Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

We had a nice weekend last weekend, too bad the rain took out the Saturday evening entertainment. We will have to reschedule the band and the activities for another time. Congratulations to the winners of the parish 50/50 raffle. Thank you to all who participated.

As we hit this first week of October and the fall season is in full swing, there are many events planned for the next few months.

Deacon Paul and Nancy Arkin will be leading us in discussions around Bishop O’Connell’s catechesis on the Eucharist videos throughout the month. On October 8 Deacon Steve will be organizing and working with small group communities beginning in November. The highlight of the Fall Celebrations around the Eucharistic Revival will be the Forty Hours Celebration, November 5-6-7.

Forty Hours is a traditional period of Eucharistic Adoration with special parish devotion, presentations, and prayers over a three- day period. While less common now, this formed the annual celebration of parishes for many years. This becomes a parish retreat of sorts.

While the exact origin of the Forty Hours Devotion is not known, the first clear attestation for its celebration comes from Milan, Italy in 1527. It was celebrated as reparation for the sins of the community and was motivated to offer prayers to God for protection during wartime. The practice of celebrating Forty Hours spread quickly. Of course, the number forty is an important biblical and liturgical number: Noah was on the ark for forty days; the Israelites spent forty years in the desert; Jesus fasted for forty days and; Jesus lay in the tomb for approximately forty hours from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. The Lenten Season lasts forty days as well. St. John Neumann was profoundly influenced by this devotion growing up in Bavaria and strongly promoted it in the United States. As the fourth bishop of Philadelphia he mandated the devotion in each parish of the diocese annually. Growing up in the Allentown diocese, which was formed from Philadelphia when I was a child, this devotion was an integral part of our parish life. As a seminarian in Allentown (70’s & 80’s) attending the various celebrations in the parishes in the diocese was common practice.

While we have 24-hours of adoration available in the parish every day, the celebration of forty hours serves to highlight and intensify this period. Adoration will move from the chapel to the church throughout the period. We will be inviting individuals, and especially families, to sign-up to make sure that the church is occupied without interruption throughout the period. We will post a schedule of prayer and liturgical events as we get closer.

The first session of the Synod of Bishops opens on Wednesday (Feast of St. Francis of Assisi) and continues through October 29. The theme for this synod is: For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission. We laid the groundwork for the synod two years ago with the listening sessions here; that moved to the diocesan and then the national levels.

I participated in the North America session this past spring as well. The church invites us to pray for the work of the synod. While there are all kinds of rumors about the synod and what it means, I think our best approach is to pray and to be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as the church affirms and enriches the body of tradition that has been handed on to us.

I hope everyone has a blessed week.
Fr. Garry