There will be an evening prayer vigil at St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, to make reparation to the hearts of Jesus and Mary this Friday evening, Dec. 4 from 6 pm to 12 midnight.

Events include

A traditional Mass at 7pm to honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus

A Mass in Spanish at 12 midnight to honor the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

Consecration to the Holy Family

Rosaries

Opportunity for Confession

Because of Covid19 and the restrictions, we can only accommodate 100 souls in our church. You must call the Rectory 203-866-5546 to make a reservation.

Rorate Masses will be celebrated at The Shrine and Parish Church of the Holy Innocents on the following days of Advent at 6:00 a.m.:

Wednesday, December 2

Thursday, December 3

Friday, December 4

Saturday, December 5

Monday, December 7

Wednesday, December 9

Thursday, December 10

Friday, December 11

Monday, December 14

Tuesday, December 15

Wednesday, December 16

 First Friday and First Saturday

St. Josaphat, Bayside

*Friday, December 4th at 7:30pm

*Saturday, December 5th at 10am: Advent Day of Recollection with Fr. John Perricone

St. Michael (SSPX), Farmingville

*Friday, December 4th at 7pm, followed by all night Adoration

*Saturday, December 5th at 8am, Benediction followed by Mass

Rorate Masses

St. Josaphat, Bayside, Rorate Masses at 6:35am:

Tuesday, December 1st

Wednesday, December 2nd

Wednesday, December 9th

Saturday, December 12th

Monday, December 14th

Tuesday, December 15th

Wednesday, December 16th

The following churches in the area will offer traditional Masses for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on Tuesday, December 8, a holy day of obligation. Please email us if you know of a traditional Mass that is not on this schedule.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Pontifical Shrine, 448 East 116th St., New York, 7:45 A.M. – Low Mass, 7:00 P.M. – Missa Cantata

St. Josaphat Church, Bayside, NY, 7:30 pm

St. Michael Church (SSPX), Farmingville, NY (Long Island), 8 am and 7 pm

Notre Dame, New Hyde Park, NY (Long Island), Solemn Mass, 7:30 pm

Immaculate Conception, Sleepy Hollow, NY, Low Mass, 7 pm.

St. Paul the Apostle Church, 14 Greenville Ave, Jersey City, 5 pm

By Fr. Richard Gennaro Cipolla

From the Epistle:  “Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” (Romans 13:11-14)

“You know what hour it is”, says St. Paul.  You know the time in which you are living.  That is quite a statement.  What is the time in which we are living?  2020 Anno Domini, or the Common Era?  How is this time in which we are living defined? Well, that definition depends on your perspective, and the perspective on this First Sunday in Advent is a liturgical perspective.  The time is Advent.  This is the time of waiting.  We all know what waiting is like.  We wait for so many things in our lives, and most of this waiting time is killing time, killing time to get onto the next thing.  We wait in line at the bank. We wait in line at the infamous Motor Vehicles Office.  We wait in line at the doctor’s office, and we kill that time by looking at empty headed magazines that fill the time, that kill the time.  We wait in line for a ticket to the latest must go to concert, grasping the ticket when we get it, something to look forward to.  Killing time in order to get to the next thing in our lives.  

But the past eight months have been different.  We have not been killing time until the next event that will satisfy us.  Rather since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic we have been marking time, part of that marking full of anxiety and dread, living in a situation over which we have little control, some control, but yet in the end no control.  The images by now have become familiar:  the crowded hospitals, the announcements of the increasing number of cases and more piercingly,  the number of deaths.  For many people this time of waiting has been punctuated by the suddenness of death, death of a loved one, and often deprived of that farewell, that clutch of the hand, the words, I love you.  For most of us we live in a time in which those basic human gestures that convey love and friendship, the hugs, the laughter, the tears, the sharing of food, and for Catholics the deprivation in many cases of the center of our lives of faith the worship of God in the Holy Mas:  the very basic human acts that convey and strengthen relationships between one another have become clouded not only by masks that are worn to help prevent spread of the virus but also most importantly by the constant threat of a force that threatens our lives and the reality of our relationships.  

The irony is that we have too much time right now. This is not a time to kill time. This is a time in which we fear that time will kill us.  But there is hope in this present darkness, this time of disorientation, this time of unease that is not general but specific.  And the ground of our hope is a vaccine, that science will come to our rescue and that once we have the vaccine against the dreaded virus, all will be well, and we can forget what we have been through and live normal lives, normal lives of waiting and killing time.  Nothing can be done. We just have to wait it out with anxiety or with stoic calm.  The result has nothing in the end to do with us and our waiting.  The triumph over the virus, the end of the constant gnawing fear, will come.  What we have waited for will come, the vaccine, then  we will go on as before.

But Advent time is radically different. For we are waiting for what has already come and what will come.  There is not a question here of killing time, for time has already been transformed from something to get through with at least pain as possible in a linear progression to something that radiates from a central point and which propels us to the end of the radius that is the center of the circle.  For when God entered time two thousand years ago, time was transformed.  There is no longer any linear secular time. That is an illusion. That is time to kill. When eternity entered time in the person of Jesus Christ, he becomes the center of time, and all time before and after reflects that center and is defined by that center that radiates out like the light of the star of Bethlehem.  In Christ, time has been sanctified, and Advent is that time of waiting for what has happened on the trajectory that will mark the end of time, the fulfillment of time, what Jesus describes in today’s Gospel for the First Sunday of Advent as the end of time, the judgment day, the day of reckoning, of a literal counting up of the seconds of eternity, and woe be to that person who has killed time, who has wasted that precious time that has been given to us to do what has to be done.  For how we use this precious, this sacred time, does determine the ultimate outcome for each of us.

What I do, who I am: in this time of waiting that is our lives, that is the life of the world: this determines,–no vaccine here–this determines whether I will be one of those in the filed who are taken of one of those grinding meal: one will be taken, one will be left.  Everything depends on how I wait:  either in killing time by focusing on the world’s illusions that there is always time to do what has to be done, that time will go on in the future and I will always have time to fill my barns against disasters and all will turn out well in the end: that end is a dead end.  Or whether I wait facing the East where the Dawn always rises and whose Light defines all time and my future and the future of the world, and by whose rays I live my life, those rays that are the life-cord to my heart, as I move outward to the end, fearing never the night of Advent but always turned with my face to the Light, to the Star, to the Glory.

How am I waiting?  Am I in the end just focusing on killing time until I get to where I want to be, figuring out the best moves to get to the end of the line as fast as possible?  Am I in the religious line looking at my watch at Mass to see how much time this has killed before I get to do something I want to do?  Do I look at someone’s death as something that has nothing to do with me, another wake to go to, another funeral, and refuse to see what this is calling me to? I who have made so many compromises with the world so that I think that active waiting means manipulating people and events so that husband, wife, children, job, friends, become excuses to turn way from the eternal East and focus on the darkness of the West, to deny the demand that Advent makes for me to actively wait for the one who  is the center of time and space and reality, the person of Jesus Christ?

We wait for thy loving kindness, O Lord.  Much is at stake. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Christmas, that great and glorious feast, so full of sweetness and light and hope, even in these times of darkness, will come and go. And what then will we wait for?  For next Christmas?  Or for the day of our salvation?

From T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding:

A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern 
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails 
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England. 

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time. 
Through the unknown, unremembered gate 
When the last of earth left to discover 
Is that which was the beginning; 
At the source of the longest river 
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for 
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always– 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded 
Into the crowned knot of fire 
And the fire and the rose are one.

Fr. Richard Gennaro Cipolla

Father Cipolla will be celebrating Traditional Masses at St. Pius X Church in Fairfield, CT for the four Mondays in Advent: November 30, December 7th, 14th and 21st. Traditional Masses will also be offered on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Dec. 28 and Epiphany, January 6. All Masses are at 7pm. Mark you calendar!

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory in Bridgeport, CT held Forty Hours’ Devotion, which ended today.

By Father Richard Cipolla

Next Sunday is the Last Sunday after Pentecost. The Gospel for that Sunday ends the Church Year with the “bang” of the Last Things. It is indeed fitting that the Last Sunday of the Church Year should call our attention to the consummation of all things in Jesus Christ when he will come to judge the living and the dead and usher in the triumph of the Kingdom of God. 

 This Last Sunday is followed by the First Sunday in Advent, that wonderful season of preparation of the feast of Christmas marking that event that changed history forever in the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world who is God and man. The season of Advent in the Northern hemisphere is marked by darkness as we approach the shortest day of the year. It is significant that Christmas is celebrated a few days after the winter solstice, when the night begins to yield to the light of day. The birth of the Christ Child is the beginning of the conquering of the darkness of sin and death, the essence of hope that Light will conquer darkness. 

It has become a popular custom in the Christmas season for candles to be placed in the window of homes as a symbol of the Light of the world who was born into this world over two thousand years ago. I have always been a stickler about not anticipating Christmas too far in advance. I have always insisted on keeping Advent almost in opposition to the secular and commercial push to begin Christmas on Thanksgiving Day and ending it on Christmas Eve. So I have always frowned on Christmas decorations being displayed before at least the O! Antiphons. I have tried to refrain from listening to Christmas music before late Advent.  No candles in the windows until after the feast of St. Lucy.

But this year is deeply different. Where I live in the United States the past year has been one of social and political turmoil that has caused great pain to all Americans. But this pain and turmoil is not confined to the United States. The whole world seems to be in a state of turmoil and deep uncertainty about the future. And the deepest affliction that grips the whole world is the COVID-19 pandemic. As I write the whole world is engulfed in the worst phase of the pandemic in terms of deaths and the number people afflicted with this virus with various levels of virulence.  But just as significant is the rupture of familial and social bonds. Loneliness is the norm. The lack of touch, of embrace, of eating together, for Catholics the deprivation of participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for all Christians the inability to worship God on Sunday as a community: this is a cause of deep sadness that cannot be quantified by charts and admonitions.

In this situation I offer a modest proposal.  Let every Catholic home put candles in the windows of their homes beginning on the First Sunday of Advent.  This year is not a time to wait until Christmas is imminent. Those lights in our windows have to shine forth in this time of physical and spiritual darkness to proclaim to those around us that Christ is the Light of the world especially in times of terrible darkness. And let those lights shine forth every night in Advent and through Christmastide to the glorious feast of the Epiphany commemorating the whole world brought to Christ by the light of a Star. So many of us will not have the loving company of our families and friends this Christmas.  But in our own and small way amidst this real pain we must remind the world of the Good News of Jesus Christ who alone can pierce the darkness of this world. Put those candles in your windows and witness to the Light in the darkness!

Father Richard Cipolla