Together in Person
Last week, the bishops of the three Connecticut dioceses jointly released a statement announcing the reinstatement of the obligation of the faithful to attend Sunday Mass. This obligation to attend Sunday Mass (or Saturday Vigil Mass) in person has its roots in the Apostolic age, when the members of the Church gathered every Sunday to celebrate together the paschal…
From the Ruins
Last weekend, perhaps overshadowed by the media coverage given to Oprah Winfrey’s interview of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Pope Francis made a historic pilgrimage to Iraq, becoming the first pope to visit that country. The images from the visit are remarkable, especially the Holy Father’s visit of the city of Mosul. Mosul is the second-largest city in Iraq, and was the…
Vaccines
Last November, the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca announced that they had developed vaccines that effectively prevent infection by the COVID-19 virus. Not long after the announcement, however, questions were raised by many as to the morality of receiving these vaccines. The issue stems from the use of a morally compromised cell line in various phases of the design & development, production, and testing of these new vaccines. This cell line was…
Giving Thanks in 2020
Thanksgiving is a holiday filled with tradition. Besides 5k Turkey Trots and football games, the most important tradition is to sit at a table with family and friends and share with each other a meal, at which everyone speaks about what they’re grateful for. This year, many are likely to say they’re grateful that it’s almost 2021. The “annus horribilis”…
Glory-Scrolling
“Doom-scrolling” is a new internet expression that seems to be growing in popular usage. It’s defined online as: “the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.” I would venture to guess that anyone who has a social media account on Facebook or Twitter has had the experience of lying in bed, scrolling down through…
Freedom in Small Spaces
If you’re looking for good spiritual reading that’s practical and accessible, you might want to try the works of Fr. Jacques Philippe. He has written many books, including one called Interior Freedom, in which he explains: “Every Christian needs to discover that even in the most unfavorable outward circumstances we possess within ourselves a space of freedom…
Sick of Coronavirus
posted 8/8/20 I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of sick of Coronavirus. And when I say sick, I don’t mean I have Coronavirus, but that I’m tired of it. I hate how it has forced us to live. I dislike wearing masks and social distancing. The plexiglass barriers at every cash register, the closed storefronts. In darker moments…
Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy
posted 8/1/20 It was on March 16, 2020 that Bishop Caggiano, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, issued the decree that temporarily suspended all public celebration of Masses in the presence of the lay faithful throughout the Diocese of Bridgeport. Thankfully, the suspension ended on May 21st, and it has been great to see people beginning to return to…
Our Birthday
posted 7/4/20 Today we celebrate the 244th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which we recognize as the birthday of our nation. Although the celebrations of this great holiday must be relatively quiet this year, I hope you get to enjoy the weekend with family and friends as best you can. Our nation is obviously…
Welcome Home
posted 6/13/20 It’s with great happiness that we welcome parishioners back to celebrate the Mass in church this weekend. For now, we will be celebrating our parish Masses at the church of St. Cecilia, but soon enough we will return to celebrating Mass together at the church of St. Gabriel as well. These past several months…
On the Mass
posted 5/24/20 As we make preparations for the resumption of public Masses this weekend, it’s hard to believe that it’s been 62 days since the last public Mass in our parish and throughout the Diocese of Bridgeport. Perhaps now is a good time to consider why, in the absence of the faithful, priests continued to say Masses over these past three months – not just in front of a camera, but…
Enduring Hardships
posted 5/16/20 During this season of Easter, the Church gives us readings for Mass taken from the Acts of the Apostles. The Book of Acts tells us about the earliest days of the Church and the missionary work of the Apostles, especially St. Paul. This past week featured a remarkable passage (Acts 14:5-28) about the experiences of Paul and Barnabas as…
Little House
posted 4/24/20 Last year my sister was looking for a nice show that she and her husband could watch with their children. Remembering how much she enjoyed the show Little House on the Prairie as a kid, she decided she would introduce them to it. Unfortunately, the first episode she played for them was the one in which the family’s barn burned down in a…
Living the Mass
posted 4/23/20 “To those who are used to daily Mass there is no privation more terrible than that of having to do without it.” These words are from the book This War is the Passion by Caryll Houselander. Houselander was born in England in 1901 and became Catholic at the age of six, when her mother entered the Church. She had several mystical experiences in her…
Help
posted 4/17/20 When I was in my mid-20s I spent some time living in Spain. Before I arrived I had signed up to take some language courses at a school in Madrid to improve my Spanish, which I hadn’t studied since my sophomore year of college. I remember one day, around lunchtime, I was walking up and down one of the main streets…
Walker Percy
posted 4/1/20 When I was in seminary I was introduced to the work of the author Walker Percy. Percy was a native of Alabama and after finishing college at the University of North Carolina went to study medicine at Columbia University in New York. While working as an intern at Bellvue Hospital in 1942, Walker contracted tuberculosis and was forced to…
This Strange Sabbath
posted 3/28/20 The Holy Father’s Urbi et Orbi blessing yesterday was very beautiful. I was particularly struck by the solitary image of him walking up the steps to the podium, and then by the moment in which he led Benediction, blessing the city and the world with the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance. In his prayer, the pope said: “It…
The Angelus
posted 3/26/20 I got a call today from my friend Fr. Andy Vill. Fr. Vill might be familiar to you since he served as the assistant at St. John’s downtown for several years. He’s currently living in Spain, discerning whether he is being called to join a religious community there. My friendship with Fr. Vill goes back to our time in…
Missing Mass
posted 3/23/20 “Sometimes I think that those who have never been deprived of an opportunity to say or hear Mass do not really appreciate what a treasure the Mass is.” – Fr. Walter Ciszek For the past month or so I’ve been making my way through a book called He Leadeth Me, which is the spiritual autobiography of Fr. Walter Ciszek,…
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
posted 3/21/20 In the year 165 AD plague broke out in the Roman Empire. Now referred to as the Antonine Plague, historians believe it originated in China and that Roman soldiers came into contact with it while on campaign in modern-day Iraq. It quickly spread into Gaul and the Germanic territories held by the Empire and even down into the Italian peninsula. Based on contemporary descriptions…
Being Close from Afar
posted 3/18/20 I received a text message from an old friend of mine this morning and she shared with me the ways in which the current health crisis has affected her family. Everything is cancelled and people are trying to figure out what to do with themselves as they move forward into a future that…
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 