A few odds and ends this week:
- Thank you to everyone who made our Christmas season, and our Christmas Masses, so wonderful! I was so happy with the decoration, the music, and the overall experience, and I hope you and your families were, too. It takes a veritable army of volunteers to prepare and run the liturgies, especially with so many visitors, and we are thankful for every single person who gave of themselves this Christmas season.
- The Friday before Christmas, as all the snow was melting, water got into the wall in the sacristy that contains our church fire control panel and shorted it out. Guardian Security was fantastic, providing a technician, even in terrible driving conditions and with plenty of other calls around the county to attend to. Had they not been able to replace our system that day, we would have been legally required to have a fire watch (a physical person on campus at all times, including through the night, logging every 15 minutes that they see no evidence of fire). As of writing, we still need our roofing company to come out and determine how the water got in, then we can call Guardian to do the final installation and check of the new system, then we can finally roll up those fire doors. [Interesting fact: that wall is actually a new interior wall appended to the old exterior wall of the church, so the water likely got in because the roof flashing against the old bricks was not perfect.]
- I am struggling to figure out how to mourn Pope Benedict. On the one hand, he is deeply important to me as he was the Pope during my period of conversion and discipleship in high school and college, and I found him deeply inspirational on my journey to and through seminary. I have framed in my office my ticket to see him during his visit to the United States in 2008. Other the other hand, most of my mourning was done at the conclusion of his papacy, since he did very little writing or speaking after his resignation and was dead to the world for all intents and purposes.
Nevertheless, I have been trying to honor him in traditionally Catholic ways but no one seems to know what they are doing and there is a lot of conflicting information about what to do at the death of a Pope (likely due to the very long life of JPII and the loss of regular traditions). Some sources (e.g. UDG #27) suggest that the nine day period of mourning [the novemdiales] begins at his death, while other sources (e.g. the USCCB guidance) suggest it begins at his funeral. The Pillar suggested that priests in their parishes, not just Cardinals at St. Peter’s basilica, might celebrate nine days of requiem Masses, but the USCCB seems to downplay this in favor of other types of prayer.
I chose to try and celebrate 9 requiem Masses, starting on Monday, but quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. The instructions on those are very sketchy in the current Missal (cf. GIRM 381), and there is zero instruction about the readings to be used and whether they must be the funeral readings. I also realized, too late, that the GIRM restricts these Masses to the weekdays in Ordinary Time, which do not begin until Jan. 10, even though as of writing I have celebrated four of them. Given that I also cannot hold them on weekends or feast days, I may not make it up to the full 9 Masses. I wish Pope Francis a long papacy, partly so that maybe we can figure this stuff out better before we have to do it again!
Fr. Moore 