Mater Ecclesiae Parish

A Message From your Rector,

We are all hunkered down. I don’t know about you, but I am already tired of cleaning closets, emptying a chaos room, filling trash bags, finding dust where I had no idea it could be, clearing my desk (which is a huge task and not yet complete), cleaning the front door of the Church of tape and sticky glue, putting things back in place that have been displaced for ages. Guess what, God has given us a Lent we would never have chosen. Don’t moan and groan. There should be no feeling sorry for yourself. I read a wise statement yesterday, “If nothing happens to you and your family in the next three weeks, then all this quarantine has been successful. Nothing is the result we want.”

But spiritually we want results. How many people say, over and over again in confessions, I don’t pray enough, or I miss my daily prayers, or I don’t have a prayer routine. STOP. “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.” Get your act together. Get your family act together. God has given us this time to put things in proper order.

On another note, I’ve seen people complaining and moaning about Masses being cancelled. We had a man call here and yell at us. He told us that we were going to hell because we cancelled Masses. I might be going to hell but he is surely right behind me, that nasty cuss. Remember, nobody wants to do this. Remember, there is a priest shortage. Not only have thousands of people died, but among them over 23 priests have died in Northern Italy. It is the good priests who go into the fray. It is the good priests who will die. We want to do everything we can to help you, but we want to be safe and do nothing careless or stupid. Here we have daily private Mass by two priests. Daily scheduled confessions, Facebook devotions and prayers, daily messages, live streamed Mass, Extreme Unction when needed. We put all our trust in God and we also use the reason he gave us to make prudent and careful decisions. We are Catholic, not careless Pentecostals waving snakes around tempting them to bite us. Faith and Reason!

I can’t repeat enough, loudly and continuously, MASSES ARE NOT CANCELLED!!!!! Public access has been restricted to stop the gathering of many people in the same spot, to contain this virus.

I stress that all Masses are being said here at their regular times. I’m doing this on purpose so that you can join with me at those times, read your missals and make a spiritual communion while I’m celebrating Mass. How many have done that so far? Really?

Confession times are exactly the same except that Tuesday night has been cancelled and we have added Sunday from 1PM to 2:30PM. Where have you been? I’ve sat in the confession room for two hours so far and I’ve had 6 confessions. Let’s get our spiritual act together.

As soon as we get a really nice day, I will schedule a holy hour before Jesus in the Monstrance. I will set up an altar on the porch of the church. You can drive up, you MUST stay in your car, and you can pray and participate in Benediction in the protection of your automobile. Windows should only be cracked for air. No fully open windows. Also no pictures are to be posted on the internet or anywhere else.

Finally, MASS WILL BE LIVE STREAMED ON SUNDAYS AT 10:30AM AND WEDNESDAY AT 7:30PM. We are setting everything up today and if we can stream more I will let you know immediately.

KEEP POSTED AND SPREAD THE NEWS.