All Saints Day

What a wonderful display of images of the saints in the alcove in our Gathering Space!  I thank our Arts & Environment team for assembling it:

The Gospel reading for today was the Beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12).  Living the Beatitudes is the way of the saints.  Those holy men and women lived the meekness, humility, poverty of spirit, courage, love and thirst for justice asked of them by Our Lord.  And by walking that simple path, despite the challenges, struggles and crosses they faced, they found joy.

The Dominican theologian Servais Pinckaers calls the Sermon on the Mount, of which the Beatitudes are a foundational part, a “charter of the Christian life” (Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View, 8).  “The Beatitudes focus the hope of the disciples upon the kingdom of heaven, paradoxically directed to the poor and those persecuted for Jesus’ sake.”  They are the “response of Christ to the question of happiness” according to the Fathers of the Church (Pinckaers, 9).

The Sainte-Chapelle, a royal medieval Gothic chapel in Paris, France, built by St. Louis IX

The saints have “competed well.”  They have “finished the race.”  They have “kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7).

“They have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb” (Rv 7:14; today’s Reading 1).

May we follow on their path by living the Beatitudes!

Halloween 2015

Happy Halloween! 

Someone said yesterday in an email at the school, “Good afternoon, boys and ghouls!”

Have you ever heard the story of the jack o’lantern?  Thousands of Americans around this time of year scoop out the flesh of a pumpkin, carve a haunting face into its rind, and stick a candle inside.  These jack o’lanterns are then displayed on porches and stoops.

There is an Irish legend that a man called Stingy Jack invited the Devil for a drink and convinced him to shape-shift into a coin that he could pay with. When the devil obliged, Jack decided he wanted the coin for other purposes, and kept it in his pocket beside a small, silver cross to prevent it from turning back into the devil.

Jack eventually freed the devil under the condition that he wouldn’t bother Jack for one year, and wouldn’t claim Jack’s soul once he died. The next year Jack tricked the devil once more by convincing him to climb up a tree to fetch a piece of fruit. When he was up in the tree, Jack carved a cross into the trunk so the devil couldn’t come down until he swore he wouldn’t bother Stingy Jack for another ten years.

When Jack died, God wouldn’t allow him into Heaven, and the Devil wouldn’t allow him into Hell.  He was instead sent into the eternal night, with a burning coal inside a carved-out turnip to light his way.  He has been roaming the Earth ever since. The Irish began to refer to this spooky figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” which then became “Jack O’Lantern.”

People in Ireland and Scotland began to make their own versions of Jack’s lantern by carving grotesque faces into turnips, potatoes and beets, placing them by their homes to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits and travelers.

Once this became a Halloween tradition, jack-o-lanterns were used as guides for people dressed in costume on Samhain (Oct 31 – Nov 1), a Gaelic pagan version of Halloween, seen as a night when the divide between the worlds of the living and the dead is especially thin. The Samhain festival marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, the “darker half” of the year.

When the Irish and Scots emigrated to America, they brought this tradition along and found that pumpkins, native to America, made perfect fruits for carving. Pumpkin jack-o-lanterns have been an integral part of Halloween festivities ever since.

Some believe that the jack-o-lanterns originated with All Saints’ Day, and represent Christian souls in Purgatory. Roaming Stingy Jack is in what would be considered Purgatory.

I think it is important to see Christian meaning behind holiday symbols.  Halloween can help us to think about the afterlife: Heaven, Hell and Purgatory; and the interaction between us here on Earth and the invisible, spirit world.

Loving Others with our Thoughts and Words

We are called to love others and have mercy upon them with our thoughts and words. 

I am guilty of “rash judgment” if I assume as true “without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor."  To use a hypothetical example, I assume that because my neighbor’s car is always in her driveway that she is lazy and does not work.  Later on I find out that she carpools, and her friend drives her back and forth to work each day, picking her up in the morning and dropping her off at night at hours when I am at work and am not home.  I was too quick to judge; I made a decision in my mind about someone without enough evidence. 

I commit the sin of detraction if I “without objectively valid reason, disclose another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them.”  The information is true but I should not tell it to others.  For example, I happen to know that my friend Joe has a serious addiction to gambling that he is ashamed of and does not want his wife to know about.  He revealed this to me in a conversation that he asked me to keep confidential.  I proceed to put it on my Facebook page and Twitter account, making a joke about how “Joe has single handedly kept the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in business.”

I commit calumny if I, by remarks contrary to the truth, harm the reputation of others and give occasion for false judgments concerning them (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2477).  The information is false and I spread it to others.  For example, I am furious at the basketball coach, because he rarely plays my son.  I spread a rumor that twenty years ago the coach sexually abused a minor: one of his nieces. It is a completely fabricated story/accusation.

Do I try to destroy others with my thoughts and words?  Or do I try to love them? 

Marriage Support and Enrichment

Telling others what marriage is, as crucial as that is at this time, is not all we are supposed to do when it comes to marriage.  Equally important, in my mind, is to help, support and encourage married couples of our parish on their chosen path/journey.  This is why we offer the marriage anniversary blessing at Sunday Masses here each month. 

It is also the reason why I have asked parishioners Joe & Luciana Sweeney to lead a Marriage Support & Enrichment Ministry for us. Joe and Luciana have already begun to form a core team, and the ministry has many exciting events and activities in store! 

On Saturday, February 13, 2016 after the 5:00 pm Mass, for example, the ministry along with our Knights of Columbus will host a Valentine’s Day Dinner Dance.  There will be a DJ and dancing, as well as poetry and other loving words expressed between husbands and wives and fiancees.  Save the date!

Joe and Luciana will also coordinate a series of Catholic dating opportunities for couples, in which couples can go out to dinner after a marriage discussion and movie (with babysitting provided if necessary). Please look on our social media and in our bulletin for details as to when this special program will start!

Our Marriage Support & Enrichment Ministry is enthusiastic about conducting other activities as well.  (Please contact Joe & Luciana at 609-203-5190 or jtmsweeney@yahoo.com if you would like to join the ministry team.)  May God bless them in their efforts!

Pregnancy and Infant Loss

Usually when we grieve due to the loss of a loved one, we grieve the loss of someone we knew for many years, someone we have talked to and shared many memories with.  We miss something, or rather someone, who was there with us for many years.  But for those who lose their own children through miscarriage, still birth, ectopic pregnancy, infant death, or SIDS “You have to deal with the loss of your hopes and dreams, ” as one woman who experienced infant loss wrote. It is hard enough to grieve for something/someone that we had and then now miss.  It is even harder though to grieve over something that we’ve always wanted but never had, or better put, had always wanted to love but which was only here with us for a brief while. 

Last Wednesday evening we celebrated a Mass to offer prayers for those little members of our community who went to God too soon, and to try to comfort one another in the midst of loss.

The children who have gone to God were represented during Mass in the sanctuary by lit candles. 

I could almost feel the presence of the children there at the Mass as I looked at the candles.  One could almost sense that they were there praying with us.

During the Mass, mothers went up and lit a candle. Some lit two, three, four. 

Dr. Shaddy played profound, healing music.

I thank parishioner Carol Moscarello, the head of our Elizabeth Ministry, for coordinating the event.   Please contact Carol at 732-691-6001 or Moscarellocarol@yahoo.com if you would like to join the Elizabeth Ministry here at St. Gregory’s and offer help and support to families with unborn and newborn children.  Elizabeth Ministry is an international movement offering encouragement, hope and healing to people in the areas of childbearing, sexuality and relationships.  The ministry is based on the visitation story of Mary and Elizabeth in the Gospel of St. Luke.