Our Lady of Hope Blog

My Dear Friends,

Happy New Year!!!!! Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family and tomorrow, January 1st, is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. There’s a lot of news coming out of the Vatican these last two weeks and much of it is controversial. I am not one to shy away from anything controversial, as you know, but on this beginning of the New Year, I want to focus on something that is not controversial.

My Dear Friends,

Merry Christmas!!!! Christmas is tied into other major feasts of the Catholic Church, beginning with the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8th. Following this important feast day, the next important feast is the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary on March 25th. It is on the Annunciation that God has become man, which our Catholic Church commemorates during the recitation of the Nicene Creed. It is on the Annunciation and on the Nativity of our Lord that we are obliged to kneel when we pray, “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

My Dear Friends,

During this time of the year many people put up manger scenes in their homes. The manger, or also called the crèche, is a beautiful tradition where we place figurines of the important people surrounding the baby Jesus. The manger scene can also be a painting or an icon besides something physical with statues or figurines. Most scenes have at the barest minimum the baby Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph.

My Dear Friends,

Christmas is only a couple of weeks away. Because Christmas falls on a Monday this year, Catholics are under the obligation to attend Mass twice, once for the Sunday Mass obligation and once for the Holy Day of Christmas obligation. There are a few ways to fulfill the obligation.

My Dear Friends,

This coming Friday is one of the most important feats of our Church year. We celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when Mary is conceived without sin in the womb of St. Anne. The privileges of the Blessed Mother are meant for two things; one is to protect the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the other is to help us on our way to eternal life.

My Dear Friends,

We have arrived at the feast Christ the King and the end of the liturgical year. Next week begins Advent. Knowing the liturgical year allows us to enter into the rhythm of our faith through the seasons, beginning in Advent and Christmas then the few weeks of ordinary time before Lent and Easter and re-entering ordinary time again. It’s not only the season that we celebrate liturgically.

My Dear Friends,

On Tuesday, November 21st, we celebrate the Presentation of Mary. This is an interesting feast day in the Catholic Church. It is not in Sacred Scripture, but it is attested to in other extra biblical writings that we call apocrypha. St. Joachim and St. Anne, the parents of Mary, bring their daughter to the temple when she is three years old. The image that corresponds to this feast is that of the dove sent by Noah to find if the flood was over.

My Dear Friends,

I recently re-watched Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Lifeboat. It is a story by John Steinbeck, (who did publicly distance himself from the film and denounced Hitchcock’s treatment of the material), and it concerns nine survivors of an American/German battle. Eight of the survivors are American and British civilians and service members while the ninth man is a German who was brought aboard on the lifeboat by the other eight. The whole movie is filmed on the lifeboat.

My Dear Friends,

The Liturgical season is winding down. November 26 is the last Sunday of the Liturgical year, which since the reform of the liturgy in 1970 has been called Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, commonly shortened to Christ the King. (In the traditional liturgy, the last Sunday in October is Christ the King.) The following Sunday, December 3, we begin the season of Advent.

My Dear Friends,

This week we celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, more commonly known as Halloween, the evening before our Holy Day of Obligation, All Saints’ Day. The day following All Saints’ is All Souls’ Day. On this day we commemorate all who have died and are still in need of prayers before they enter into the presence of God in his eternal Glory. Throughout the month of November, we will remember our loved ones in the Book of the Dead as well as in our All Souls envelopes, which are placed on the altar at Mass for the thirty days of November.

My Dear Friends,

As you know, October is not only the month to honor Our Lady of the Rosary, but it also respect life month. Every year the Archdiocese of Hartford joins with the other dioceses throughout the United States to prayerfully pray for life from conception to natural death. We do so here in Our Lady of Hope by taking our parish’s turn in front of a Planned Parenthood that performs abortions, and we do a 24 hour adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. There are so many other ways for us to show our love for life, especially the life of the unborn.

My Dear Friends,

It is so hard to believe that we are at the midpoint of October. The days and weeks are flying by. October, as you may know or may remember from last year is the month devoted to the Holy Rosary. You may also have heard at least one Marian hymn during Mass for the Sundays of October. To honor our Blessed Mother is so important as Catholics, and every parish I have been assigned to I have made sure that we honor her in May and October with at least one hymn to her glory.

Since the pandemic in 2020, many churches, Catholic and Protestant, have suffered with the loss of active parishioners. In many Catholic churches throughout the country, but especially here in New England, the various faith formation classes for our young people have also continued to shrink. There is no magic program to get families back to church, but as Catholics, we do have something besides programs; we have the Holy Eucharist.