Happy Thanksgiving

Abraham Lincoln, in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863, said the following:

“[T]hose nations are blessed whose God is the Lord… It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.”

What a powerful message from our 16^th president, the president who kept our country united!  

Today you and I as members of St. Gregory the Great Parish are called to offer such praise to God as the source of all our blessings.  

You are well aware that Thanksgiving and Christmas are becoming increasingly secularized;  this is nothing new – it has been happening for decades.  By “secularism” I mean the ideology that the worldly/temporal must be always distinguished from the spiritual, that religious belief must always be separated out of public life.  At one point in the 1930’s, Thanksgiving Day, which had been established by Lincoln as the last Thursday of the month of November, was moved up one week earlier to allow for more shopping time prior to Christmas.  

As Catholics we do not live as if our daily lives are separate from our religious lives.   We integrate the two and believe that our faith in God affects our everyday lives and that faith should also have a place in the public life of our country.  

May you and I live Thanksgiving Day in the spirit of the Pilgrims, George Washington and Lincoln, in a spirit of love and joy, by offering thanks to Whom it belongs: our Creator, our Father in Heaven.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mass of Remembrance

As we look at the beautiful trees around here on campus - red, yellow, orange, and gold - and see the leaves begin to fall - we think of the words describing trees in autumn from the poet Robert Frost:

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

As we remember our loved ones this month, we speak those same words: “Nothing gold can stay.”  Our loved ones mean the world to us, yet we always knew all along that at some point they would have to leave us - that they could not stay forever - that they would have to pass from this world.

As I shared with those present at our Mass of Remembrance this past Wednesday, Harold Bloomfield, Peter McWilliams and Melba Colgrove have some advice for us in a book about surviving during loss. They say that it is important to grieve for our loved ones.   

“Don't postpone, deny, cover or run from your pain.  Be with it now.”  “Everything else can wait.”  “Set aside time to mourn” they say to us. We are so used to putting things behind us quickly and moving on with our lives. But sometimes we force that to happen and we never completely heal.   

It is best to be open with God about our grief as we think about our loved ones and lift them up to God.    

“Be gentle with yourself.”  “Accept that you have an emotional wound, that it is debilitating, and that it will take awhile before you are completely well,” they advise us. 

It may be a little more difficult for you to carry out certain tasks. That's okay.

“Surround yourself with goodness and light.”  “Breathe deeply of goodness and light.  Let it fill every cell of your body.”

God can help us heal. We want to breathe in the light and goodness of Jesus Christ and his Resurrection.  We choose to light candles for our loved one and allow the warmth of that light to come into our hearts.

Please take a moment to pray for our deceased parishioners whose photos are in the alcove of our Gathering Space this month.  It is a powerful way that we continue to think about them, hold them in our hearts, and still express our love for them.

Confirmation 2014

On Saturday, November 1st (All Saints Day) Bishop O’Connell, the bishop of the Diocese of Trenton, celebrated the sacrament of confirmation with 225 youngsters of our community.  It was a beautiful, prayerful, sacred, spiritual event!   These boys and girls received this final sacrament of their sacraments of initiation, the third one for them after baptism and Eucharist.  Confirmation is a strengthening of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the person. Those gifts include wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord. It was wonderful to be present as those gifts were sealed in them.

Our church was decked in red: red cloths, red flower wreaths around the candles, red ribbons on the edges of the pews, and red vestments on the bishop, priests and deacons. “Red” as you know is the liturgical color of the Holy Spirit.  At the ceremony, the boys and girls reaffirmed their faith in God and His Church by responding “I do” to the Bishop when he asked them if they believed various teachings of the Faith and the Creed.  The Bishop then laid hands on them as a group while praying a prayer. He then placed chrism on their foreheads in the form of a cross and said “Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit” followed by “Peace be with you.”   

Each youngster of course had chosen a confirmation name. Just as a piece of trivia, the Bishop told me that the two most common confirmation names for girls are “Cecilia” and “Elizabeth.”  

One could truly feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament. May we all support these young men and women as they strive to live their Faith this year, in their high school years and beyond!  We pray that the gifts of the Holy Spirit will continue to blossom and shine forth in them.

It was such an honor to have Bishop O’Connell with us to celebrate confirmation. The Bishop is not able to go to all the 109 parishes in the Diocese of Trenton to perform confirmation, so it was a privilege that he selected us.

Most of you know about the Bishop already I am sure, but I just wanted to share some biographical information about him with you.  A member of the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians), Bishop O’Connell since his ordination to priesthood has served at various institutions in the areas of academic administration and education; he has served as a professor of theology, philosophy, religious studies and canon law.   

In 1998, then-Father O'Connell was named the 14th president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.  One of his main priorities while he was president of the university was the Catholic identity of the programs on campus.  I was a canon law student at CUA while Bishop O’Connell was president there and was able to meet him there on one occasion (not knowing that he would be my bishop one day!).

On June 4, 2010, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI appointed Father O'Connell as Coadjutor Bishop of the Diocese of Trenton. He was ordained to the episcopacy by Bishop John M. Smith in St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral, Trenton, on July 30, 2010.  Bishop O'Connell succeeded Bishop Smith as the 10th Bishop of Trenton on December 1, 2010.

Since becoming the shepherd of the Diocese, Bishop O’Connell has focused his efforts on the catechetical development of his flock, the sanctification and cultivation of his priests, and the advancement of vocations.  The Bishop has also devoted special attention to the sustainability of Catholic schools in the diocese, and I know that he thinks very highly of our Academy.  

The bishop also serves on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education. He is also a consultor to the Congregation for Catholic Education at the Vatican.

Congratulations again to all our newly confirmed and to their parents and families!