May is Mary’s month, and we shall have the traditional Crowning of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Solemn Mass today, which also happens to be the secular observation of Mother’s Day. A good fit of sacred and secular. That this lovely tradition survived the post-Vatican II “cleansing” is a minor miracle and shows the deep roots of the many such traditions that make up the celebratory nature of the Catholic faith in its traditions. May the memory of this day be long lived in the hearts and minds of our children who will participate in the Crowning.
The statues on the Rood Beam and the Corpus of our Lord have been repainted in the medieval Gothic style and will be replaced sometime during the next ten days. The Rood Beam itself will also be decorated in the style of the wonderful Victorian Gothic revival churches of the latter half of the nineteenth century. This will be the culmination of the “re-new-vation” of St. Mary’s that began some ten years ago now. Gothic tracery will also be applied to the glass panels at the back of the church, to complete the transformation and renewal. So many of our parishioners have thanked me for the remarkable transformation of the statues of Mother Cabrini and St. John Vianney in the chapel. We thank Carlos Arias for his masterful work with these statues and for his restoration of St. John the Baptist and his transformation of the beautiful baroque ceiling centerpiece also in the chapel. And we thank those who have made this possible by their generosity.
The new bathroom will be framed on Monday and should be operational in the very nearfuture. One more thing on my wish list for the church. We need a proper and beautiful front center door. The door we have is dysfunctional, leaks and is ugly. I have found a beautiful door that we can install with the help of those at St Mary’s who work for the parish out of love. If someone, or a family, or a group of parishioners would like to give this door as a memorial, please contact me by phone, email, text or best in person. This door would be like the Porta Caeli, the entrance into heaven. I pray this will come to fruition.
Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla
Pastor
