Sundays, Saints’ Days & Prayers for Healing

Sundays, Saints’ Days & Prayers for Healing
 

“By an apostolic tradition taking its origin from the very day of Christ’s resurrection, the Church celebrates the paschal mystery [death and resurrection] every ‘eighth day’ [the day after the Saturday Sabbath], the day that is rightly called the Lord’s day. On Sunday the Christian faithful ought to gather together, so that by listening to the word of God and sharing in the Eucharist they may recall the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord Je-sus and give thanks to God who has given them a new birth with a lively hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The Lord’s Day is therefore the first and greatest festival, one to be set before the loving devotion of the faithful and impressed upon it, so that it may be also a day of joy and of freedom from work. Oth-er celebrations must not take precedence over it, unless they are truly of the greatest importance, since it is the foundation and the kernel of the whole liturgical year.” – from the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Sec-ond Vatican Council (SC n.8)

With one of the top three priorities in our Local Pas-toral Plan being “Strengthening and Growing the Sunday Experience,” our parishes are looking at everything from new and creative ideas to getting back to basics. Whatever we do -- especially anything to do with the Mass – has to remain rooted in our Catholic Christian teachings, identity, and the richness of our faith. We also need to follow Jesus’ example of connecting the eternal Good News to the particular circumstances of people’s lives today. I encourage you to prayerfully reflect a couple of times this week on the above teaching from Vatican II and how we are living that in our own lives, families, and parishes today. While life gets complicated at times, Sunday Mass is meant to be one of the constants that re-stores us to stability, peace, and hope each week – a spiritual day that takes priority over almost everything else in our lives. While it’s not easy to live this out in our world today, it is the ideal that we need to keep in mind and make a value in our lives.

Even within the Church, the Sunday Mass of the resurrection takes priority over most Saints’ feast days, including today’s celebration of St. Blaise on February 3. We know very little about Saint Blaise, but he was bishop in Armenia in the fourth century who, before he was martyred, is said to have healed a boy who was choking. Since the eight century, he has been venerated as the patron saint of those with diseases of the throat. When this feast falls on a weekday, we use special Mass prayers, which seek his intercession and protection, but this year the Sunday Mass prayers and readings outrank those. Still, we have a custom in our collaborative of offering the traditional blessing of throats on the weekend of or right after his feast day, so we will offer this today after all the Masses.

The throat blessing of Saint Blaise is a sign of our faith in God’s protection and love for us and for the sick. At every Mass we lift up those who are sick or frail in our prayers, but this is a visible, tangible way of making God’s healing care present, using candles blessed on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (Feb.2). This blessing “may be given by a priest, deacon or a lay minister who follows the rites...” in the Catholic Book of Blessings. With the assistance of our priests and deacons, Fr. Joe has commissioned a few lay minsters to assist with blessing throats this weekend. After each Mass, individual blessings will be offered in front of the altar.

As all liturgical celebrations are centered around the Sunday Eucharist, it is “through Christ that the Father bestows on the world all that is good.” ( Eucharistic Prayer III). May we all grow in our reflection on the value of the Lord’s Day, and our efforts to worship God and lovingly bring others to be nourished at the altar of the Lord!