Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary December 8, 2013 Second Sunday in Advent Volume 1, Issue 14

Our Lady of the Chapel

I Am The

The Second Sunday in Advent this year happens to fall on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when Our Lady was prepared for the coming of the Son of God in her womb. God prepared her by giving her the unique privi- lege of being born without Original Sin. Of all the Sons and Daughters of Adam, she alone has been given that eminent privilege. She alone was found worthy to bear the Son of God. As the rod grew from the Root of Jesse, it found its

Our Lady of the Rosary

15 Pepper Street Monroe CT 06468 (203) 261-8290 Emergencies: (203) 268-9200 www.rosarychapel.net Fr. Adan Rodriguez (Pastor) [email protected] HOLY MASS Sundays: 7:00 & 10:00 am Weekdays: 7:00 & 8:00 am CONFESSIONS Sundays 6:40—6:55 am 9:15—9:55 am Weekdays 6:40—6:55am And by appointment HOLY ROSARY Sundays: 9:40 am First Saturdays: 8:45 am CALENDAR

DATE FEAST TIME INTENTION

Sun Dec 8 Immaculate Conception of BVM 7:00 am Ellen Hall Second Sunday in Advent 10:00 am Missa pro Populo W

Mon Dec 9 Within the Octave of BVM 8:00 am Special intentions of Vincent Ferro W

Tue Dec 10 Within the Octave of BVM 7:00 am Harriet Rand St. Melchiades, M 8:00 am Maria Antonieta Suracci, RIP W

Wed Dec 11 St. Damasus I, PC 7:00 am Sharon Ludwick Rand Within the Octave of BVM 8:00 am Frank Suracci, RIP W

Thu Dec 12 7:00 am Hannah Mae Keaveney, RIP W 8:00 am Rita Dolan Inside Story Headline Fri Dec 13 St. Lucy, VM 7:00 am Harvey Rand Within the Octave of BVM 8:00 am Mary Morris & Family R

Sat Dec 14 Within the Octave of BVM 7:00 am William Byrnes W 8:00 am Maria & George Schmitt, RIP

Sun Dec 15 Third Sunday in Advent 7:00 am Octave Day of Immaculate 10:00 am Missa Pro Populo Conception Rose

Please submit your Mass requests to MASS TODAY Father Rodriguez via e-mail or in per- MASS NEXT SUNDAY son, specifying the intention, whether Immaculate Conception of BVM the person is living or deceased, and if Third Sunday in Advent a specific date is required.  2nd Collect: Second Sunday in  2nd Collect: Octave Day of the Advent To pray for the living and the dead is a Immaculate Conception  Preface: BVM spiritual work of mercy. Remember  Preface: BVM  Proper Last Gospel: Second your loved ones by having a Mass said Sunday in Advent for their intentions.

2 The Immaculate Conception… (continued) ANNOUNCEMENTS home in the Blessed Mother, and took flower. She is the Flower of Schedule Changes the Field, the Lily of the Valley. She is our role model during Advent. It There will be no 7:00 am is the season of Our Lady’s Expecta- Mass on Monday of this tion, and we should meditate often and profoundly on our Blessed week. Mother, and the thoughts and hopes that were going through her Fundraising Committee own mind at this time. We must follow her from her home in Naza- There will be a meeting of reth where she received the mes- the Fundraising Committee sage of the Angel Gabriel, to the home of her cousin Elizabeth, mother of St. John after the 10:00 High Mass the Baptist who was to the Forerunner of Our Lord, the Messenger of God, he who was to prepare the today. way of the Lord. Follow Our Lady all the way to Bethlehem, where she would bring forth a Saviour Second Collection who would be called Emmanuel, God with Us. Fol- low her by the preparation of your own heart. Fol- There will be a second col- low her example and her courage, her patience and lection at both Masses. endurance, and follow above all her love for her Son, Our Lord Emmanuel, that when Christmas comes, when our Day of Judgment comes, we might ALL bring forth Our Blessed Lord in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds, that all men might see, by our example, their Redemption.

One day when Moses led his flock toward the desert of Mount Horeb, the Lord ap- peared to him in a burning bush surrounded by flames. Seeing that the bush burned without being consumed, Mo- ses said: “I will go and see this great sight – why the bush is A Christmas Visitor not burnt.” (Exod. iii, 3) On Gaudete Sunday, De- A daughter of Adam, the child of a fallen and sullied race, appears before us, in the language of the heavenly spouse, all beautiful and spotless. Let us examine cember 15, Saint Nicholas this wonderful privilege. It will be well to consider it first in itself and in its nature, will visit the children of the and then reflect for a moment on its reasonableness and propriety. chapel in the hall down-

The mystery of the Immaculate Conception is that exceptional privilege by which stairs after the 10:00 am the Virgin of Nazareth was, from the moment of her Conception, preserved im- Mass. He will tell them the maculate, or uncontaminated by original sin. A daughter of Adam, Mary was sub- ject to the common law, and exposed to that stain which falls as a malediction on story of his life, and distrib- all the posterity of a guilty father; for it is written in the Sacred Books that Adam ute holy cards and candy begat sons and daughters after his own image and likeness. So all men must say canes. with the Royal Prophet: “Behold I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.”

3 The Immaculate Conception... (continued) Christmas Novena But was the degradation of such an the human generation of Mary, the

origin compatible with the mysterious Immaculate Conception is a mystery the destiny of Mary? No. From all eternity secret of which surpasses our under-

Hail and blessed be the the Incarnation of the Word and His standing. We may ask how Mary es- hour and moment in which great work were foreseen in the divine caped a stain which belonged to her the Son of God was born counsels, together with the fall of man. very origin; but the secret of this of the most pure Virgin From all eternity, also, Mary was spe- preservation is not more mysterious cially predestined to give the Word In- than the secret of the transmission of Mary, at midnight, in carnate His virginal flesh. But before Bethlehem, in the piercing being the Mother of the Son of God she cold. In that hour, vouch- was the privileged daughter of the Fa- safe, O my God! to hear ther, who had her eternally present in my prayer and grant my His mind, who begat her mysteriously before all creatures. “The Lord pos- desires, through the mer- sessed me in the beginning of His ways, its of Our Saviour before He made anything from the be- Christ, and of His ginning.” The Holy Ghost, on the other Blessed Mother. Amen. hand, made her His mystical spouse, reserving to Himself the day marked for The Second Advent Candle the , on which He would descend on her, and operate what Clement of Alexandria calls “that divine Let us pray. prodigy, that divine novelty―a virgin- mother.” Stir up, O Lord, our hearts to make ready the Both God and Mary way for thine Only- Who does not understand the reasons, the propriety, which claim for the Begotten, that through his Blessed Virgin an existence altogether coming we may be worthy pure, an immaculate conception? She to serve thee with purified alone is not here in question, but God minds. Who liveth and Himself. It is God the Father, that can- reigneth with thee, in the not consent, by delivering Mary over to the evil spirit through original sin, to unity of the Holy Ghost, deliver to His mortal enemy the privi- ever one God, world with- leged daughter of His eternal tender- out end. ness. It is God the Holy Ghost, that can- the original taint. Explain the rule in not suffer in the heart of His mystical virtue of which original sin infects all R. Amen. spouse that stain which would most mankind, and then, as a Christian phi- afflict His heart; it is God the Son, that losopher declares, we shall be able to would come forth like a ray from the explain the exemption of Mary. Wheth- Morning Star. It is the august Trinity, er we suppose that Mary was separated who, in associating Mary to their great- from the general mass of humankind by est victory over the demon, could not special disposition of the Creator, or for a single instant leave it in the power whether we represent her to ourselves of the prince of darkness to call her his as forming a part of the general mass slave. but distinguished from it by a special grace, it always remains true that the Without doubt, admitting the transmis- divine honor does not permit her to be sion of original sin to all mankind, and involved in the universal malediction.

4 The Immaculate Conception… (continued)

And what the honor of God demands, His supreme will den mentioned in the Canticle of Canticles, the enclosure and power can effect. In other words: without taking of which nothing could violate, by the virtuous Esther, upon ourselves to argue with the divine will and power who by a solitary exception was not comprised in the against what it was becoming that God should do for decree of death issued by her spouse against the entire Mary, let it suffice for us to say that God did it, and the Jewish race to which she belonged. Who does not know fact in this case is not less striking for its truth than for its of the glowing words of the Holy Fathers proclaiming the propriety. same belief throughout the Church? Irenaeus, Ephrem, Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard, Justin, vie with one anoth- Prophesied From Adam er in calling the Blessed Virgin a lily among thorns, a vir- The truth of the Immaculate Conception is written on the gin earth, an incorruptible mass, which the leaven of sin first page of the Sacred Books with the history of original never spoiled. sin: “I will put enmities between thee and the Woman, Tradition Affirms We must also remember that living book called Tradi- tion, which proclaims as loudly as the Sacred Books the belief in the Immaculate Conception. To those who one day asked in what book the Salic law was written, the answer was returned: “In the hearts of the French peo- ple.” If, laying aside the Scriptures and tradition, any one should ask, where is the dogma of the Immaculate Con- ception written? We might in like manner reply, in the hearts of Christians. That is to say, in that epistle of Jesus Christ spoken of by St. Paul, which is written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone but in the fleshly tables of the heart.

But what sets the seal on the testimony of the Scriptures and the Fathers and Doctors, and on the faith of the gen- erations that have gone before us, is the authority of the and thy seed and her seed,” said the Lord God to the Church. It is that solemn decision of the successor of demon, who had disguised himself in the form of a ser- Peter, the Vicar of Christ – of the immortal Pius IX, of pent; “she shall crush thy head.” Either this oracle has no glorious memory, when, he decreed that “the doctrine reference to Mary, notwithstanding the entire series of prophesies in regard to the Messiah, which are but its which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, by a development or it implies the privilege of the Immacu- singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in consider- late Conception. If we suppose Mary to have been for ation of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the hu- one instant subject to the demon by original sin, then their radical opposition and enmity disappear. That the oracle be fulfilled, it is necessary that, as soon as the serpent attempts to raise his head against Mary, she should crush it. She should escape his empire entirely; and even before breathing the breath of life in her moth- er’s womb she should make him feel that natural enmity which is ever to exist between them.

Under what a countless number of figures is Mary Im- maculate presented to us in the Old and in the New Tes- tament! She was prefigured by the Ark of Noah, which escaped the general deluge uninjured; by the closed gar-

5 Proclamation of the Dogma

ALTAR SERVERS Vatican City, Feb 13, 2008 / 05:04 pm (CNA).- In an article published by L’Osservatore Romano, Italian historian Fran- Saturday, December 14 cesco Guglietta, an expert on the life of Pius IX, revealed Christopher Mendes how the Pontiff decided to consult with the bishops of the world to proclaim the dogma of the Immaculate Conception Sunday, December 15 on December 8, 1854.

10:00 High Mass Guglietta points out that the revolution that ended with the Celebrant: Fr. Hall proclamation of the “Roman Republic” in 1848 and that forced the Pope to take up residence for nine months in MC: James Morris Gaeta, south of Rome, had a profound effect on the Pontiff, Th: David Bouton who like Cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, had openly sympathized with the European revolutionary movements. Ac1: Michael Mendes

Ac2: Paul Richardson “During this lapse of time, in fact, Pius IX progressively lost trust in the processes of Cr: Thomas Kusterer the ‘revolution’ that were taking place in Europe and distanced himself from the liberal Catholic environment, beginning to see in the insurrection movement, as well as in the ‘modernity’ of that time, a dangerous snare for the life of the Church,” Guglietta writes.

The expert points out that “understanding what hap- tion of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin laid a pened with the thinking of Pius IX in Gaeta is of signifi- strong foundation for affirming and strengthening the cant historic relevance” and is an “area of research not certainty of the primacy of grace and the work of Provi- yet explored.” Nevertheless, he said, the Pope’s sojourn dence in the lives of men.” in Gaeta was fundamental for his decision of proclaiming the Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception. He said Pius IX, despite his enthusiasm, welcomed the idea of consulting with the bishops of the world, who According to tradition, Pope Pius IX spent a long period expressed their agreement, leading him to finally pro- in prayer in Gaeta before a painting of the Immaculate claim the dogma. Conception by Scipione Pulzone preserved in the so- called Chapel of Gold, and that moment of encounter with God convinced him to proclaim the dogma.

However, French historian and professor Louis Baunard said that while gazing upon the Mediterranean from the city, “the Pope mediated on remarks made to him by Cardinal Luigi Lambruschini: Holy Father, you will not be able to heal the world unless you proclaim the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Only this dogmatic defini- tion will reestablish the meaning of the Christian truths and bring minds back from the paths of naturalism upon which they have become lost.”

According to Guglietta, naturalism, which rejected all supernatural truth, could be considered the “backdrop” for the Pope’s proclamation of the dogma. “The affirma-

6 Christmas Sale

On a clear and crisp November 30, the annual Christmas Craft and Bake Sale was held from 9am-4pm. It was well attended by the peo- ple of Monroe and members of the Church alike, who were able to shop in a festive atmosphere created by strings of Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, and of course the sound of carols. Shoppers enjoyed free cookies and a choice of hot cocoa, coffee or tea as they browsed among the various tables offering a variety of items ranging from crochet work and china tea sets to a refrigerator. The grade school classroom housed the tag sale, while the high school class- room became the clothing store. Baked items sold well, and a well stocked Christmas basket was raffled off.

The sale was extended into Sunday, December 1, for the benefit of those who could not make it on Saturday.

The Children of Mary (by whom the sale was hosted) and the school children would like to thank all those who helped with the Fair and those who attended, for their generosity and hard work. Special thanks go to Teresa Costanza who manned the religious items table, and Mrs. Mendes who acted as cashier for the day.

The sale benefited about $890. Entertainment was provided by Krooning Tom Kusterer Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel operates a thriving parish, com- enthusiasm. Come and be a part of this work, which was founded plete with full-time Catholic school for grades K through 12. Two not so much by good Father Fenton in 1972, but by Our Lord Jesus Masses are offered daily, and various devotions and other cere- Christ himself, when he gave the keys of his kingdom to St. Pe- monies are provided during the course of the liturgical year. Our ter. This is none other than the Roman , and at parish guilds offer wonderful opportunities to become more in- Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel we are proud to be an instrument volved as your time and interests permit. We are always looking for its continuation, and the preservation of its Faith and Liturgy. for volunteers to serve Mass, sing in the choir, or work in the church and on the property and grounds. The enthusiastic partici- pation of our parishioners is one of the hallmarks of Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel, and we welcome your support and talents.

Newcomers are particularly welcome, and we invite you to intro- duce yourself to one of our priests. He will be able to answer your questions concerning the traditional Latin Mass and the crisis in the Catholic Church since Vatican II, and guide you towards a fuller understanding of what your own role should be in these difficult times in which we live.

Our aim is to preserve the truth and beauty of our Catholic herit- age. We invite all of you to participate in this our apostolate, and in particular by becoming shining examples of our true Faith by your everyday life, both spiritual and moral. God calls us all to perfection, and our role is to answer that call with all our love and

7 A Message from the Pastor VISIT US ON THE WEB We stand in awe this For up-to-date information, week before the Blessed such as last-minute changes Mother and the unprece- dented privilege she to the Mass schedule, spe- was granted that pre- cial prayer requests, and served her free from other breaking news, please sin from the very mo- refer to our website at: ment of her conception. This single fact is www.rosarychapel.net alone sufficient to proclaim to the world You will also find a wealth the sanctity of life within the womb, and of information about Our the perversity of the Lady of the Rosary Chapel, notion that it is a including our history, mis- mother’s right to ter- Mary is conceived without sin in the sion statement, guild activi- minate that tiny soul. womb of ties, and school curriculum. Let today’s glorious We hope you will find our feast herald the approach of Our Divine Savior who site a valuable resource, will come not only at Christmas, but also as our and will help us by sending judge. God bless you. your stories and photos of life at our chapel. Fr. Adan Rodriguez

NOTICE TO NEWCOMERS Founded in 1973 in the wake of the disastrous Second Vatican Council, the mission of Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel is to maintain and restore as far as possible the traditional faith, values and liturgical practice of the Roman Catholic Church, and to provide a haven of sanctity where men and women of good will may grow in love for God and their neighbor.

Please don’t hesitate to introduce yourself and ask questions. After Mass come to the Social Hall, and join us for coffee and refresh- ments.

We welcome Spanish-speakers, and confessions are heard in Span- ish and English every Sunday and by appointment with the pastor.

We hope your visit with us is a pleasant one, and we look forward to seeing you again and welcoming you as a member of Our Lady of the Rosary.