PASTOR’S MEANDERINGS 6 – 7 OCTOBER 2018 TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY ORDINARY TIME (B) This coming Thursday evening, 11 October St. Stephen, Martyr will be hosting one of the Regional Mass for Atonement for Victims of Abuse. In accordance with the Diocese’s directives the evening will begin with a dinner and a Listening Session for designated representatives of selected parishes and schools meeting with His Excellency Bishop Knestout. This will run from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. and will be held in the Commons of the church. Once this program starts no one will be admitted to the Commons. Following the dinner and Listening Session, the Bishop will celebrate Mass beginning at 7:30 p.m. All are invited and encouraged to attend this liturgy to pray as a community of faith and to hear the comments of His Excellency. If you arrive early for Mass you will be directed around the building to the side doors, those on the cemetery side of the church for access to the worship space. Since this is the Month of the Rosary; while awaiting the beginning of Mass this could be an appropriate time to pray the rosary for healing of those who have suffered from abuse as well as for the cleansing of the Church. SUNDAY REFLECTION Let us accept the vocation we have at the moment be it marriage, the single state, widowhood, single parenthood. Let us pray for marriage fidelity in our country, as we reflect on this gift of God to humanity. Father, You created man and woman in love to share Your divine life. We see their high dignity in the love of husband and wife, which bears the imprint of Your own divine love. Love is the origin of man and woman, love is their constant calling, love is their fulfillment in heaven. The love of man and woman is made holy in the sacrament of marriage, and becomes the mirror of Your everlasting love. (Irish Preface of Christian Marriage, III) In our Mass we bring before our minds the redeeming suffering and death of Jesus, and His being crowned in glory. Our minds and hearts are filled with grace, and we are given a foretaste of heaven. Our relationships, too, have a past, a present and a future. We ask Jesus, who triumphed through suffering, to heal the wounds we inflict upon each other, and to help us make our relationships signs of our future glory in heaven. STEWARDSHIP: The phrase in today’s psalm, “May you see your children’s children,” is really a prayer for a long life. The good steward knows that every day is a gift from God, to be lived with joy and thanksgiving. “May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives!” Josiah Royce “’Create me’ – this is the word that the Church, viewed as an idea, addresses to mankind.” READINGS FOR THE TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY 14 OCT ‘18 Wis. 7:7-11: The gift of wisdom is preferred to any riches. The ultimate treasure is found in seeking truth. Ps. 90:12-17: Heb. 4:12-13: The Word of God is alive and active. Our whole life is laid bare in the light of that Word. Mk. 10:17-30: Jesus asks the young man to move beyond observance to faith, beyond comfort to vulnerability. Peter Abelard “The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning. For by doubting we come to inquiry and by inquiry we arrive at truth.” OCTOBER - MONTH OF THE ROSARY Following each weekend Mass that I celebrate during the Month of October you are invited to gather on the choir side of the church to pray the rosary. The month of October each year is dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary. This is primarily due to the fact that the liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated annually on October 7. It was instituted to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary in gratitude for the protection that she gives the Church in answer to the praying of the Rosary by the faithful. Scholarship traces the development of the Rosary to the High Middle Ages period when it came into use in various medieval monasteries as a substitute for the Divine Office for the lay monks, nuns and devout laity who did not know how to read. Instead of the 150 psalms, they would pray 150 “Our Fathers” counting them on a ring of beads known as the crown or “corona.” With the growth of popularity of Marian devotion in the twelfth century, the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary” developed now substituting 150 “Hail Marys” in place of the “Our Fathers.” The 150 “Hail Marys” were subsequently subdivided into fifteen decades by the young Dominican friar, Henry Kalkar (1328-1408), with each decade referring to an event in the life of Jesus and Mary. The Dominican, Alanus de Rupe (1428-1478) further divided the episodes in the history of salvation into the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. He also attributed the origin of the Rosary to St. Dominic. Accordind to legend the Rosary as a form of prayer was agiven to St. Dominic (1170-1221) by Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, who entrusted it to him as an aid in the conflicts with the adherents of the Albigensian heresy. This spurred the Dominican Order to make the Apostolate of the Rosary their special concern. The Dominicans have, since then, promulgated the Rosary with notable results. The Dominican pope, St. Pius V (1504-1572), did much to further the spread of the Rosary and it became over time one of the most popular devotions in Christendom. It was the same Pope St. Pius, who in 1565 officially approved the Rosary in its present form with the Papal Bull, Consueverunt Romani Pontifices. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, originally entitled Our Lady of Victory was introduced by Pope St. Pius V in the year 1571 to commemorate the miraculous victory of the Catholic League (an alliance of Spain, Venice, the Papal States, Genoa, Savoy, and Malta) over the forces of the Ottoman Empire who were seeking to take over Italy in an effort to move into the heart of Europe. It was on October 7, 1571 when the battle was actually fought and the Catholic League was able to overcome the Ottoman forces.Christian forces in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. The pope attributed more to the “arms” of the Rosary than the power of cannons and the valor of the soldiers who fought there. Prior to the ships sailing off towards battle, Pope Pius V prayed the rosary, asking for Our Lady’s intercession in victory, and every man on board carried a rosary. For this reason, as soon as the men returned from the battle, the pope declared a feast day for Our Lady of Victory. A rosary procession was offered in St. Peter’s square after the victory and in time the whole month became associated with the rosary, rather than just one day. The practice of dedicating the entire month of Octobe to the Holy Rosary developed toward the end of the nineteenth century. Pope Leo XIII (papacy 1878-1903) strongly promoted the increase of devotion to the Blessed Mother by encouraging the constant use of the Rosary. Beginning on September 1, 1883, with Supremo Apostolatus Officio, he wrote a total of eleven encyclicals on the Rosary, ending with Diuturni Temporis in 1898. Pope Leo XIII officially established October as the Month of the Rosary in 1884. That year, he published Superiore Anno, an encyclical which was focused on recitation of the holy rosary. In it, he called for the entire Church to dedicate the whole of the month to the rosary and to pray it daily: “Last year, as each of you is aware, We decreed by an Encyclical Letter that, to win the help of Heaven for the Church in her trials, the great Mother of God should be honored by the means of the most holy Rosary during the whole of the month of October. In this We followed both Our own impulse and the example of Our predecessors, who in times of difficulty were wont to have recourse with increased fervor to the Blessed Virgin, and to seek her aid with special prayers… … We therefore decree and make order that from the 1st of October to the 23nd of November following in all the parish churches, in all public churches dedicated to the Mother of God, or in such as are appointed by the Ordinary, five decades at least of the Rosary be recited, together with the Litany. If in the morning, the Holy Sacrifice will take place during these prayers; if in the evening, the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed for the adoration of the faithful; after which those present will receive the customary Benediction. We desire that, wherever it be lawful, the local confraternity of the Rosary should make a solemn procession through the streets as a public manifestation of religious devotion.” In recent years, really decades, devotion to the rosary overall has not been what it once was, and so interest in celebrating October as the Month of the Rosary has waned as well. Many churches, whether named for Mary or not, do not have a public rosary throughout the month and there has not been much publicized about reviving this. In part, this seems to have come about due to some misconceptions attributed to the Second Vatican Council. One aim of the council was to ensure that Marian devotion remained balanced.