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April 11, 2025Please see your bulletin for all the Holy Week Dates, Times and Events. HAPPY EASTER!!Read More
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April 4, 2025Our Church (like every other Catholic Church in the world) looks different today. All the Shrines and the figures on our Rood Screen are veiled in Purple cloth. Why is this? Catholics veil statues, crucifixes, and other sacred images, particularly during the final two weeks of Lent (beginning on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, or “Passion Sunday”), as part of an ancient liturgical tradition. This practice, known as “Passiontide veiling,” carries both symbolic and spiritual significance.Read More
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March 28, 2025Why is today, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, called “Laetare” Sunday? The name comes from the first words of the Entrance Antiphon for Mass, “Laetare Jerusalem” — “Rejoice, O Jerusalem”. The fourth Sunday marks the half-way point of the Lenten season, even though the Thursday before Laetare Sunday is the actual middle day of Lent.Read More
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March 21, 2025Lenten fasting is a cornerstone of Lent and rediscovering traditional Catholic fasting for Lent is making a comeback. The Lenten Fast began under the Apostles themselves and was practiced in various forms. St. Augustine in the fourth century remarked, “Our fast at any other time is voluntary; but during Lent, we sin if we do not fast.” At the time of St. Gregory the Great at the beginning of the 7th century, the fast was universally established to begin on what we know as Ash Wednesday. While the name “Ash Wednesday” was not given to the day until Pope Urban II in 1099, the day was known as the “Beginning of the Fast.”Read More
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March 14, 2025In the Gospel account of the Transfiguration which is read today, the 2nd Sunday in Lent, Jesus takes three of his closet companions with Him up the mountain. The outcome is miraculous. Their Savior is speaking with the representatives of the entire faith of Israel - Moses and Elijah. Moses was believed to have single handedly written the Law; Elijah represented all the Prophets. His disciples must have remembered Jesus saying that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill. Peter experienced this moment with great awe.Read More
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March 7, 2025Ready or not, welcome to Lent! On Friday nights in Lent, the Catholic Church of St. Mary the Virgin, like the vast majority of Catholic Church’s all over the world, will walk the Stations of the Cross, beginning at 6:00 PM, ending with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and followed by a meatless meal at @ 6:45 PM. (There is a sign up sheet about these meatless meals in the Narthex by the Baby Bottle display.) We will have our usual Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on Fridays in Lent. Confessions during Lent are heard from 4:00 - 4:55PM (as per usual) and then, after the closing prayers and transfer of the Sacrament from the Monstrance at 5:00PM, Confessions will also be heard from 5:10PM - 5:55PM before Stations and Benediction.Read More
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February 28, 2025With today being “Quinquagesima” (one of my most favorite of ecclesiastical words to say!) Sunday, it’s time to look to Ash Wednesday this week, followed by our Friday Night Stations of the Cross and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.Read More
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February 21, 2025Today is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. It is the Patronal Festival for the North American Ordinariate. It takes the place of the usual Septuagesima Sunday for Ordinariate Parishes. An Ordinariate patronal feast day refers to the special feast day celebrated by a particular “Ordinariate” within the Catholic Church, usually commemorating the saint or title associated with that specific jurisdiction, which in the case of the “Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter” in the United States and Canada.Read More
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February 14, 2025With the Feast of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (aka Candlemas) last Sunday, Christmas has definitively come to an end, and we have sung our last “Alleluia" until Easter. You can see their “burial” spot off to the side of the patio as you enter the Church. The grocery stores now remind us that (the secular/pagan versions of) St. Valentine’s and St. Patrick’s Day are upon us. By the time St. Patrick’s Day comes around this year, the Catholic Church will be well into Lent. Then, in turn, the wonderful season of Easter with its feasting and joy in the Resurrection of Our Lord will be upon us. It is a busy four months, but thankfully, the Church, in her wisdom, has given us a pause these next three weeks — before Lent, we enter into Gesimatide.Read More
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February 7, 2025Two or three times a year, I like to use this column as a vehicle for ‘Housekeeping” issues. These are mundane issues in some ways, but important for us to pay attention to. I like to refer to these as some “Ordinariate Etiquette” examples for us to implement. Each of these has been brought to my attention (since my last article about this) in one way or another, and I thought this letter on the last Sunday of Epiphany would be the most appropriate way to address all them before we move into the busy liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter.Read More
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January 25, 2025Last week I wrote that a good way to use these few weeks of "Epiphanytide" is by doing some Spiritual Reading, Well, putting my money where my mouth is, I have been reading (or re-reading) some of the great books by Msgr. Ronald Arbuthnott (I love that middle name) Knox.Read More
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January 17, 2025“The Epiphany season, also known as Epiphanytide or the time of Sundays after Epiphany is a liturgical period, celebrated by many Christian Churches which immediately follows the Christmas Season. It begins on the Epiphany and ends at various points (such as Candlemas, which will be covered in a future letter) as defined by those denominations. The typical liturgical color or the day of Epiphany is white, and the typical color for Epiphany season is green.Read More
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January 11, 2025It has been my great honor to teach the RCIA (now OCIA, but I am having a hard time getting used to that!) classes here at St. Mary the Virgin. Because we are a small parish, our group might be more aptly named “Seekers Classes” because people come seeking different things. Some are unbaptized adults, seeking baptism and confirmation, becoming part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Some are baptized Catholics who have left the Church before receiving all their sacraments and are looking for First Communion and/or Confirmation. And some are Catholics who received their sacraments, but left the Church to follow a different way, and are now coming back into the Church and want to relearn what they didn’t get in their initial religious education. And some have been faithful Catholics who just want to brush up on their faith.Read More -
December 25, 2024For centuries now, every twenty-five years the Church sets aside a graced time of Jubilee. These Jubilee Years are “a significant moment in the life of the Church in which she celebrates the year of messianic favor inaugurated by Christ through his Incarnation and Paschal Mystery” (cf. Lk 4:19, St. John Paul II, Tertio Millennio adveniente, nos. 11-16). The Year of our Lord 2025 is just such a Jubilee, and so it stands apart as a new opportunity to receive the Lord’s mercy, to give gratitude for his Holy Church.Read More
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December 15, 2024While the traditional reckoning of the Advent Ember Days is in the Third Week of Advent (nearest St. Lucy’s day), the Ordinariate was given permission to shift them to the First Week of Advent. This was done to safeguard the full observation of the O Antiphons (Sapientiatide), from 17-24 December (this week) in the Ordinariate calendar.Read More
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December 8, 2024The term “Advent” derives from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming” or “arrival.” Thus it’s a time of waiting and preparation, filled with joy but also with repentance and penance. It anticipates the “coming of Christ” from three different perspectives: the 1st coming in Christ’s Nativity in Bethlehem, Christ’s reception in the heart of the believer, and the return of Christ as King of the Universe at His Second Coming (which we celebrated two weeks ago).Read More
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November 30, 2024I am probably "Preaching to the Choir" (this is an old church adage, you know, referring to something commonly known) but the word "Advent" comes from the Latin word "adventus" which means "coming" or "arrival." It is a time to reflect on the humble nature of the birth of Jesus. It is a time to anticipate our heavenly home.Read More
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November 8, 2024Have you ever given your opinion about something, and then said "That's just my two cents worth"? It's a way of letting the person you're talking to know that this is just your own opinion, and the listener is free to disagree. When we add our "two cents worth" to a discussion, we let people know that, "yes indeed, this is what I think, but I could be wrong. Take it for what it's worth - a great deal perhaps, or not much, maybe."Read More
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October 25, 2024By tradition, the Catholic Church dedicates each month of the year to certain devotions. I often like to use my weekly letter to describe some of them. The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary, one of the best known of all Catholic devotions. October includes the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7). the best way to celebrate the month is, of course, is to [pray the Rosary.Read More
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October 18, 2024During this month of October we are able to celebrate the Feasts of two great female saints – St. Therese of Lisieux (on October 1st) and Teresa of Avila (on October 15th) of whom we have relics of both, or the two Teresa’s of SMV! (We are also blessed with a Shrine Altar to Saint Therese, a gift of the Oliver family) Because of these connections, I thought I’d share brief outlines of their lives, as inspirations for us today.Read More
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