Year C Hymnal #945 VI Sunday in Ordinary Time February 17, 2019

Sun., February 17 Sat., February 16 Weekend of February 10, 2019 4 PM …  Foley by Connie Raymond Regular Offertory $2,729.00 11 AM … Sacristan / Altar Server Mtg ., February 17 VI Sunday in Ordinary Time Loose Offertory 584.15 in the main church 7:30 AM … Mary Marszal; Ernest, Carl & Jeanne Online Offertory Last Wk 575.00 Mon., February 18 Total Offertory $3,888.15 PRESIDENT’S DAY—Office Closed Bienvenue by Richard Bienvenue 9:30 AM … Our Parish Family Stewardship $1,517.00 NO Food Pantry 5 PM … Kathy Horning by Malachy McCarthy Stewardship Loose 229.35 Tue., February 19 Monday, February 18 Stewardship Online 30.00 12:45 PM … Parish Nurse Total Stewardship $1,776.35 Wed., February 20 9 AM … Mary (Howe) Byrne by Eileen Smith Tue., February 19 Food Pantry $ 10.00 7 PM … Knitting Group

12 PM … Robert Margaritis by Mikki Margaritis Thur., February 21 ********************** 7:30 PM … Choir Practice Wed., February 20 Last Year: Wknd of Feb. 11. 2018 12 PM … Available intention Total Offertory $9,101.70 Thur., February 21 Total Stewardship $2,189.00 On Monday, February 11, the food pantry served 51 adults, 31 8:30 AM … John Horton by Malachy McCarthy Thank you for your sacrificial gift! children, and gave out 52 bags of Fri., February 22 The Chair of St Peter the Apostle groceries. 6 PM … Elmer Soderberg by Jaye Soderberg Sat., February 23 Tickets for our annual ’s Dinner are on sale. Join us 4 PM … Ronald Robichaud by Mary Robichaud Saturday, March 9, 2019 at 5:30 PM for corned beef dinner Sun., February 24 VII Sunday in Ordinary Time with all the trimmings, raffles and Irish dancers and singing. 7:30 AM … Therese Paris by Nelson & Lillie Duquette Tickets are $20 and can be purchased following all weekend 9:30 AM … Denny Smith by Don & Esther Leclerc 5 PM … Our Parish Family Masses or at the rectory during the week. Please help support our event by donating goods or gift cards for our penny sale Sanctuary candle The sanctuary candle raffles and silent auction. Items can be dropped off at the rectory during the burns this week for Our Parish Family. week. If you have questions, please call Kerri at 623.2604. Thank you! READINGS FOR THE WEEK of February 17, 2019 Please pray for the repose of the soul of Melissa Ann Bar- Monday: Gn 4:1-15, 25; Ps 50:1 and 8, 16bc-17, 20-21; Mk 8:11- more, who died Feb. 12 and whose funeral service will be 13; Tuesday: Gn 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10; Ps 29:1a and 2, 3ac-4, 3b and celebrated on Feb. 19. Please keep Melissa and her family in 9c-10; Mk 8:14-21; Wednesday: Gn 8:6-13, 20-22; Ps 116:12- 13, 14-15, 18-19; Mk 8:22-26; Thursday: Gn 9:1-13; Ps 102:16- Sound Investment We hope you enjoyed the demonstra- 18, 19-21, 29 and 22-23; Mk 8:27-33; Friday: 1 Pt 5:1-4; Ps 23:1- tion sound system during the Feb. 2-3 weekend Masses. We 3a, 4-6; Mt 16:13-19; Saturday: Heb 11:1-7; Ps 145:2-3, 4-5, 10- hope you will consider the great need at Saint for a 11; Mk 9:2-13; Sunday: 1 Sm 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23; Ps 103:1- new and updated system. We have raised nearly $3,000 to date 2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-13; 1 Cor 15:45-49; Lk 6:27-38 towards this project. Our SRP Finance Council and our Parish Pastoral Council have endorsed this project at recent meetings. Thanks! Shout Thanks to all out to Stu Mills who attended Book Discussion Group our St. Valen- Please join the Book Discussion for watering and tine’s breakfast Group on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7 PM downstairs in The Pas- maintaining the Christmas last weekend tor’s Classroom. (Note the day and location changes!) We poinsettias in the church! and contributed funds to- will discuss Arundahti Roy's The God of Small Things. A great . We’re at the wards a new sound system! This lyrical novel, set in India in 1969, follows the life of fra- threshold of Lent! ternal twins as they learn difficult lessons about family, , life and cul- ture. Copies of the novel are available for $10 at the rectory. Please come Coming soon … The New Saint Raphael Follies ~ early for refreshments and fellowship! 5th Edition ~ May 31 and June 1, 2019 Get Ready! Time to begin determining your acts for the stage! NO CLASS—Monday, Feb 18 & 25 (Holiday & School Vacation) St. Gianna’s Place, Monday, Mar 4, 6:30—8 PM: Confirmation Prep #5 @ St Raphael Londonderry, offers Monday, Mar 11, 6:30—8 PM: Confirmation Prep #6 @ Transfiguration safe, long-term Monday, Mar 18, 6:30—8 PM: $1 Night @ St Raphael—Teens will have housing for homeless pregnant women in need and their lunch at their normal time but no snacks or drinks except water until they babies. The baby bottle fundraiser drive will continue throughout February. Bottles are in the baskets at the back get to class. Please bring a dollar bill to participate. of the church. Please take them home and fill them up with Monday, Mar 25, 6:30—8 PM: Discussion @ Transfiguration. “What is your loose change and return them the first weekend in March. Checks made out to St. Gianna’s Place will also be your vision of your future?” Questions? Please call Lynne at 603.533.4574 or accepted. Thank you for your support! email [email protected]. From the Pastor: Fr. Day, O.S.B. Saint Valentine, Miguel, Coco and Mass intentions—and remembering the dead Saint Valentine’s Day this past week is a ple’s attraction to the custom and appreciation time when many of us remember those we of its theology have declined. Ironically, love. The romantics among us take center “practical remembrance” through contribu- stage; the feast is a time for young lovers, the tions to medical research, animal shelters, engaged, the newly-married, as well as those libraries and schools, scholarships and other veterans of matrimonial love and commitment good causes has increased. who press on through the demands of chil- Our Saint Raphael Food Pantry and Hope dren, personal challenges and changes in soci- Chest, the Geisel Library and the Saint Raph- ety. For those of us who are less romantic but ael Scholarship at Saint Anselm College have blessed with friends, it is a time to remem- benefited – and we continue to be grateful. I ber and salute the gift of time, concern and remember when my mom died back in 1985, presence they bestow. But Saint Valentine’s Jewish friends contributed funds for a tree to Day is also a time when many of us remember be planted in Israel in her memory – and I those we have loved or cherished through could not have been more grateful or proud. death – and the holiday can be bittersweet All that having been said, we should re- because there is not much opportunity to ex- member the sublime beauty and great pow- press such deeply held pathos. er of having a Mass celebrated for the in- In this regard, the American celebration of tention of a deceased, or living, loved one. Saint Valentine has something in common We join our personal prayer to those of the with Memorial Day, when our commemora- celebrating the Mass, offered in union tion of those veterans who have died, and with the whole Church throughout the world. especially those who fell in the service of The celebrant offers the Mass with the needs their country. Memorial Day has never lost its Miguel, a precocious little boy age 12 deter- of the deceased loved one in mind – and that military connection, nor should it, but it has mined to give full scope to his musical talents. intention is taken up in the sacrifice the Liv- broadened out to become an opportunity for His family, uncharacteristically, is unwaver- ing Christ makes perpetually to his Eternal secular society to remember all our deceased ingly hostile to music of any kind. Father, a sacrifice now made in an un-bloody family, friends and fellow citizens. The reason for such anger is the fact that fashion but one that re-presents and commem- In the Church, however, the day to celebrate Miguel’s great, great-grandfather ran away to orates the sacrifice of the Cross. For believers, loved ones who have “gone before us marked perform and abandoned his wife and their there can be no greater act of remembrance. with the sign of faith,” as the liturgy expresses daughter, Coco. That little girl is now an old For Catholics, there can be no greater sign of it, is All Souls Day, Nov. 2. But All Souls lady, Miguel’s great grandmother, whose hope in eternal life. The Mass is the act of Day, at least in English-speaking countries, is own daughter polices the family stamping out the Risen Christ. relatively somber. We have already tricked any musical flirtations. The film charts Mi- Coco is a charming, culturally rich and and treated each other for Halloween, Oct. 31, guel’s fantastic journey into the underworld to hopeful portrayal of remembering loved ones, then pulled ourselves together for All discover his ancestor, who went on to become but it is fantasy. The Mass is historical, re- Day, Nov. 1, when we acknowledge and sa- “the greatest musician in all the world,” Ern- membering the events of the Lord’s Last Sup- lute all those saints, the canonized and hon- esto de la Cruz, a Mexican version of Elvis per, Crucifixion and Resurrection. It is real in ored around the world, those known more Presley and Cary Grant. that it makes those events present for us regionally and locally, and those unknown but The Land of the Dead is pretty lively in and gives us Christ’s Eucharistic Body and who, all together, enjoy the eternal presence Coco; its charming and amiable residents Blood. It is real too in acknowledging that of God in everlasting happiness. Then, on All have all the passions, peccadilloes and prefer- before heavenly bliss, we may have to under- Souls Day, we turn back to our beloved dead ences of their brethren topside. Miguel even- go purgation for our sins and failure to use – with the hope that they enjoy in due course tually meets Hector, a gifted composer and freedom as God intends. It is hopeful, because everything we celebrate for the saints. singer who assists the lad. In the bargain, in God’s mercy, our prayers can help in that The American system is not a bad one, but Miguel discovers the truth behind his ances- process which depends on Christ’s saving in typical Anglo-Saxon style, it makes dis- tor’s identity and seeming family abandon- action. And it is faith-filled for it makes a tinctions and imposes order. South of the bor- ment. The power and importance of faith, moment of eternity available to us, unites to der, in Mexico, Spanish civilization and na- family and love deepen for Miguel because of all those who have gone before us and is filled tive American Indian cultures produces a his journey on the Dia de los Muertos. His life with faith, hope and love. As the closing pray- much more effusive remembrance of the changes once he returns home. er of the Mass for All Souls Day reads, dead – those we have loved, lost and remem- Throughout the film, the song “Remember “Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your departed ber and those who have slipped from our own Me” displays the multiple ways that we hold servants for whom we have celebrated this personal consciousness but whom the culture people dear in our heart – and how life-giving, paschal Sacrament, may pass over to a dwell- collectively embraces. That remembrance is life-renewing and smile-inducing such activi- ing place of light and peace.” the famous Dia de los Muertos, a cele- ty is even through tears and sighs. Strangely, © Rev. Jerome Joseph Day, O.S.B. bration of All Souls Day on Nov. 2 in most of perhaps, I thought of Mass intentions. Mass Latin America. In many respects, the Dia de intentions? For the past several months, . los Muertos combines some of the best fea- “intention available” slots on our weekly tures of all these holidays and holydays. list of announced Masses have increased a Now this relatively long foray into love and fair bit. Not long ago, it was difficult to find remembrance customs is really just a way to an available day. Some parishes even had to say that recently I had the opportunity to double up in order to accommodate requests watch Coco, a 2017 fantasy film produced by from parishioners and friends. Not so much Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt these days. Why has this phenomenon oc- Disney Pictures. The movie, which was pro- curred? While I’m still puzzled, it may have duced with a largely Hispanic cast and which to do with the fact that as generations pass, was premiered in Mexico before general re- those who understood the inestimable value of lease in the U.S., is a charming story about the Mass are slipping away, and younger peo-