Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

In two weeks we will celebrate the Forty Hours devotion. This long-standing tradition in the life of the church was popularized here in the US by Saint John Neumann when he was the Bishop of Philadelphia. Forty Hours is a focused period of Eucharistic adoration, serving as a time of retreat and reflection for a parish. This is a tradition that I grew up with in Pennsylvania and am happy to bring it here for this time of the Eucharistic Revival. There is a complete list of parish focused prayer times and other events for the Forty Hours devotion available in the bulletin. Periods of parish public prayer is punctuated with the extended times of adoration.

We are inviting families to consider spending an hour together in adoration, along with the individuals and couples who will participate. We are using a two-centered approach. We will have adoration in the church from 8:30am until after 9pm, and then switch over to the Adoration Chapel for the overnight hours. This will assist with security and provide a comfortable setting in the chapel for those who are here overnight. There will be sign-up sheets available for adoration.

Father Mariusz Eugene Koch, CFR will lead off the celebration celebrating the 5pm Mass on Sunday, November 5. Father Daniel Kirk will lead us in the Liturgy of the Word and offer a homily on Monday, November 6. Bishop David O’Connell, CM, will celebrate and preach the closing Mass on Tuesday, November 7. I hope you can make all three nights, but if you cannot, please attend one or more of the events. More on this next week.

Next weekend is the fifth Sunday of the month and we are reinstituting an old tradition here at St. Benedict by having coffee and pastries after Mass on Sunday morning. As part of our stewardship commitment, we have decided that this is a good way to help build the community and provide more information about our programs. Next week we will specifically focus on the Forty Hours devotion. We will have a coffee and pastry Sunday on the fifth Sunday of the month.

This weekend is World Mission Sunday. We draw our focus this weekend to the many missionary fields throughout the world, and the many men and women who spend their lives working to promote and support the Gospel in lands foreign to their birth. When I was a seminarian in Pennsylvania some of my brother seminarians were members of the Congregation of the Missions (Vincentians) and a number of them have served in missionary territories — mostly Central America — for the past forty plus years. We pray for them and their work, and also we pray that other men and women will respond to the call to serve the church in this way.

Of course, as I have said before, we benefit from priests who come to us from outside of the US to serve our church here. Our diocese would not be able to maintain the level of priest support in parishes were it not for the foreign-born priests who serve here. Specifically our own parish has benefited recently from the presence of Fathers Adam Midor, AL Gamalo, and JM Patilla. Everything else here seems to be going well.

Have a blessed week,
Fr. Garry