Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

A most blessed Lent to everyone. The Lenten Season is our gift each year that enables us to prepare properly for the Easter Celebrations. However, Lent also provides us the opportunity to transform our lives through acts of prayer, charity, and penance. We all have those bad habits, vices, and shortcomings that we need to overcome. In Lent we can take one of those and consciously work to overcome it, perhaps even replacing it with a virtue instead. It isn’t easy, but then personal growth is meant to be a challenge. This is the only way it takes root.

This weekend we welcome at the Saturday evening and Sunday morning Masses Father Christopher Colavito. Father Colavito -- ordained in 2016 (a classmate of both Father JM and Father AL) is the Diocesan Director of Vocations and Diaconate Formation. He serves as the chaplain at The College of New Jersey. Father will be challenging us to reflect on our own Christian vocation while at the same time encourage vocations to the priesthood. If you or someone whom you know is discerning a vocation as either a priest or deacon, please encourage him to speak to Father Colavito, or at least please take his contact information and social media name so that they can be in touch.

Please check the bulletin for the many opportunities for spiritual renewal and enrichment. We have much going on, and it will be a great way to get on track for Lent.

This Tuesday evening, our Deacon Candidate Anthony Cullen will be installed in the two ministries of Lector and Acolyte.

Canon Law #1035 says: “§1. Before anyone is promoted to the permanent or transitional diaconate, he is required to have received the ministries of lector and acolyte and to have exercised them for a suitable period of time. §2. There is to be an interval of at least six months between the conferral of the ministry of acolyte and the diaconate.”

Where you will see a change with what Anthony has been doing at Mass is noted here:

“If no deacon is present, after the Prayer of the Faithful is concluded and while the priest remains at the chair, the acolyte places the corporal, the purificator, the chalice, the pall, and the Missal on the altar. Then, if necessary, the acolyte assists the priest in receiving the gifts of the people and, if appropriate, brings the bread and wine to the altar and hands them to the priest. If incense is used, the acolyte presents the thurible to the priest and assists him while he incenses the gifts, the cross, and the altar. Then the acolyte incenses the priest and the people.