St. Paul the Apostle , McLean Avenue, Yonkers NY, will have a Forty Hour Devotion beginning on Sunday, Oct. 25 following the 12:15 Mass, continuing on Monday, Oct. 26 and then ending on Tuesday, Oct. 27th at 7 pm.

BIG news from the Cathedral Parish in Bridgeport, CT. The parish is having a 40 Hours Devotion starting tomorrow!

There will be three Solemn High Masses, all at St. Patrick Church in Bridgeport. Times:

Thursday, October 22nd at 7:00 PM: Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist. Following this Mass the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed on the high altar.-

Friday, October 23rd at 7:00 PM: Traditional Missa Pro Pace (Mass of Peace)-

Saturday, October 24th at 9:00 AM: Another votive Mass of the Eucharist, followed by reposition of the Blessed Sacrament.

From the first Mass to the third one, Our Lord will be exposed on the altar, without interpretation. Come and pray at any time!

There will be the scheduledl Low Mass on Friday morning at 7:00 AM but it will take place on one of the side altars.

**Due to this event, there is no Low Mass at St. Pius X in Fairfield, Thursday at 7PM

On October 8, I read this in Catholic New York:

Sister Mary John Burke, S.R.C.M., who was the last surviving member of the Sisters of Reparation of the Congregation of Mary, died Sept. 14. She was 90. Sister Mary John spent many of her early years serving in the convent at St. Zita’s Home for Friendless Women on 14th Street in Manhattan, where she assisted poor and homeless women. 

Up till about ten years ago, you could make out the faded words: “St Zita’s Convent” above the entrance to a nondescript, dilapidated structure on West 14th Street. The sisters had long abandoned the convent – the building had been sold to the Mormons in 2002. Yet, this had once been the home to one of New York’s rare home-grown religious congregations. Ellen O’Keefe founded St. Zita’s Home for Friendless Women in 1890. Later she founded the Sisters of Reparation of the Congregation of Mary to administer it.

Miss O’Keefe had always treasured the thought of forming a regular community for the perpetuation of her work and to make reparation to Our Savior in the Blessed Sacrament. Archbishop (Cardinal) Farley approved her institute in September 1903, under the title of the “Sisters of Reparation of the Congregation of Mary”. Miss O’Keefe was named superioress of the congregation under the title of Mother Zita, Katherine Dunne (Sister Mary Magdalen) taking the habit on her deathbed.

A sister always sleeps near the door, since it is a rule of the community that no one is to be refused admission at any hour, day or night; the observance of this rule frequently renders it necessary for the sisters to give up their own beds to their humble guests. The women are kept as long as they desire to stay; if able-bodied they must help in the laundry or at sewing, the sole support of the home; if ill, they are cared for or sent to the hospital. Catholic inmates are required to attend Mass on Sundays and holydays of obligation, but this is the sole distinction between the inmates of the different religions. The sisters also visit the poor in the hospitals and supply free meals to men out of employment. The number of women accommodated each night is from 100 to 125; the meals supplied to men out of work averages daily 65. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV at 762 (The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., New York 1912)

In other words, these sisters were already doing things undertaken decades later by the Catholic Worker people – without the latter’s flair for publicity and political agitation. By the time the sisters set up shop on West 14th Street in 1903, this corner of Manhattan was fast becoming a dingy, decidedly low-rent part of town.

Yet, as in the case of so many other religious congregations, vocations to the Sisters of Reparation must have dried up in the post-Vatican II world. After selling the 14th Street convent ( “St. Zita’s Home for Friendless Women” had been closed several years earlier), the sisters moved to their last apostolate, appropriately enough, a retirement home for ladies, in Monsey, New York . There, Sister Maureen Francis O’Shea, the last mother superior and director of the adult care facility, died on March 18. She was 85. ( Brum, Robert, Monsey:Future of St. Zita’s Villa appears unertain following director’s death, Rockland Westchester Journal News, lohud, 7/17/2020.See also Pollak, Michael, F.Y.I.: A Place for the Friendless, The New York Times 9/4/2005)

And now, no sisters of this order are left at all. The death of the last sisters calls into question the future of the Monsey facility – today, its real estate value might well be considerable. But let’s reflect on the sisters of this small defunct order and the decades of unselfish work they gave. We are sure that they have their reward!

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The Church of the Holy Innocents in New York will start its annual Forty Hours Devotion THIS COMING Friday, October 23^rd, 2020.

First Day: The opening Mass will be on Friday, October 23^rd at 6PM, and it will be a Votive Mass of the Most Blessed Sacrament. 

At the end of the opening Mass, the Blessed Sacrament will be solemnly exposed: there will be a Eucharistic procession inside the church, and the Pange lingua, the Litany of the Saints, and some other special psalms, versicles, and prayers will be chanted.  

–The church doors will be closed and locked at 9PM and only those who have signed up for the night adoration will remain in the church keeping vigil before Our Lord until 6AM.

Second Day: On the second day, Saturday, October 24^th at 1PM, we will have the traditional Votive Mass Pro Pace.

–The church doors will be closed and locked at 9PM and only those who have signed up for the night adoration will remain in the church keeping vigil before Our Lord until 6AM.

Third Day: The closing Mass will be on Sunday, October 25^th at 10:30AM, which will also be the 1^st class Feast of Christ the King. This closing Mass will be celebrated coram Sanctissimo (in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed). 

At the end of the closing Mass, the Litany of the Saints and other special psalms and prayers will be chanted and we will have another Procession of the Blessed Sacrament inside the church.

The Forty Hours Devotion is surrounded with 3 special dimensions: 

1) The protection from evil and temptation; 

2) Reparation for our own sins and for the poor souls in purgatory; and 

3) Deliverance from political, material and spiritual calamities.

This beautiful devotion was permanently established by Pope Clement VIII “in order that day and night the faithful might appease their Lord by prayer before the Blessed Sacrament solemnly exposed, imploring there His divine mercy.“

St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk will hold Eucharistic Adoration in the downstairs chapel from 8 pm on November 2 to 6:30 pm on November 3.

On Monday, November 2 at 7 PM Father John Ringley will offer a Solemn Mass for All Souls. After Mass at 8 PM Father will have Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel with Adoration all night long AND all day Tuesday, Election day until 6:30 PM November 3. 

We are asking parishioners to sign up for one or more hours of adoration. Sign up sheets are on the table in the chapel foyer with your name + your contact information. We also need one gentleman at each hour between 11 PM to 5 AM Monday night during nocturnal adoration. We will need coverage during both the 8 AM and 12 noon Masses on Tuesday, Election day.

The regular parish Adoration will resume on Wednesday, November 4 from 1-4 PM.

Any questions, please contact Jacquie at 475-206-7109 or email jacquelinejuh@gmail.com. 

The “Italian Cathedral” – thus does the church of St Lucy in Newark, New Jersey, assert its claim to preeminence among Italian churches of the New York area. And with some justification! St Lucy’s may not quite attain the size and splendor of the “Polish cathedrals” of Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest. Yet its architecture is impressive – unconstrained by the narrow lots of New York. And, in my view, its decoration exceeds in its extravagance and quality that of its Italian competitors – most notably, Our Lady of Pompeii in Greenwich Village, built and decorated about the same time. We had a chance to visit St. Lucy’s today on the weekend of the celebration of the festa of St. Gerard Majella – whose national shrine is found here.

(Above)The sober exterior of St Lucy’s, executed in a kind of Romanesque – Renaissance idiom. Construction started in 1925. The church presides today over a combination of plaza, parking lot and outdoor shrine offering the opportunity for all kinds of devotions. (Below) Peering over St Lucy’s parish complex are the towers of Newark’s grand Sacred Heart Cathedral (presumably the “Irish” Cathedral).

But it is the architecture and decoration of the interior that is the glory of this church. For here the local Italian community was able to achieve an amazing recreation of the 18th century Southern Italian Baroque. The parish is dedicated to St Lucy of Syracuse; the paintings and inscriptions emphasize strongly this Sicilian connection. But in fact people from many other Southern Italian villges, towns and regions participated in the life of this parish and in the construction of the church. (Below) The high altar.

The real heart of this decorative program, however, are the murals of Gonippo Raggi (1875-1959) who worked on the decoration of many other important Catholic churches – especially in New Jersey. Above all the paintings of the cupola and of the huge ceiling of the nave recall to the visitor not only Italy but, in their wild exuberance, even the visionary ceiling paintings of the German baroque.

(Above) The cupola.(Below) The apse mural, complete with the Syracuse cathedral on the left and Mount Etna on the right.

(Above) Detail of the apse.

(Above and below) Details of the martyrdom of St Lucy on the celing of the nave.

(Below) From the same mural.

Today, perhaps, St Lucy’s is best known as the shrine of St Gerard Majella. In contrast to the deserted shrines of most Manhattan churches, devotion to St Gerard is very much alive and well. I hear many come from all over the country to participate in the festa. This year was, obviously and unfortunately, a great exception.

St. Gerard Majella is most often invoked as an intercessor for a safe childbirth. At one time St Lucy’s had 20,000 parishioners, and in one year there were over 1,000 baptisms. So his assistance was very much in demand!

The statue of St. Gerard is adorned by the faithful not merely with strips with dollar bills attached – that happens in every other Italian church festival – but with whole coats covered with greenbacks. At least on this weekend, the stream of visitors never let up. The quantity of (real) candles to be found everywhere in the church is amazing. A notice is provided, however, that candles will be extinguished in the evening but relit in the morning.

(Below) The miraculous safe delivery of a child, depicted here, started the devotion to St. Gerard as a patron saint of expectant mothers.

After the murals, what catches the vistor’s attention are the innumerable, mostly large-scale statues around the church. It seems like every saint and every Marian devotion of Southern Italy is represented here. And the Hispanic peoples subsequently have added their own devotional images to this collection.

St Lucy’s is still kept in beautiful condition. Almost all the Italian population of what once was Newark’s “Little Italy, ” however, had left the immediate neighborhood long ago. The final straw was a series of disastrous urban renewal projects, which had the same results here as everywhere else – Chicago, St Louis, Bridgeport etc.. Most of the old Catholic ethnic neighborhoods of these cities, like those of Newark, were destroyed long ago . But St Lucy’s old parishioners and their descendants have been more dedicated than most in maintaining their old parish, its devotions and its church.

..above the choir loft of St. Lucy’s church, Newark, New Jersey. This church was built and decorated 1925 onwards. As is customary for the decoration of this corner of a church, King David and St.Cecilia are depicted. But in this window two others, both popes, find a place as well.

St. Gregory the Great, so strongly associated in Tradition with the development of the liturgy and of chant, sits on the left.

On the right is pope Pius X, the great champion of Gregorian chant in the early 20th century. The scroll he holds is not in chant notation, though.