St. Mary's Church, Roslyn: Pastor's Page

My dear people of St. Mary’s:

This weekend we come to Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. This is the most important and solemn week of the Church’s liturgical year. So here is a preview of what is to come.

Holy Week begins with what is called “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion”. As we do each year, Mass begins at the door of the Church, where we read the Gospel account of the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The palms, which you will receive upon entering the Church, are blessed during the entrance procession with Holy Water. The water which we will use for this rite contains water from both the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. This water was brought back from Israel by me at the time of my last pilgrimage to the Holy Land. During that Mass we will read the Passion according to St. Mark. Red vestments are worn on Palm Sunday to remind us of our Lord’s suffering.

Monday, March 26, is our annual Diocesan Day of Penance. Every Catholic Church in the dioceses of Rockville Centre, Brooklyn and New York will have priests in the confessional from 3:00 to 9:00 pm. Here at St. Mary’s, I will be in the confessional from 2:00 to 10:00 pm. Please make use of the Sacrament of Confession this Lent.

On Wednesday, March 28, we conclude our Parish Lenten Mission with the talk, “St. Peter’s Rise”, which will be held at 1:00 pm in the Church, and repeated again at 7:00 pm in Msgr. Ryan Hall.

Thursday, March 29, begins what is known as the “Sacred Triduum”, or the “Sacred Three Days”. On Holy Thursday morning at 9:00 am we will have Solemn Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. This is not a Mass, but a prayer service with music and a short homily that usually lasts thirty minutes. Following that, I depart for the 11:00 am Chrism Mass with Bishop Barres at St. Agnes Cathedral. Each year the priests of the diocese renew their priestly vows at that Mass, and the Bishop blesses and distributes for each parish the three Holy Oils to be used in the Sacraments to be administered in the course of the next year. You may watch the Chrism Mass on Telecare (Cablevision channel 29/137, Verizon FiOS TV channel 296, and Charter Spectrum channel 162/471) or online at telecaretv.org. Holy Thursday evening has the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, celebrated at 7:30 pm in the Church. Following the Mass, we have the procession with the Blessed Sacrament down to the repository in the lower Church, where adoration will continue until Midnight.

Good Friday, March 30, begins with a 9:00 am Solemn Morning Prayer, followed by confessions in the Church until 12:00 noon. At 3:00 pm we will have the Good Friday Service of the Lord’s Passion with Holy Communion at Msgr. Ryan Hall. At this service we read the Passion according to St. John, as well as venerate the Holy Cross. This year our guest presider will be my good friend, Fr. Walter Kedjierski, the Vice-Rector of the Seminary. This liturgy dramatically ends in silence as all depart the Church. In the evening of Good Friday, we will have the Solemn Stations of the Cross with music in the Church at 7:30 pm.

On Holy Saturday, March 31, we again begin with the 9:00 Solemn Morning Prayer, followed by confessions until 12:00 noon. At 7:30 pm in the Church we celebrate the beautiful and solemn liturgy of the Easter Vigil. This Mass begins in darkness as we light the Paschal Fire, symbolizing that Christ the Light enters our world darkened by sin. We follow that with a number of readings from the Old Testament, summarizing Salvation History for us. Then lights come on, we sing the Gloria for the first time since Lent began, and we read the Easter Gospel, proclaiming our Lord’s Resurrection. This year we are blessed to have a catechumen, Saori Enright, who will be receiving her Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist) at that Mass.

On Easter Sunday itself, we have our regular Mass schedule: 7:30 am, 9:00 am & 11:00 am in the Church; and 12:15 pm in Msgr. Ryan Hall. We hope you will join us for these beautiful services in the most Holy Week of our year.

—Fr. McCartney

My dear people of St. Mary’s:

Last week it was announced that there will soon be two new saints canonized by Pope Francis, most probably by the end of the year 2018: Pope Blessed Paul VI, and Blessed Oscar Romero. This week we will look at the first.

Giovanni Montini was born in Brescia, Italy, in 1897. His father was a lawyer and member of Parliament, and his mother was from a noble family. He had one brother who became a lawyer and another who became a physician. He was ordained a diocesan priest in the year 1920, at the age of only 23. He soon received his doctorate in canon law in Milan, and then studied in Rome at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where future church diplomats are trained. In 1922, at the age of only 25, he was appointed to work in the Vatican Office of the Secretariat of State, which handles all diplomatic and political functions of the Church, as well as its internal governance. Because of this early appointment, Giovanni Montini never actually served one day as a parish priest.

Montini would go on to work for years at the very highest levels of the Roman curia. He worked very closely with Eugenio Pacelli, then Cardinal Secretary of State, who would be elected Pope Pius XII in 1939. During that papacy, which included the tumultuous years of the Second World War, Pope Pius would come to rely a great deal on Montini and would develop a close working relationship with him. In 1954, Pope Pius named him the Archbishop of Milan, historically one of the most important sees in the world, and one from which many future popes had previously come. It is said that both Montini and Pope Pius had tears in their eyes when the new archbishop departed to take possession of his diocese, which had 1,000 churches, 2,500 priests and some 3,500,000 Catholics.

In 1958, with the death of Pope Pius XII, Angelo Cardinal Roncalli was elected Pope, taking the name John XXIII. With a career as a papal diplomat and a term as the Patriarch of Venice, at the age of 76 Pope John would stun the world when he decided to summon what would become the Second Vatican Council. He asked Archbishop Montini to live at the Vatican and help to prepare for the council and then to guide its deliberations. At the end of the year 1958, Montini was named a cardinal and, although he continued to serve as Archbishop of Milan, he also had many new jobs in the Vatican, requiring his frequent presence in Rome.

When Pope John XXIII died in 1963, Montini was elected his successor, taking the name Pope Paul VI. The Second Vatican Council was only halfway through its deliberations, and the new Pope would have to bring it to its completion. This occurred on December 8, 1965. The next dozen years would see great turmoil and upheaval both in the world, and in the Church. Pope Paul presided over many changes in the Church, most especially in the Mass, and the change from the Latin language to the vernacular. He was the first Pope in many years to travel abroad, making trips to the Holy Land, the Philippines, India, Colombia, Portugal, Uganda, and even a whirlwind 14-hour trip to New York City in 1965, where he spoke at the United Nations and celebrated mass at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

He wrote eight encyclical letters, the most famous of which is Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), in which he reaffirmed the Church’s traditional view of marriage, and condemned artificial contraception. He also took a great interest in ecumenical relations, and interfaith dialogue with non-Christian religions. He died at Castel Gondolfo on August 6, 1978, at the age of 80.

Now, with the announcement of his canonization likely to be held in October of 2018, Giovanni Montini will soon become Pope St. Paul VI.

—Fr. McCartney