Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

I returned home Monday night from a two-week sojourn which was very refreshing and quite interesting. All things considered I am happy I went. I am grateful to Father JM who managed things brilliantly in my absence.

Last weekend I mentioned the incorporation of the Pentecost Vigil into our parish liturgical life. However, I was not fully up to speed – as I was not here – about some of the specifics. There is a further explanation in the Bulletin, but let me emphasize the following.

On Saturday evening May 19th at 5:00 p.m., we will begin celebrating Pentecost with Praise and Worship and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, followed by a presentation given by Rev. Monsignor Eugene Rebeck, Pastor Emeritus of St. Catharine Church in Holmdel. Confessions will follow and then the Mass will be at 7:00 p.m. (Last week I said 8:00 p.m., but we reconsidered that). This is an ancient (though new to us) and prayerful way to welcome the Holy Spirit among us. I look forward to it and hope to see many of you there.

Pentecost is a feast that often gets lost in the shuffle of so many other secular and religious events of the Spring Season. Let us take the time to pause and celebrate this most solemn feast – the so-called Birthday of the Church – with all due solemnity.

As you may have heard, Pope Francis issued a proclamation declaring the Monday after Pentecost to be the Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church. The decree states in part: “The joyous veneration given to the Mother of God by the contemporary Church, in light of reflection on the mystery of Christ and on his nature, cannot ignore the figure of a woman, the Virgin Mary, who is both the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church.

Indeed, the Mother standing beneath the cross accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal. She thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit. Christ, in turn, in the beloved disciple, chose all disciples as ministers of his love towards his Mother, entrusting her to them so that they might welcome her with filial affection.

Thus the foundation is clearly established by which Blessed Paul VI, on 21 November 1964, at the conclusion of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles’.

This celebration will help us to remember that growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed, the Virgin who makes her offering to God.”

We will celebrate with all due dignity and solemnity this Feast for the first time on Monday, May 21.

A blessed week,
Fr. Garry