Disposing of Sacred Objects
I recently went to a local mortuary to plan a cremation and
burial. With a heavy heart and some
trepidation, I entered the doors of the funeral home. I met with the undertaker and handed over the
body—not a human body—a body of liturgical books. Outdated lectionaries and sacramentaries, (the
big red books used by the priest at Mass) once used to pray the liturgy, had
cluttered part of the office for years.
As much as I wanted more office space, I realized that the words in
these books, the scripture readings and the prayer texts, had for a time formed
a people into faith and just throwing the books away didn’t seem right.
There are few guidelines on what to do with liturgical books
that have been revised or updated. But a
compendium known as the Book of Blessings gives us some direction. This book contains a compilation of blessings
for people and for objects, including books used in the sacred liturgy. There are blessings for students and
teachers, blessings for travelers, blessings for homes and offices, even
blessings for boats and fishing gear.
This tells us that the Church believes that everything, even fishing
equipment, is touched by God and is sacred.
Blessings are a way for us to acknowledge this reality. Because we believe in the sanctity of all of
creation, we are called to treat everyone and everything with respect. Even in death, we are to treat the body with
respect by either burial or cremation. Likewise, it is customary to dispose
of objects that have been blessed, such as palms, rosaries, and liturgical
books by either burying them or burning them.
In this way, we return everyone and everything to the creator from which
it came. As the Book of Blessings
reminds us, “Scripture attests that all the beings God has created and keeps in
existence by his gracious goodness declare themselves to be blessings from him
and should move us to bless him in return.”
Here Comes the Pope
Planning a regular Sunday parish liturgy is a challenge. There are rubrics to read, logistics to consider, ministers to schedule, prayers to write, music to choose and rehearsals to conduct. But coordinating a televised papal liturgy is quite a feat. That is the task faced by planners in three U.S. cities as they anticipate the arrival of Pope Francis.
Pope Francis will spend six days in the United States next month, from Tuesday, September 22 to Sunday, September 27. The Pope will begin his first U.S. visit in Washington D.C. on the 22nd, move on to New York on the 24th and then travel to Philadelphia on the 26th for the culmination of the World Meeting of Families.
Francis will participate in several liturgical services throughout his trip, but the two largest will be public Masses in Washington on September 23 at 4:15pm, and in Philadelphia on September 27 at 4:00pm.
The Mass in Washington will take place on the East Portico of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The Mass will include the canonization of Blessed Junípero Serra, a Franciscan friar who founded the first Spanish missions in California in the 1700s. This will mark the first time a saint will be canonized in the United States. According to Fr. Mark Knestout, who is leading the planning effort for that Mass, much of the liturgy will reflect the life of Junípero Serra. The majority of the Mass will be celebrated in Spanish and one of the readings will be proclaimed in a Native American dialect that was in use when Serra was alive. The music will be multilingual and will be comprised of 500 choir and orchestra members.
The Mass in Philadelphia will take place on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Fr. Dennis Gill, Director for the Office of Worship in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia says they expect a crowd of about 800,000 people. “We will have 1,500 communion stations alone,” Gill said. The main parts of the Mass will be in Latin with other parts in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. A choir of 500 along with the Philadelphia Orchestra will lead the music.
There are no tickets necessary for the Mass in Philadelphia. The public is welcome. However, tickets are required to attend the Mass in Washington. For the majority of people, the best seats will be at home in front of the television.
Haiti Medical Mission
When Bishop David Talley was pastor of St.
Thomas Aquinas, (then Monsignor Talley), he asked dentist Lori McMurray to consider doing a dental mission
in Haiti. She had no idea what she was getting into. “I thought maybe we would have 30 people,” McMurray
said. But what she found on her first
trip in 2007 was overwhelming. “When we
got there, all these people started lining up, and I looked at the amount of
anesthetic that we had and I thought, oh my gosh, what are we going to do?” With help from the clergy at our sister
parish, St. Martin, McMurray was able to obtain additional anesthetic that
enabled her to treat more than 200 patients.
Since 2007, Dr. McMurray has traveled with other
parishioners to Haiti every year except for 2010, the year the earthquake struck
the island nation. McMurray says each
visit reveals more of the same. “There’s
not a lot of food there and sugar cane is very plentiful so they chew on sugar
cane which is very bad for teeth and so they have very bad tooth decay. Kids who are eight years old are already
losing their eight- year molars.”
Because of the lack of equipment, McMurray treats the patients by
extracting their teeth. She says she
would like to be able to purchase a dental unit that would allow her to do
fillings instead of taking teeth out. The underlying need, McMurray says, is for
education. “There’s a need to really get
these children educated in the schools.
They had no idea how sugar is related to tooth decay.”
In 2010, Dr. McMurray moved from Georgia back to
her home state of Michigan, but she
continues to accompany members of the parish Haiti committee on their yearly
dental mission trips. That is due in
part, she says, to a calling. “I think there is always a part of me that wants
to do God’s work for the underserved.
It’s some way that I can contribute.
Every year that I go, there’s a part of me that wants to do more. I wish we could do more. We have to do more.”
The Power of the Ministry of Music
When Randy Russell met Carmen Ortiz in 1999, he was a
practicing Methodist and a member of Roswell United Methodist Church. Carmen was a practicing Catholic who
faithfully worshiped at St. Thomas Aquinas and who, for years, sang with the
10:30 choir. At the beginning of their
courtship, when Carmen’s work schedule
prevented her from singing with the Sunday morning choir, Randy and Carmen went
to the 5:30pm Sunday Mass at St. Thomas.
Though his Methodist ties were strong, Randy says he felt something stir
deep inside during those early experiences of the Catholic liturgy, “The Spirit
would grab me by the time we had heard the gospel. I would be all tingly with energy and I knew
then that this is where I needed to be.”
After about five months of dating, Carmen rejoined the choir
and brought Randy with her. The love
between Carmen and Randy grew stronger and eventually they married. Because both Randy and Carmen had had
previous marriages which were not annulled, the two could not receive communion,
nor could Randy be received into the Catholic Church. Yet the two remained faithful, immersing themselves
in the music ministry week after week.
Last year, Carmen received a terminal diagnosis. The week before Carmen died, as fellow choir
members came to visit her, she made them promise that they would see to it that
Randy became Catholic. Carmen’s death came all too soon. Randy was devastated and so was the
choir. Ironically, her death brought new
life. Carmen’s death freed Randy to
pursue the process of becoming Catholic. Choir members and friends made good on
their promise to Carmen. And so Randy
went through the RCIA process and in April at the Easter Vigil, he was received
into the Catholic Church, was confirmed and received the Eucharist for the
first time. Randy credits the choir with
being “the mortar that holds my bricks together,” and he says that the choir
has been instrumental in blessing his life with love and with hope.
Cursillo in Atlanta
Life-changing is a phrase that often bursts forth from the lips of those who have participated in the Christian renewal movement called Cursillo. Some have found Cursillo so powerful, it has inspired a vocation. In fact, a number of priests and deacons in the Atlanta Archdiocese say their Cursillo experience moved them to consider ordained ministry. Deacon Bill Keeling, who attended a Cursillo weekend in 1973, talked about the conversion he experienced. “Making a Cursillo weekend was one of the greatest gifts God has ever given to me … Cursillo took all the things I had learned from my grandmother, my parents and the Catholic schools I had attended and made sense of it. It gave me direction and the necessary tools to continue to grow in my faith.” Sr. Margaret McAnoy has been involved in Cursillo in Atlanta as a team member and spiritual director for forty-four years. She says her first Cursillo weekend helped her to discover that she could have a personal relationship with Jesus, a realization that changed her life.
Cursillo is not just for those called to religious life. Its primary focus is to help all men and women to be greater witnesses of Christ to their families, to their workplaces and to the world. The name Cursillo is Spanish meaning short course. Cursillo is considered a short course in Christian living. It begins with a three-day weekend that is filled with talks, prayer, faith-sharing and fun. Cursillo participants or Cursillistas, as they are called, usually come away inspired, empowered, renewed and challenged to live their faith more fully.
Cursillo is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in Atlanta. In the past fifty years, an estimated ten-thousand men and women in the Atlanta Archdiocese have participated in Cursillo. Atlanta Cursillo weekends are held twice a year at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Men and women attend separate weekends. The next weekend for men is October 8-11. The next weekend for women is October 15-18. For more information on Cursillo in Atlanta, go to http://www.atlcatholiccursillo.org/.
You will be hearing more about Cursillo in the weeks ahead at St. Thomas Aquinas. In the meantime, we are looking for persons who are either interested in attending or have already attended a Cursillo weekend. It you would like to sign up to attend an upcoming Cursillo weekend, or if you have already made a Cursillo weekend, please contact Terry Zobel, tzobel@sta.org.