Posted on November 15, 2020 View all news
Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ!
I am happy to announce that this coming Tuesday, David Wimmel will begin as our new Facilities Manager. David was hired a few weeks back, after receiving many resumes and interviewing several of the applicants. I am happy to welcome him to Old St. Mary’s and Sacred Heart!
David has spent his career in managing facilities, first with Proctor & Gamble and then with an outside company where he still managed the local facilities of P&G. He has been married for 34 years and has two children. He and his wife reside in Harrison. He is very much looking forward to starting in his new role here and I look forward to brining him on board. Please welcome him if you happen to run into him!
This Saturday we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple. Sts. Anne and Jocahim offered Our Lady to the service of the Temple in gratitude for her miraculous birth, believing that they would not have children. Please find this reflection from Dom Prospoer Gueranger for your reflection! Have a blessed week!
“The Presentation is one of the minor solemnities of our Lady, and was inscribed at a comparatively late date on the sacred Cycle; it seems to court the homage of our silent contemplation. The world, unknown to itself, is ruled by the secret prayers of the just; and the Queen of saints, in her hidden mysteries, wrought far more powerfully than the so-called great men, whose noisy achievements fill the annals of the human race.
In 1373, following the example of the Sovereign Pontiff, Charles V of France introduced the feast of the Presentation into the chapel of his palace. By letters dated the 10th of November 1374, to the masters and students of the college of Navarre, he expressed his desire that it should be celebrated throughout the kingdom: “Charles, by the grace of God king of the Franks, to our dearly beloved: health in him who ceases not to honor his Mother on earth. Among other objects of our solicitude, of our daily care and diligent meditation, that which rightly occupies our first thoughts is that the blessed Virgin and most holy Empress be honored by us with very great love, and praised as becomes the veneration due to her. For it is our duty to glorify her; and we, who raise the eyes of our soul to her on high, know what an incomparable protectress she is to all, how powerful a mediatrix with her blessed Son, for those who honor her with a pure heart … Wherefore, wishing to excite our faithful people to solemnize the said feast, as we ourselves propose to do by God’s assistance every year of our life, we send this Office to your devotion, in order to increase your joy.”
Our Lady’s Presentation also opens new horizons before the Church. On the Cycle of the Saints, which is not so precisely limited as that of the Time, the mystery of Mary’s sojourn in the sanctuary of the Old Covenant is our best preparation for the approaching season of Advent. Mary, led to the temple in order to prepare in retirement, humility, and love for her incomparable destiny, had also the mission of perfecting at the foot of the figurative altar the prayer of the human race, of itself ineffectual to draw down the Savior from heaven. She was, as Saint Bernardine of Siena says, the happy completion of all the waiting and supplication for the coming of the Son of God; in her, as in their culminating point, all the desires of the saints who had preceded her found their consummation and their term. (Bernardine of Siena, Pro festivitatibus V. Mariæ, Sermon 4)” –