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Saturday: 5:00pm

Sunday: 7:30am, 9:30am, 11:30am, 2:00pm (español), 5:00pm

Monday-Friday: 9:00am

(The 12:10pm Monday-Wednesday-Friday Mass will return on Wednesday, September 6.)

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Confession

Saturday: 10:00am-10:30am (English)

Sunday: 3:00pm- 4:00pm (español)

Dear Friends,

In just a few weeks, children will be back to school, and many of your households will return to the busy demands of daily schedules. Where has summer gone?

This weekend, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. In connection to this feast day, we often hear the expression of having a “mountaintop experience,” a moment of significant revelation or closeness to God. In terms of the spiritual life, it is important to embrace these mountaintop experiences and recognize how they can truly be moments of grace and opportunity. 

In many ancient religions, mountaintops were thought to be the dwelling places of the gods, where sacred encounters might happen. Even today, mountains are good places to seek peaceful refuge from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Mountaintops can be an ideal place to listen when we need to reflect or make an important decision.

In this weekend’s gospel reading, Matthew 17: 1-9, the disciples encounter more than they expected on that mountaintop. They experience a glimpse into how special Jesus is. They hear a voice, a Big Voice, guiding them, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

In our modern, fast-paced world, many of us need an opportunity to reflect on the long view, to see with clarity and gain perspective on our own lives. When we choose to go on a retreat, a walk in the woods, speak to a counselor, it is as if we are responding to the invitation Jesus gave to his disciples, to come apart for a while. We are choosing to do what the disciples heard from God, “listen to him.” 

Perhaps our “mountaintop experience” will not happen on a mountain, it might be at the beach or the lake or as close as our own back yard. I do think this feast as well as the month of August invites us to slow down, if just for a few days, to rest and rejuvenate our bodies and spirits. Perhaps we will hear the voice of the Lord speaking to us, but even if we do not, the respite will allow us the opportunity to gain perspective and direction in our lives as well as our relationship with God and others.

Wishing all of you a blessed August and a time to get some rest, rejuvenation, and perspective.

Live Jesus,

Fr. Joe

The Memorial of Blessed Michael McGivney, Founder of the Knights of Columbus, is celebrated on August 13.

Born in Connecticut in 1852, Michael McGivney was ordained a priest in Baltimore in 1877. Fr. McGivney was assigned to St. Mary's, the first Catholic parish in New Haven, Connecticut. There the young priest experienced several challenges, particularly anti-Catholic sentiments that negatively impacted his parishioners.

He first started meeting with Catholic men in the basement of St. Mary's Church to create a fraternal benefit order that became the Knights of Columbus. The intent of their new order was to offer the Catholic men meaningful fellowship in faith as well as financial security for families in the event of the death of the family's financial provider. In 1882, founded on the core principles of charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism, the Knights of Columbus was officially established. Today, the Knights of Columbus has grown into an international organization of over 1.6 million Catholic men in over 12,000 councils around the world.

Fr. Michael McGivney was declared "Blessed," the third stage of canonization, in 2020. On October 31, 2020, Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Letter at the Mass for Beautification, stated that Blessed Michael McGivney’s “zeal for the proclamation of the Gospel and generous concern for the needs of his brothers and sisters made him an outstanding witness of Christian solidarity and fraternal assistance.” In order to be raised to sainthood, Blessed Michael McGivney needs a second miracle attributed to his intercession.

August 13, which is the day between his birth on August 12, 1852, and his death on August 14, 1890, was set as his feast day.

For information on submitting petitions and reports of favors received, please visit fathermcgivney.org.



With the recent theatrical release of the biographical film, “Oppenheimer,” there has been increased attention to the origin of the atomic bomb. As we know, the Manhattan Project resulted in the creation of the atomic bombs that were subsequently dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945. With the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary celebrated in August, there is a lesser-known story of Our Lady—a story of hope and healing in Nagasaki.

Japan has a complicated history with the Catholic faith. In 1549, St. Francis Xavier arrived to Japan with the first Jesuit missionaries to plant the seeds of Christianity, but by 1587, Christian persecution had become widespread in Japan. The Takugawa shogunate completely banned Catholicism by 1614, and Catholics who continued to practice their faith did so only in hiding. During this time, a “test,” called fumie, which literally translates to “stepping on picture” in Japanese, was implemented by government officials. Suspected Catholics were ordered to renounce their faith by trampling on images of Jesus and Mary, and those who refused, or even hesitated, were arrested, tortured, and often executed. Religious freedom was not restored in Japan until the mid-19th century. Over the centuries of underground Catholicism, the site of these interrogations became sacred to Catholics in Nagasaki, and in 1925, the Urakami Cathedral, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, was built on the local fumie interrogation site.

In the 1930s, a six-foot tall wooden statue of Mary was placed in the Urakami Cathedral, positioned high above the altar. The statue was carved in Italy and said to be based upon Bartolomé Murillo’s famous painting, “The Immaculate Conception.” On August 9, 1945, at 11:02 a.m., 26 people, including two priests, were in the cathedral praying the novena of the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The cathedral was about one-third of a mile north of the bomb’s hypocenter or ground zero. An estimated 80,000 people were instantly killed three days earlier in Hiroshima, another 40,000 perished in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

In October 1945, a Japanese chaplain, Fr. Kaemon Noguchi, who was also a Trappist monk and had worshipped at the Urakami Cathedral as a child, visited the cathedral ruins. Recounting the day several years later, Fr. Noguchi wrote, “I wished to find a keepsake of the cathedral to bring with me, so I went to the ruins of the church and yet I found nothing but a heap of rubble…I tumbled onto a stone and prayed to Virgin Mary just like when I departed for the monastery as a boy…and all of a sudden, I saw the holy face of the Virgin blackened by fire, looking at me with a sorrowful air.”

The Marian statue was terribly scarred with burns and her glass crystal eyes were melted leaving blackened hollows. There is crack down the left side of her face that some refer to as “the tears of God.” Fr. Noguchi took the Virgin’s head with him back to the monastery; in fact, he kept it in his cell for the next thirty years until 1975 when he gave it to Nagasaki Immaculate Heart Junior College. In 2000, the statue, which is known as the Urakami Virgin or Our Lady of Nagasaki, was returned to rest on the ride side of the Urakami Cathedral that was rebuilt on the same spot in 1959.

In 2005, then-U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan visited Nagasaki where he visited bomb survivors and the Virgin of Urakami. After this experience, he wrote it “only further strengthened my determination to seek the elimination of all nuclear weapons.” In 2010, Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki brought the Marian statue remains to a meeting of the United Nations as he delivered a plea for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Cardinal Timothy Dolan saw the Virgin statue at the United Nations and described the experience as “haunting.” He wrote of Our Lady, “She absorbs our sorrows, our worries, our sickness, our fears, like any good mother would. She brings them—not us—to the only one who can do anything about them: Jesus. At Nagasaki, she absorbed the radiation, incinerating heat, the suffering of her children.”

We live in a world broken by sin. A world where a bomb powerful enough to eliminate thousands of lives in a moment was conceived, created, and employed. Pope Francis has consistently expressed our “unwavering commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” This month as we remember the anniversary of those tragic days in 1945 and celebrate the Assumption and Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, let us rest in her, allowing her to absorb our sorrows and fear. Knowing Christ is almighty, let us remember and honor all the lives lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by praying for peace and joining in the Holy See’s commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Whatever stage in life you might be in, August is often viewed as the last chance to squeeze out as much summer fun as possible before the days become shorter, colder, and darker, and we transition to the faster pace of fall. For that, Mother Church gives us Feast Month! Liturgically, August is one of my favorite months because we celebrate so many saint feast days (hence Feast Month)! If you look closely, there are only six days this August that we are not celebrating an event, a person, or a Sunday.

We began August with St. Alphonsus Liguori, a doctor of the Church known best for his devotion, The Way of the Cross. August 2nd brought us the feast day of St. Peter Julian Eymard, whose greatest love was for Jesus in the Eucharist, and St. John Vianney (8/4), the Curé de Ars and patron saint of priests, who made the mercy and love of God accessible to multitudes with his countless hours in the confessional. We will celebrate another doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, the author of the famous Confessions, on the 28th. His mom, St. Monica, is celebrated the day before, but this year August 27 is a Sunday, which preempts feast days.

To add to the awesome female saints of August, we have St. Clare of Assisi (8/11) who founded the Poor Clares and had a deep love for the Eucharist; our own St. Jane de Chantal (8/12), whose deep understanding of our universal call to holiness and friendship with St. Francis de Sales gave many more women the opportunity to answer the call to religious life. There is St. Rose of Lima, the patroness of Peru, the Philippines, and gardeners on the 23rd, and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (8/9), more commonly known as St. Edith Stein, who converted from Judaism and was martyred in Auschwitz.



We celebrate five more martyrs this month. St. Maximillian Kolbe (8/14), World War II martyr, who beautifully modelled the words and example of our Lord “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Pope Sixtus II and Companions (8/7) were martyred in the early days of the Church, among them is St. Lawrence (8/10), a deacon who, when asked by the Roman persecutors, brought forth the poor and needy as the true treasures of the Church. One of the apostles, St. Bartholomew, also called Nathanael (8/24), whose candid first meeting with Jesus sees him as the first in John’s Gospel to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God (John 1:43-51); and the Passion of St. John the Baptist (8/29), often considered the last of the great prophets, whose voice crying out for repentance led him to become a martyr of truth.

August is also known as the Month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The devotions to Mary’s Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus were celebrated for the first time in the Church in the 1600s thanks to St. John Eudes (8/19), who was also influenced by St. Francis de Sales. Fellow Marian devotees of August include St. Bernard of Clairvaux (8/20), a monk and a mystic, St. Dominic (8/8), who tradition often credits as the devisor of the rosary as we know it. We have two more opportunities to celebrate Mama Mary with the Queenship of Mary on August 22nd and, of course, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15th.



There are a few more saints, like St. Cajetan (8/7), St. Stephen of Hungary (8/16), and Pope St. Pius X (8/21), who are known for their work in bringing about reformation in their orders, their countries, or the Church as a whole.

Right in the middle of Ordinary Time, a season that does not seem to have much happening liturgically, the Church and the Communion of Saints give us so many opportunities to celebrate the people, devotions, spiritualities, persecutions, and sacrifices that make up our Church.

You may be drawn to one saint or another, be it their devotion to the Eucharist, their devotion to Mary, the fact that they are from your same country, or you were moved by their gentleness. Maybe they are your patron saint, or maybe you are learning about them for the first time. Whatever the case, amidst your last hurrahs of summer and preparations of the fall, I invite you to #liveliturgically. Make a French dessert for Jane, come sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament with Peter Julian and Clare, give a little more of yourself for others ala Teresa Benedicta and Maximillian Kolbe, grill something in honor of Lawrence, pray the rosary to bring yourself closer to Mary and her Son. Think outside the box, get creative, and whatever you end up doing, Happy Feast Month!