Bishop McManus Blesses Diocese and Seeks Mary's Intercession

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  On the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop McManus asked the intercession of the Mother of God in this time of pandemic and consecrated the Diocese to her maternal aid. Joining with priests throughout the Diocese, the Bishop prayed the following prayer on the steps of Saint Paul Cathedral in Worcester, Saint Cecilia Church in Leominster, Holy Rosary Church in Gardner, Saint John’s Church in Clinton, Saint Luke’s Church in Westborough and Saint Joseph Basilica in Webster.

  O Mary, conceived without sin,
  look upon your children
  in our beloved Diocese:
  intercede for us with your Son
  that he who willed to take flesh in your immaculate womb
  might banish from our midst all sickness and disease;
  and calm the trembling of our hearts.

  We consecrate our Diocese to your protection,
  O Mother of God,
  that the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit.
  might still the waters of chaos and death
  and save us from this present hour. Amen.

  Bishop McManus then blessed the Diocese, by sprinkling three times in three directions.  He then lead the gathered priests in the Hail Mary and the Our Father and gave them his blessing. In his letter to the priests explaining this consecration, Bishop McManus wrote “In these days we are all praying fervently that God deliver us from danger and watch over us in our need. From the earliest days of the Church, we have trusted in the maternal assistance of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of all who are in distress, especially the sick and those in danger of death.

  “This Wednesday, March 25th, as we celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation, the Church provides us with a special opportunity to call upon the help of the Mother of God.  I have planned, therefore, to travel to six locations throughout the Diocese and consecrate our beloved Diocese to Mary’s protection in this time of pandemic.
  
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We Miss You!!!

  

A Prayer in Time of Pandemic

O God, 

whose Only Begotten Son 

bore the weight of human suffering 

for our salvation, 

hear the prayers of your Church

for our sick brothers and sisters

and deliver us from this time of trial.

Open our ears and our hearts

to the voice of your Son: 

Be not afraid, for I am with you always.

Bless all doctors and nurses, 

researchers and public servants; 

give us the wisdom to do what is right 

and the faith to endure this hour, 

that we might gather once again 

to praise your name in the heart of your Church,

delivered from all distress 

and confident in your mercy.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Oh Dios, 

cuyo Hijo único 

cargó con el sufrimiento 

de toda la humanidad 

por nuestra salvación, 

escucha las oraciones de tu Iglesia 

por nuestros hermanos y hermanas enfermos 

y auxílianos en esta hora de angustia. 

Abre nuestros oídos y nuestros corazones 

para escuchar la voz de tu Hijo: 

No tengan miedo, estoy con ustedes siempre.

Bendice a todos los doctores y enfermeras, 

investigadores y servidores públicos; 

Danos la sabiduría para hacer lo correcto 

y la fe necesaria para vivir este momento;

Que nos volvamos a reunir una vez más 

para bendecir tu nombre en el corazón de la Iglesia, 

libres ya de toda ansiedad 

y confiados en tu misericordia.

Por nuestro Señor Jesucristo, tu Hijo. Amen. 

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT 2020

 They were lost in the desert, with no water to drink. And so they complained to Moses. “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst?”

They had forgotten the exodus from slavery in Egypt,

the parting of the Red Sea and the hope of the promised land. All they could think of was their thirst, their misery and the man of God who had led them to it.

I can relate to their feeling. For here we are in the uncertain first days of the Corona pandemic. All you ever read about any more is how horrible it is, how much more horrible it’s going to get and how very thirsty we are.

It’s like we’re lost in a desert that God knows who led us into, and if we can’t find someone to blame, we’d might as well blame God.

But isn’t it remarkable how moments of misery are so often accompanied by such amnesia…the kind of spiritual amnesia which forgets the blessings God has showered upon us?

Was it not God who put breath in these mortal lungs, without which I would never have known how to sing and speak of love and the beauty of life?

Was it not God who first breathed his breath into the dirt that he formed into a mortal coil, which he taught to embrace and be embraced, and to care for others as he first cared for me?

Was it not God who put the spark into this mind which can imagine the wonders of his creation and the infinity of his plan?

Was it not God who set this heart to beating in the image of him whose sacred heart was pierced as he taught us to live and to love from the Altar of the Cross?

Was it not God who gave us everything that is good and beautiful and wonderful?  

So where is he now?

Lamentations

That question is perhaps the most asked in all of the  scriptures, but never more starkly than in the third chapter of the Book of Lamentations.

We don’t know the specific afflictions of the author of the third chapter, but we do know he was pretty miserable.  “I have known affliction,” he begins.  I have known “the rod of God’s anger…driven and forced to walk in darkness.” For “he has worn away my flesh and has broken all my bones.”  I am surrounded by ‘poverty and hardship, hemmed in like those who long for death.’

Pretty stark stuff. 

And he even touches a nerve with those who wake up in the middle of the night wondering what a pandemic is really like. “My life is deprived of peace,” he goes on, “I have forgotten what happiness is; The thought of my wretched homelessness is wormwood and poison; Remembering it over and over, my soul is downcast.”

Now, to be honest, I don’t think our present state is nearly as miserable as all that. But in our darkest moments, we can be afraid it will be.

But then, in a remarkable moment, his whole tone changes. And it begins with the word BUT.

But this I will call to mind; 

The LORD’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; 

The LORD is my portion, I tell myself, therefore I will hope in him.

The LORD is good to those who trust in him, to the one that seeks him;

It is good to hope in silence for the LORD’s deliverance.

For I have called upon your name, O LORD, from the bottom of the pit;

You heard my call, You drew near to me and you said, “Do not be afraid”

So, he is reminding us, this too will pass, in God’s good time. And when Corona returns to being the name of a beer, we will return to this place, before that Cross and that Altar, with the Lord looking down on us with love.

And on that blessed day, we will sing a hymn of praise, a Te Deum, that he has delivered us once again. That he has brought water from the rock and delivered us from evil.

Cling to that hope. Let it sustain and refresh you.

For the LORD’s acts of mercy are not exhausted.

May the good God bring us to that day, very very soon.

Truth in an Age of Pandemic

Visiting the edges of the internet these days, you would think it was the end of the world. One wild story says that COVID-19 is a biological weapon which either accidentally or on purpose escaped a nefarious government laboratory in either China or Washington State or Venice, depending on which Tweet you read.

Such posts remind me of “Chicken Little,” whom I first heard of when I was three years old. You remember her: the little chicken who was picking up corn in the barnyard when all of a sudden an acorn hit her on the head. “Goodness gracious” she exclaimed! “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

The story of this terrified little chicken, the patron saint of conspiracy theorists, goes all the way back to a Dutch collection of children’s fables in 1823. It made its way to Boston thirty years later with the publication of The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little and was promoted by none other than Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and the first promoter of the idea of Thanksgiving, but that’s a story for another day.

The story of chicken little took off all on its own and is told to children in almost every language and culture, largely because the idea of conspiracy theories and hysteria exist in every culture and language and land.

Every once in a while you hear conspiracy theories about nearly everything, and no less so in these days epidemic with fear. 

There are conspiracy theories that allege that Jesus was married with children, that the Bible is a ruse to cover up the existence of aliens…that the Pope, the Queen and Harry Styles re all shape shifting Reptilians from another dimension. And that’s not even to mention Black helicopters, New Coke, Freemasonry, the illuminati and the New World Order. 

As the movie Contagion made so clear a decade ago, it is often the epidemic of conspiracy theories and the fear they spread which are even harder to contain than the virus itself. And the lies are often the more deadly, for they threaten not just the body, but the soul as well.

Perhaps that’s why, from the time of Moses, the ninth commandment forbid false witness again my neighbor: thou shalt not lie.

But we have a witness even greater than Moses here, for in Jesus we have the perfect antidote to chicken little. For Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The truth that, as Saint John tells us, will set us free. And in an age of pandemic conspiracy theories the truth is more important than ever before.

For, without the truth we are lost in the dark. With the truth and nothing but the truth (so help me God) we can discern the clear path that leads to God, the way of prudence, of wisdom and of love.

Otherwise, whether it’s the origin or transmission or treatment of the latest virus or the meaning and purpose of life, without the truth we are little better little children, or hysterical little chickens running in circles and clucking at the top of our lungs…the sky is falling!  the sky is falling!

Not a bad lesson to remember in these sometimes troublesome days.

On Being Sick

A couple years ago I was privileged to go to Lourdes with the Knights of Malta, where I learned the answer to a very important question, one which has been on my mind a lot lately: What does it mean? What does it mean to be sick?

I met an orthopedic surgeon in Lourdes, a newly minted Knight, whose first contact with our Order came from first being a malade, that is one of the hundreds of sick people the Knights bring to Lourdes every year..  

A wildly successful and prosperous surgeon he seemed to have life on a string and it was very good….until they noticed the spot on his brain scan.  A few weeks later the headaches would wake him up in the middle of the night.  And all of a sudden he went from being the doctor with the highest success rate in complex hip replacements, to an old man so weak that he could not stand without the assistance of his wife.

He quickly found out what it meant to be sick.  It meant he was not longer in charge.  He was no longer driving the bus, even of his own life.  Someone else was in charge.  At first, it was just aggravating.  Not having enough energy to do what he wanted to.  But it progressed to needing help to get to the bathroom, and sometimes just standing there like an infant, peeing in his own pants.  And then he started to tremble so much that more food ended up in his lap than in his mouth.

What did it mean for him to be sick?  It meant he was in longer in control.

“But you know," he told me one night as we went out for a walk, “that’s the greatest gift I could have ever received.  Even better than eventually getting rid of the brain tumor and returning to health.  Getting so sick like that was the greatest gift of my life.

Cause the real sickness I had was thinking that I was in control.  That the purpose of my life was being successful, respected and rich.  And I was really successful, and have a whole wall full of awards and diplomas and three houses, four cars and a really big boat.

No the real sickness was not the one that started with the headaches.  The real sickness was the one that tempted me to forget to pray to God and rely on my own resources, seeking my own pleasure and patting myself on the back for all my wonderful successes.  I was a really sick man.  Not in the head, but in the soul of me…way down deep where its only you and God.

I had forgotten what I learned from the Catechism as a little kid:  That the whole reason God made me was to know him and love him and serve him in this world, in order that I might be happy with him in the next.

And it took that cancer…that blessed cancer…to bring me back to what really matters.

“I remember one night,” he told me, “when I was convinced the cancer was going to kill me.  That night I went to bed and, maybe for he first time in my life, I asked myself the question: What’s this all about?  My life.  My career, My religion.  My marriage,  My kids.

“And it all came flooding in…the truth that its all about the cross, about that man up there on the Cross and about picking up my crosses and trying to love like him: a self-sacrificing, self-emptying love.  That life is not about what we take, but what we give.  And that all suffering, all sacrifice and even sickness itself is but an opportunity too love…to join our little sufferings to his perfect sacrifice and in so doing, to learn how to love.

He touched me.  And he answered my question.

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Last week I had the flu.  Not a bad way to start Lent, helpless, hacking and out of control.  At first I loudly lamented to the heavens that I did not deserve this!  I groaned about how unfair God was being and how much he had failed to realize  how much important work I have to do.  

But then I looked up at the Cross on the opposite wall. At the Christ nailed up there to suffer unto death for love of me. And I felt more than a bit ashamed and I began thanking him for the gift of the flu, of being reminded that suffering, all sacrifice and even sickness itself is but an opportunity to love…to join our little sufferings to his perfect sacrifice and in so doing, to learn how to love.

We all have moments like that, and I suspect they make Jesus smile. He understands.  He understands how we tremble when we hear words like pandemic, mortality rate and “it’s all but certain.”

But even in the face of the novel Corana virus, which will probably get worse for a time, even in the face of fear and suffering and even death, we Christians are a funny lot. For we have something better than all the vaccines, anti-virals and hand sanitizers in the world: we have the Cross, in which death becomes life and suffering is changed to hope by him who offered the perfect sacrifice of praise for our redemption.

This week, once again, the seasonal flu got a lot worse…a statistic of which I am an example. But I got better, just as over 98% of those who will get the novel Corona virus will too.

But we can do a lot prevent the seasonal and COVID-19 influenza as well, which is why Bishop McManus has mandated education, good hygiene and even some temporary adaptations of our liturgical practices, as well.  You can read more about that in the Bulletin and on our social media accounts.

But in the end, as the Bishop reminds us, there are spiritual lessons to be learned during this Lent of prayer, penance and influenza, “for sickness reminds us of how utterly dependent we are on God’s will for our lives.”  For sickness is something more than a personal tragedy, but rather as an opportunity “to release love, in order to give birth to works of love towards neighbor, in order to transform the whole of human civilization into a civilization of love.” (Apostolic Letter Salvifici doloris, n. 30)

Saint Paul's Youth Group Goes to a Monastery

Here's a great pic of our Youth Group at Saint Joseph's Abbey in Spencer today. What a wonderful way to spend the First Sunday of Lent!