Father’s Column – March 24, 2019

Posted on March 24, 2019 View all news

Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ! 

Tomorrow we will celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation. The Feast Day of Old St. Mary’s. We will also institute Bro. Brent and Bro. Henry to the Ministry of Acolyte, the final stage before their ordination to the diaconate. I am strongly encouraging everyone to attend Mass at Old St. Mary’s tomorrow evening for the Feast Day, and also to pray for Bro. Brent and Bro. Henry as they make this step. There will be a social following Mass, please bring a dish to share!

A plenary indulgence is also given to all those who visit Old St. Mary’s tomorrow, recite the Creed and Our Father, along with the usual conditions of receiving Holy Communion, detachment from all sin, Sacramental Confession within 20 days, and praying for the Holy Father’s intentions. 

Please find this reflection from St. Leo the Great on the Annunciation. Have a blessed week ahead!

“The Almighty and merciful God, Whose nature is goodness, Whose will is power, and Whose work is mercy, did, at the very beginning of the world, as soon as the devil’s hatred had mortally poisoned us with the venom of his envy, foretell those remedies which His mercy had foreordained for our healing. He bade the serpent know that there was to be a Seed of the woman Who should yet bruise the swelling of his pestilential head; this Seed was none other than the Christ to come in the flesh, that God and Man in one Person, Who, being born of a Virgin, should, by His undefiled birth, damn the seducer of man.

The devil rejoiced that by his fraud he had so deceived man as to make him lose the gifts of God, forfeit his privilege of eternal life, bring himself under the hard sentence of death, and find in his misery a certain comfort in the accomplice of his guilt; he rejoiced also that God, in His just anger, was changed towards man, whom He had made in such honour. But, dearly beloved brethren, that Unchangeable God, Whose Will cannot be divorced from His goodness, by His own secret counsel carried out in a mysterious way His original purpose of goodness, and man, who had been led into sin by the wicked craft of the devil, perished not to disappoint that gracious purpose of God.

Then therefore, dearly beloved brethren, the fullness of that time came, which God had appointed for our Redemption, our Lord Jesus Christ entered this lower world, came down from His heavenly throne, and, while He left not that glory which He hath with the Father before the world was, was incarnate by a new order and a new birth new, in that He Who is Invisible among His own, was made visible among us; He Who is Incomprehensible, willed to be comprehended; He Who is before the ages, began to be in time; the Lord of all shadowed the glory of His Majesty, and took upon Him the form of a servant; the Impassible God vouchsafed to become a man subject to suffering; and the Immortal laid Himself under the laws of death.” – St. Leo the Great