All posts by Paul Zalonski

Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday 2019

We are at 50 days! The great and solemn feast of Pentecost! The Holy Spirit is waiting to pour out His gifts to you if you ask. Are you ready (“made fit for the gift”) for the Holy Spirit to pour His gifts upon you? Have you asked for this outpouring? What gift (perhaps you need all 7 at this moment) will you ask the Paraclete for tomorrow?
 
Father Peter Langevin will hear confessions beginning at 1pm tomorrow. Please be prompt. The Mass will be at 2pm.
 

“But why did the Holy Spirit not come to them while Christ was present, rather than immediately after his departure? Instead, although Christ ascended on the fortieth day, the Spirit came to them when the day of Pentecost had come. …It was necessary for them to have a longing for the event, and so receive the grace. For this reason Christ himself departed, and then the Spirit came. For if he had been present, they would not have expected the Spirit so earnestly as they did. For this reason he did not come immediately after Christ’s ascension, but after eight or nine days. Our desire toward God is most awakened when we stand in need.

For this reason, John sent his disciples to Christ at the time when they were to be most in need of Jesus, during his own imprisonment. Besides, it was necessary that our nature should be seen in heaven and that the reconciliation should be perfected, and then the Spirit should come and the joy be unalloyed. For, if Christ had then departed, when the Spirit had already come, and the Spirit remained, the consolation would not have been so great as it was. For indeed they clung to him and could not bear to part with him. To comfort them he said, “It is to your advantage that I go away.” For this reason he delayed also for the intervening days, that they, for a while disheartened and standing, as I said, in need of him, might then reap a full and unalloyed joy.…For it cannot, it cannot be, that a person should enjoy the benefit of grace unless he is wary. Do you not see what Elijah says to his disciple? “If you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you,” that is, you will have what you ask for.

Christ also said everywhere to those who came to him, “Do you believe?” For unless we are made fit for the gift, we do not feel its benefit very much. So it was also in the case of Paul: grace did not come to him immediately, but three days intervened, during which he was blind, being purified and prepared by fear. For just as the dyers first prepare the cloth that is to receive the dye with other ingredients to prevent the color from fading, likewise in this instance God first prepared the soul so that it was anxiously awaiting and then poured forth his grace. For this reason he did not immediately send the Spirit, but on the fiftieth day.

St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles 1.

Ascension

Ascension Thursday 2019

Ascension Thursday is May 30th. The Traditional Latin Mass Mass will be offered at 5:30 p.m. It is a Low Mass.
 
In New England, Ascension Thursday is a holy day of obligation and is not transferred to the next Sunday.
 
First Friday Mass is June 7th at 8:00 a.m.
Catechesis, Easter

Fifth Sunday after Easter

The Fifth Sunday after Easter will be celebrated in a High Mass in the traditional Latin form at St. Stanislaus Church in New Haven on Sunday, May 26, at 2:00 pm. The celebrant will be The Reverend Peter Langevin, Chancellor of the Diocese of Norwich and Parochial Vicar of the Cathedral of St. Patrick, Norwich.

The proper texts of the liturgy for this Sunday’s Mass continue to sing of Christ’s victory and of the salvation of Christian people whom He has redeemed. During the Rogation Days that follow, the Church exhorts us to pray in “His name” and ask for what is necessary for us, salvation first and foremost; these prayers will unfailingly be granted us “that our joy may be full.”

We must ask, too, that we may be worthy to enter with Him into His Father’s kingdom, while acknowledging that prayer that is sincere implies generosity: St. Jame’s Epistle reminds us that it is not enough merely to pray; we must also be “doers of the Word.”

Music for the service, sung by the Schola Cantorum of The Saint Gregory Society, will include the Gregorian Mass Ordinary for Eastertide (Vatican Edition I: “Lux et origo,” Easter antiphons, and the proper Gregorian chants.

Catechesis

Second Sunday of Easter

The Second Sunday after Easter, or Good Shepherd Sunday, will be celebrated in a High Mass in the traditional Latin form at St. Stanislaus Church in New Haven on Sunday, May 5, at 2:00 pm. The celebrant will be the Reverend Jan Pikulski.

The Liturgy of the Second Sunday after Easter calls on the newly baptized to cling to Christ as the Shepherd of their souls. It is suitable, then, to keep a Good Shepherd Sunday, a fortnight after the Easter baptisms, with the beautiful parable from the Gospel and the Epistle in which St. Peter reminds us what it cost Jesus to bring us, the erring sheep, back to the sheepfold of salvation and to become the Shepherd of our souls.  

As St. Peter, chief pastor of the Church by the will of Christ, wrote those word of this Epistle reading, he was mindful of the greatness and responsibilities of his office; so well did he understand them that, following his divine Master he gave his life for his sheep.  We should remind ourselves that the ministry of the priesthood is for the faithful the incarnation and ever prolonged action of Him who remains always the one Shepherd of the Church and Savior of our souls. 

Music for the service, sung by the Schola Cantorum of The Saint Gregory Society, will include the Gregorian Mass Ordinary for Eastertide (Vatican Edition I: “Lux et origo,” motets by Guillaume Dufay and Claudio Monteverdi, and the proper Gregorian chants.