Msgr Moroney's Blog: The Great Pumpkin

21 October 2015

The Great Pumpkin

On the window sill in the great hall sits a pumpkin, a recollection of the great victory of the SJS Softball team last week. All the team members have signed it.

They, and our soccer team and all the seminarians are deep into mid-term exams this week, cramming their notes as they walk by. Tonight the second floor took a bit of a break for the last of the Dessert Receptions in the rector's apartment. Tomorrow all the men will join Cardinal O'Malley and the Order of Malta for a Mass in remembrance of Pope Saint John Paul II.

But tonight, if you walk down the darkened great hall, the moonlight reveals the spectral presence of the great pumpkin, a symbol, of sorts, of the great joy which so infects this holy house (even during mid-term exams).

Monsignor James P. Moroney, a priest of the Diocese of Worcester for forty four years, is Pastor of Saint Cecilia Parish in Leominster. He served for many years as Executive Director of the USCCB Secretariat for Divine Worship in Washington D.C., as Rector of Saint John's Seminary in Boston, and as Pastor of Mary Queen of the Rosary Parish in Spencer and as Rector of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Worcester. Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict both appointed him as a Consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome and as Executive Director of the Vox Clara Committee. He is author of THE MASS EXPLAINED (Catholic Book Publishing) which is being published in its third edition this Spring.