October 01, 2026 – Pastor’s Note

Listen to this post: https://morefrmoore.podbean.com/e/october-01-2026-pastors-note/

Reminder – Listening Sessions

Introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wao1xBYeiQM

Calendar and Registration Link: https://www.whatcomcatholic.org/sessions

This weekend:

  • Assumption, Sunday, 11:30 am [English]
  • Assumption, Sunday, 2:30 pm [Spanish]

Date Nights

Based on some recent pastoral conversations, I really want to emphasize to married couples (especially couples with kids in the home) the importance of regularly scheduled date nights! Ideally every week or every other week.

It is super easy for married couples over time to become coworkers instead of romantic partners. Coworkers have common projects, and most of their communication is about getting those projects done peacefully and efficiently. If you have kids at home, think about how much of your communication with your spouse is about getting the kids to bed, or to their different activities, or planning meals, or dealing with the family calendar, etc. These are coworker activities. And when the common project goes away, what happens? What do you talk about then?

A significant part of romance, on the other hand, is curiosity. Couples need to remain curious about each other, and that requires significant communication. It requires time to talk about interests and struggles and celebrations. Maybe the conversation is about the kids, but there is a world of difference between “How are we getting Johny to school?” and “Now that I am a dad, I am really seeing life differently.” Or maybe it is “Now that I am a mom, I realize just how mad I am at God for taking my mom away from me too soon.” Date nights can also be an opportunity – for those with or without kids – to have new experiences together or to keep fresh the shared interests that bonded you in the first place.

Regardless of the form or frequency, couples need to make time to invest in each other and renew their understanding of and connection to their spouse. I may be celibate, but I have probably spoken to more people about their marriages than 98% of our parishioners. And my experience tells me that the babysitter money is worth it: you need a date night!

St. Michael Prayer at Mass

On Tuesday, we celebrated the Feast of the Archangels, and I ended the Mass with the St. Michael Prayer. Some of our churches consistently end their daily Masses with this prayer and I have had requests from parishioners in our other churches to introduce the practice.

First, I should say that this is an excellent prayer, and I think we should all have it memorized for those times when we are scared or feel that we need extra protection. We should never be shy about asking the angels for help, and especially so for St. Michael, the prince of the angels.

That said, I am not going to introduce the practice of praying the St. Michael prayer after Mass, and I will eventually be transitioning all of our churches away from this. Instead, I will be introducing the practice of singing the seasonal Marian anthem after each daily Mass.

Why? The original context of the St. Michael prayer was as part of the “Leonine Prayers” instituted by Pope Leo XIII in 1884 and suppressed after the Second Vatican Council in 1965. These prayers were required to be said after every Mass, originally for the restoration of the Papal States and later for freedom of religion in Russia. Saying the St. Michael prayer after Mass is not simply a pious devotion that developed in a vacuum, it was a specific prayer for a specific intention at a specific time.

Now, as I said, the St. Michael prayer is an excellent prayer that I think we all ought to know and use! But to put it back at the end of Mass is to connect ourselves back to a specific context and practice that the Vatican deliberately moved away from in 1965. It is one thing to try to preserve traditional Catholic or liturgical practices that still show up as recommendations in canon law or the liturgical rubrics (like going meat free every Friday or using a communion paten); it is an entirely different thing to try to preserve practices that have been specifically suppressed. It is not wrong to say the St. Michael prayer after Mass (otherwise, I would have ended the practice much sooner), but I do not like the direction that it points us in.

So why Marian anthems instead? Well, every one of our parishioners that I’ve spoken with who wants to pray the St. Michael prayer after Mass wants to do so for good reasons: (1) it connects them to Catholic history and devotion, (2) it asks for additional heavenly aid against the forces of evil, and (3) it puts a nice punctuation mark on the end of daily Mass in the same way that the closing hymn or recessional does for Sunday Mass. If I am unwilling to continue with the St. Michael prayer, I think we can achieve each of those goals with the seasonal Marian anthem.

Honestly, I made this decision two full years ago, but I have never made the time to implement it, as that requires printing materials, training the priests, and training the parishioners. It is a LOT of work. So for now, feel free to stick to the status quo at each of our churches. But if you’d like to help me introduce the Marian anthems to daily Masses, they are:

Published by Fr. Moore

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