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November is the month of All Souls. Throughout October we signed the names of our beloved dead in the parish Book of Remembrance, which is presented each year in the Mass of Remembrance held on All Souls Day, November 2nd.

There’s only one door out of purgatory for the Holy Souls there. It opens only into heaven. But here’s the catch: they can’t open it themselves. We have to open it for them. We have the key. The question is, will we help unlock it for some of them during this month of November, which the Church dedicates to the Holy Souls?

As we approach All Saints’ Day next week and witness once again the beautiful collection of Saint relics in front of the Altar of Sacrifice, we take this opportunity to learn why the veneration of relics is important and part of our devotional life as Catholics.

Tradition holds that our Blessed Mother Mary and the 12 Apostles visited the actual scenes of the stations daily after the death of Jesus. Then, after Constantine legalized Christianity in the year 312, pilgrims from all over the world traveled to see these holy places. St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem in the late 300s, personally attested to the crowds of pilgrims who would visit and follow the Stations of the Cross. These pilgrims would literally trace the very steps that Jesus took from his trial before Pontius Pilate all the way to Calvary where he was crucified. For more about the history of the Stations and why and how we pray them, click the title of this post!

For the Catholic, fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature. In order for fasting to be effective, then, the spirit must be a part of it. Catholic fasting is not concerned with losing weight. It is a matter of prayer and the spirit. And because of that, because it is truly a place of the spirit, true fasting may well lead to temptation, and weakness and doubt and irritation. In other words, it will be a real fight between good and evil, and very likely we shall fail many times in these battles. But the very discovery of the Catholic life as "fight" and "effort" is an essential aspect of fasting.

On Ash Wednesday the Church begins the penitential season of Lent, the forty days of mortification during which her children are called upon to remember that they must chastise their bodies and bring them into subjection; that he who neglects to do penance is in danger of perishing; and that at all times the Christian must remember his last end and his return to the dust from which he was taken.

Saturday, February 22nd is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. Yes, we actually have a feast day in the Catholic Church to celebrate a chair! But this is not just any ordinary chair that we celebrate, and it is not so much the physical chair that we celebrate, but the spiritual meaning of the chair that represents a value beyond measure! Click the title for 7 things you need to know about the Chair of St. Peter.

The most influential of these nineteenth-century visions was at Lourdes, France, in 1858, where a peasant girl, St. Bernadette Soubirous (d. 1879), had a series of visions of a lady who said of herself, “I am the Immaculate Conception”, a dogma only recently officially proclaimed and which the uneducated Bernadette probably did not fully understand. Lourdes captured the imagination of the world. Bernadette’s story was eventually told in a popular Hollywood film (The Song of Bernadette), and Lourdes became one of the world’s greatest pilgrimage places, the scene of countless reported miracles of healing.

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Presentation of the Lord which occurs forty days after the birth of Jesus and was first observed in the Eastern Church as "The Encounter." In the sixth century, it began to be observed in the West: in Rome with a more penitential character and in Gaul (France) with solemn blessings and processions of candles, popularly known as "Candlemas." The Presentation of the Lord concludes the celebration of the Nativity and with the offerings of the Virgin Mother and the prophecy of Simeon, the events now point toward Easter.

The four marks are the words we profess every Sunday in the Creed: “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 811). But why do we say these particular words?

The Liturgical Calendar is omnipresent in Catholic life, that is to say, it is everywhere, but not always noticed. If we allow it, the Liturgical Calendar will shape us to the point where we will find ourselves automatically applying Christ’s story to our own and acting accordingly.

How often do we think about why Christ himself was baptized? Why do we as faithful members get to experience the same death he did and be united with him in the same resurrection? In A.D. 107, St. Ignatius of Antioch said this as it relates to this question: “For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was born and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water.”

God came down from heaven and was made into flesh and dwelt among us. This simple yet extremely profound statement is what is known as the Incarnation. The Epiphany of our Lord is not only talking about this very revelation to the Magi, but what it means for the God of the universe to now be known to the Gentiles. The Old Testament speaks many times to the coming of our Lord but what is more incredible is that the Magi knew that the Messiah’s coming meant that he was going to redeem the world!

This Feast Day of the Holy Family is greatly important, for the Holy Family is a model for all Catholic families. We celebrate this day in honor of Jesus our King, Mary His Mother, and Joseph, His legal father and guardian. We remember the triumphs of the Birth of the Messiah, but also recall the suffering of long journeys, possible lack of food and water on that journey, and of course, the undignified response of the innkeepers, who rejected comfort to the King of Kings and His Holy Family.

St. Matthew will be hosting an hour of Eucharistic Adoration and Praise and Worship each second Saturday of the month in the Church. Come and join us!