scatter the shadows and fear of the world.

In the days ahead when the power of darkness seeks to exert his influence over you, I invite you to remember mother bee. Remember the work of the bees and the human hands that fashioned this candle. Remember the glory of its light that mingles with the lights of heaven. And remember that the Lord has taken each of us, as small as we are, and given us his light and made us his children. And now changed into his likeness he has given us the ability to boldly stand in his presence and show the world a light that never fails.