August 5, 2023 Column Father De Celles News
Fr. Bergida’s Travels. Fr. Bergida will be away from the
parish on “business” from August 1 to 25. This trip has been
planned since before he first joined us in February. With the
Bishop’s blessing, and mine, he will be visiting parishes in
several different states and be giving talks for “parish missions.”
He asks for your prayers for safe travels and his mission.
Knights of Columbus. Our Council of the Knights has just
presented a $20,000 donation to the Tepeyac Pro-Life Pregnancy
Center (Divine Mercy Care). The donation was matched
(+$20,000) by the Supreme Council of the K of C for a total of
$40,000. The funds will be used by Tepeyac to purchase a new
4D Ultrasound. Kudos and thanks to the men of the Knights of
Columbus (our parishioners) for their generosity and commitment
to the Pro-Life cause and to assist pregnant mothers.
Tepeyac OB/GYN is a pro-life faith based obstetrics and
gynecology practice serving the metropolitan DC/NOVA/MD
area for over 25 years.
Their mission is to “restore the integrity of the human person by
combining the best of modern medicine with the healing presence
of Jesus Christ.”
Welcome to New Parishioners. Summer is always a time we
lose and gain parishioners, especially those in the military. So I’d
like to welcome all who have joined us in the last few months. I
hope you find St. Raymond’s’ to be a welcoming parish, and I
encourage you to get involved in our many liturgies, committees,
and activities.
Please make sure you register with our parish office, so
we can send you regular email updates on what’s going on in the
parish. You can register in person, by filling out a registration
form in the church narthex and drop it in the mail or the Sunday
offertory basket, or by visiting our parish website and clicking the
menu “Welcome,” and then click to the page “New to St
Raymond’s” (the link to the form is near the bottom of that page).
One thing to know about our parish is that we place
great importance on the Grace and Real Presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. Flowing from this you will find a pronounced
emphasis on reverence, especially during Holy Mass, what I call
“emphatic reverence.” Nowadays reverence seems to be a lost
virtue. The word “reverence” comes from the Latin for “fear,”
“revere,” and Scripture tells us, “The fear of the LORD is the
beginning of wisdom.” But this kind of fear is not like being in
terror or afraid, but rather being in “awe”: recognizing that God is
the all-powerful creator and sustainer of the whole world, and I
am just a little tiny speck in comparison—and yet, he loves me.
So Christian reverence is fundamentally rooted in love.
So we go out of our way here in our liturgies to be
reverent, to remind ourselves we are in presence of God, the God
who loved us so much He became one of us and died for our sins
on the Cross, and gave us the Eucharist to be with us always,
even to enter into us, especially in the mystery of His Sacrifice.
To encourage this reverence, we follow some ancient
customs of the Church that set the liturgy apart as radically
different from the mundane world we live in. For example, we
sing traditional Catholic hymns, which are different than most
contemporary liturgical music that incorporates so many aspects
of modern secular music. And we use the ancient language of the
Church, Latin, to remind us we’re doing something very
different, in union with the Church all the way back to time of
Jesus. And at many Masses the priest turns with the people, so
that, facing in the same way as them, he leads them in prayer
before the Most High God. We also use an altar rail to give folks
the option to kneel to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion.
Things are just a little different here at St. Raymond’s.
But then again, so is God. Welcome to St. Raymond’s.
Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery. From Foxnews.com:
“Conservatives had mixed reactions to South Carolina
Rep. Nancy Mace’s risqué anecdote at a prayer breakfast in
Washington, D.C…
“Mace said Wednesday that her fiancé tried to keep her
in bed that morning, but she insisted she needed to get to the
breakfast on time.
“‘When I woke up this morning at 7, …Patrick, my
fiancé, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed. And
I was like, ‘No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning,’‘
Mace remarked. “‘I gotta get to the prayer breakfast, and I gotta
be on time,’ she said.
“‘A little TMI,’ Mace joked as the crowd chuckled. ‘He
can wait, I’ll see him later tonight,’ Mace added.
“The clip of her speech went viral on Twitter on
Thursday. Mace reacted in a tweet saying, ‘I go to church because
I’m a sinner not because I’m a saint!….Glad those in attendance,
including @SenatorTimScott and our pastor, took this joke in
stride. Pastor Greg and I will have a little extra to talk about on
Sunday now,’ she said.”
Just to be clear: what she is describing, sex before
marriage, is “adultery.” That, and her clear intention not to repent
(“I’ll see him later tonight)” is a mortal sin. It’s one thing to be a
sinner, it’s another thing to think it’s okay to be a sinner and to
think it’s something to joke about. Guys: offending God is not
funny. Going to hell is not funny. Corrupting the morals of
America is not funny.
It’s Called a “WALL.” Did you see this story reported in an
excellent commentary by Joshua Arnold in “The Washington
Stand”?
“No irony is more delicious than when a progressive
stumbles upon an old, discarded, but sensible idea and believes
they have found something new. Representative Steve Cohen
(DTenn.) provided the latest example of this…
“‘My teammates and I were forced to undress in the
presence of Lia [Thomas], a six-foot, four-[inch] tall biological
male, fully intact with male genitalia, 18 times per week,’ said
former UPenn swimmer Paula Scanlan during Thursday testimony
before the House Judiciary Committee.
“‘When we tried to voice our concerns to the athletic
department…we were told that Lia’s swimming and being in our
locker room was a non-negotiable…. we were offered
psychological services to attempt to re-educate us to become
comfortable with the idea of undressing in front of a male.…’
“Scanlan’s account of palpable injustice was… so
moving that one of the committee Democrats tried to suggest a
solution…. Cohen told her. ‘They should have been putting up
some type of different barriers in the women’s area of the locker
room.’
“Ah, yes….Women object to sharing a locker room
facility with males, so how can we give them extra privacy?
Perhaps some sort of barrier would do. …Mr. Architect, we need
a permanent, opaque barrier to divide a space; now, what would
you call that?….
“‘Barrier’ is a two-syllable synonym for ‘wall’…In fact,
a ‘wall’ is typically all that separates the women’s locker room
from the men’s locker room…”
Oremus pro invicem. Fr. De Celles