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This is a time “to choose what matters and what passes away,” we heard Pope Francis say March 27 as we gathered around a laptop in our kitchen. St. Peter’s Square was emblematic of our lives — usually so packed but now eerily quiet.
Celebrating Mary during the month of May seems as natural as blossoms opening in spring. I never actually knew why we celebrated Mary during May, just that it was tradition. It may have had something to do with the arrival of spring, a relief from the bitter cold of winters in Western Massachusetts. The fragrance of spring lilacs reminded us that life was being renewed. Perhaps it was the special crowning ceremony when, as a child at Catholic school, we crowned the beautiful statue of Mary in our church, recognizing her as “Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.”
From updates provided by state officials, we are preparing to enter Phase 1 of reintegrating our diocese back to normal operations.
Hallow is now the top Catholic app in app stores, has 150,000 downloads in 50 countries and has been used to pray over 1 million times.
Once a week throughout this pandemic, we’ll bring you fun and uplifting videos, photos and posts from people throughout the diocese.
It started with the Italians, whose arias rose from the balconies. They were on lockdown, but their voices rang out down empty moonlit streets. Ballads, the national anthem, improvised ditties over the barking of dogs.
Every sacrament confers sanctifying grace, but each sacrament also confers its own proper sacramental grace. In addition to sanctifying grace, the sacrament of confirmation brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace, roots us more deeply in divine sonship, unites us more firmly to Christ, increases in us the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, renders our bond with the church more perfect, gives us a special strength to witness, spread, and defend the faith boldly and without shame, and imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark with the seal of the Holy Spirit (“Catechism of the Catholic Church,” 1303).
The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed divided May 6 over Trump administration rules that give employers more ability to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage in their health plans. The argument, part of a handful that will take place by teleconference during the coronavirus restrictions, took another look at an issue that has come before the court already and again, as in previous terms, it highlighted the Little Sisters of the Poor, the order of women religious who care for the elderly poor.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge celebrated a special Mass livestreamed from the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington May 6 for students, families and all those involved in diocesan schools. “I know how much you miss being with each other and I certainly miss being with you,” he told students.
Become Christ-centered
One of the hardest lessons to learn is that your life is not about you. One could even say that to understand that idea is the secret of living. We were designed by God to give ourselves away in acts of self-forgetfulness, and we will never know happiness until we learn to do so. A light was made to shine. A fish was made to swim. A bird was made to fly. And a human person was made to live for God, and for others. Our sadness and anxiety only increase whenever we imagine our lives to be a grand self-actualization project — as if we were created only to serve our personal ambitions and to make all our dreams come true. As the Second Vatican Council states, “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (“Gaudium et Spes,” 24).