What a powerful and beautiful experience of Church we all had this past week as we celebrated our Forty Hours Devotions. So many of our faithful parishioners and friends joined us as we honored the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. As the Blessed Sacrament rested on our altar during the days of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Lord was never alone. So many times as I went into church in the course of the day, there were five or six and sometimes more people sitting there with the Lord in prayer, and more often than not two or more classes of students from our Blessed Trinity School were also there. What a great consolation our prayer and company must have been to our Blessed Lord! Each evening we celebrated the beautiful liturgy of Evening Prayer, and Father Kenneth Cavara, in his homilies, gave us much to think about and pray about regarding the great gift that the Eucharist is to our lives and to our world. We concluded each evening’s prayer with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
The crowning of our Devotions was Wednesday night, when we gathered not only for Evening Prayer, but also for our beautiful outdoor candlelight procession of the Blessed Sacrament, which ended at our grotto where we had our concluding Benediction. Literally hundreds of our parishioners --- young and old, school and PREP children and their families, high school students, and friends --- joined us as we gathered in prayer and song and procession to honor our Eucharistic Lord, and to petition him to bless our neighborhood and our city and our world, all of which are in desperate need of our presence.
Our Forty Hours was a great tribute to who we are as a community of faith. From the bottom of my heart I thank everyone who came to pray with us and to honor Jesus in his Eucharistic Presence. I also thank anyone and everyone who worked so hard to make our Devotions the beautiful experience of prayer it was, especially Anne Coneghen and our music ministers, Nick Monica and Francesco Sifoni, our dedicated rectory staff, our second-to-none altar servers, our devoted teachers and catechists Mrs. Pfeiffer and Mrs. Kirschman, and anyone else who made our Forty Hours the success it was.
I remind you that next Saturday, October 7, in honor of the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, we will be blessing our beloved pets at 9:30 A.M. at our grotto (in case of rain, the blessing will take place in the lower church). Please bring your furry (and other) friends to be blessed as we remember the poor saint of Assisi who loved all God’s creatures intensely.
Know that you and those you love are daily remembered in my Mass and my prayers.