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‘Good liturgy, beautiful space connect people, feed them’

Posted on by Vermont Catholic

St. Alphonsus Liguori and Our Lady of Good Help, the two historic brick churches in Pittsford and Brandon, respectively, that makeup the Otter Valley Catholic Community, shine brighter these days thanks to the Christ Our Hope Campaign.

At St. Alphonsus, the shining is literally true through the restoration of the stained-glass windows in front of the church. They are as old as the church and were blunted by age. “From the inside, they are much clearer and sharper,” said Father Maurice Moreau, OFM Cap., pastor. “When the lights are on, they shine on passing traffic on Route 7.”

St. Alphonsus and Our Lady of Good Help ranked fourth and fifth in participation in the Christ Our Hope Campaign diocesan capital campaign.

Our Lady of Good Help tells a fuller story. Father Moreau led me through the ancestral strata of the parish with the skill of an archaeologist.

French Canadian Catholics built the first church in Brandon, called Bon Secour, in 1852, on the other side of the railroad tracks where the old cemetery is located.

The first part of the current Our Lady of Good Help Church was the sacristy, which was built in 1878. The parish added the rest of the building beginning in 1888.

Irish newcomers, whose labor fueled local industry, soon outnumbered the mostly rural French Canadians and added a new layer. “There’s more green in this church than one would expect,” Father Moreau said. “Just look at this green tile floor in the sanctuary.” He bent down and pointed to a small tile that he discovered cleaning during the Covid-19 shutdown with a date scratched in it. “Looks like 1939.”

Up until a couple of years ago, there was no image of Our Lady of Good Help at the church. “It took me a little bit to track it down,” he said; one now hangs in the vestibule between the front doors.

At the center of Our Lady of Good Help is a new back altar. It was moved from recently closed St. Agnes Church in Leicester, which was a mission of Our Lady of Good Help for much of its history.

The back altar was probably made in Fair Haven. It was taken apart after the Second Vatican Council and stored in the basement.

Long-time parishioner Jim Hayes oversaw the move and reconstruction.

“It was a complicated process,” said his daughter, Marci Hayes, who assisted in the project. “The pieces were heavy, and we had to figure out how to put them back together.”

Hayes utilized his professional skill as a general contractor, providing an engine lift and hydraulic lift to move the larger pieces. They built staging at Our Lady of Good Help to carefully lower the pieces in place.

For Marci Hayes it was the gift of her father’s faith that made it possible. “Dad was baptized at Our Lady of Good Help. He served as an altar boy, and he and Mom were married there. …  And the altar wouldn’t have been possible without him.”

For Father Moreau, the altar represents a kind of continuity within the reality that parishes constantly shift and evolve.

“Sometimes incorporating something from another church is forced; a third statue of the Virgin Mary — where can we fit it in? In this case, St. Mary’s [Our Lady of Good Help] needed a back altar. It fit perfectly, and both the people of St. Agnes and St. Mary’s loved it.”

When asked about the connection with the Eucharist, Father Moreau replied, “Good liturgy and beautiful space connect people and feed them. We’re trying to get back to doing what we do well. The rest follows.”

— Damian Costello is the director of postgraduate studies at NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community, a speaker with the Vermont Humanities Council, and a member of St. Augustine Parish in Montpelier.

—Originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

 

Newly named ‘venerable’ Sister Lucia spread Fatima message throughout her long life

Posted on by Our Sunday Visitor

Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last surviving Fatima visionary, died in the Carmelite cloister in Coimbra, Portugal, in February 2005 at the age of 97. At the time of her death, St. John Paul II recalled their “bonds of spiritual friendship that intensified with the passing of time.”

“I always felt supported by the daily gift of her prayers, especially in difficult moments of trial and suffering,” the pope wrote in a message to Bishop Albino Mamede Cleto of Coimbra, less than two months before the bishop’s own death. “May the Lord repay her abundantly for the great and hidden service she gave the church.”

Last month, Pope Francis declared Sister Lucia “venerable” with a decree recognizing the Fatima visionary’s heroic virtues. The next step toward official recognition of sainthood is beatification, after which Sister Lucia would be called “blessed,” followed by canonization, where she would be declared a saint. In general, the last two steps each require a miracle attributed to the intercession of the sainthood candidate and verified by the church.

The Portuguese girl was only 10 years old when she and her two younger cousins told their family and friends that they had seen the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917. Mary first appeared to Lucia, 9-year-old Francisco Marto and 7-year-old Jacinta Marto on May 13, and the apparitions continued approximately once a month until October 1917, culminating in the “Miracle of the Sun.” The Catholic Church has ruled that the apparitions and the messages from Our Lady of Fatima were worthy of belief.

Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta died 1920, both of the Spanish flu. St. John Paul II beatified them in 2000.

That same year, Pope John Paul, who met Sister Lucia three times, ordered the publication of the so-called “third secret” of Fatima, which he believed referred to the 20th-century persecution of the church under Nazism and communism and spoke of the 1981 attempt to assassinate him.

The pope was shot May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first of the Fatima apparitions.

Pope John Paul has said he believes Mary saved his life that day; he sent one of the bullets removed from his abdomen to Fatima, where it is part of the crown on the statue of Our Lady.

In his message to Bishop Cleto, who died in 2012, the pope said that with her death, Sister Lucia “reached the goal she always aspired to in prayer and in the silence of the convent,” and she was a “humble and devout Carmelite who consecrated her life to Christ, the savior of the world.”

Seeing the Virgin Mary as a child “was the beginning of a unique mission for her, one to which she was faithful until the end of her days,” he said.

“Sister Lucia leaves us an example of great fidelity to the Lord and of joyfully following his divine will,” the pope wrote.

Upon Sister Lucia’s death, speculation surrounding her cause for canonization was immediate. Some wondered if St. John Paul II would waive the five-year waiting period after a person’s death for a cause to open.

Jesuit Father Paolo Molinari, postulator of the cause for Sts. Francisco and Jacinta, said at the time he personally believed it was important to wait.

“We must avoid the danger of people thinking that she is being beatified or canonized just because of the visions,” he told Catholic News Service in 2005.

“The apparitions of Our Lady and what Our Lady said certainly had an impact on Sister Lucia’s life,” he said, but they did not make her holy.

“She accepted the message and she lived according to the message for more than 80 years, offering her life for the sake of sinners. This is holiness, not just receiving the grace of a vision,” said the Jesuit, who died in 2014, three years before Francisco and Jacinta were recognized as saints.

Ultimately, St. John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, waived the standard waiting period for Sister Lucia’s cause, and it opened in 2008. The Coimbra Diocese completed its investigation and forwarded documentation to the Holy See’s Congregation (since renamed Dicastery) for the Causes of Saints in 2017, the apparitions’ centennial year. Three months later, Pope Benedict XVI canonized Francisco and Jacinta.

—This reporting drew from Catholic News Service archives.

— OSV News

 

 

Superintendent of Catholic schools to address next meeting of Vermont Catholic Professionals

Posted on by Cori Urban

The superintendent of Catholic schools for the Diocese of Burlington will be the speaker at the July meeting of Vermont Catholic Professionals.

David Young, who accepted the position last year with the Diocese of Burlington, will speak about the importance of community and the need for positive influences in life.

“Having been in public education for the past 34 years, I was eligible to retire from the Vermont public school system and was ready for new challenges and opportunities,” he said. “I continue to be interested in supporting student learning and believe in the Catholic mission where academic excellence is provided within an environment of Christian values.”

He began his teaching and administrative career in Fairfax before serving as the principal of the Georgia Elementary School for 10 years. He has spent 17 years with the South Burlington School District. He started at South Burlington as the assistant superintendent and served as the superintendent for the last 11 years.

Young received a bachelor’s degree from Norwich University and served in the United States Army as an officer before returning to his alma mater for a master’s in education administration.

The purpose of Vermont Catholic Professionals is to join Catholic men and women and others with shared values from the business and professional communities to encourage intellectual discussions, to foster professional and faith-based relationships, and to inspire service and charity to the community in Vermont. The group hosts quarterly events that offer networking and a professional development speaker that is relevant to the business and professional communities here in Vermont.

Vermont Catholic Professionals works to foster community, inspire discussions and spread their faith, which was the intent of the group’s founding in 2018.

The Vermont Catholic Professionals meeting will take placer July 19 beginning at 8:30 a.m. at 55 Joy Drive, South Burlington, and on Zoom.

For more information, go to vermontcatholic.org/vcp.

—Originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

 

The spiral of the liturgical year

Posted on by Josh Perry

“Sound familiar?” is what I’m always tempted to ask after the readings on Holy Days, such as Christmas Day or Easter Sunday. The nature of the ritual involves repetition. The liturgical year is arranged the same way each year (with minor adjustments from year to year), but we can safely say Advent always comes before Christmas and Lent before Easter. There is an extended season of Christmas after Christmas Day; likewise, an extended time of Easter follows Easter Sunday. The lectionary, the book that contains the readings we hear at Mass, assigns particular readings to every day of the year. Although the priest has some discretion to choose other readings within limited circumstances, we often hear the same readings from year to year, every other year, or every three years.

The readings that are assigned in the lectionary for weekday Masses are arranged in a 2-year cycle: Years I and II. The readings that are assigned to Sunday Masses (and Saturday Masses of anticipation) are arranged in a 3-year cycle: Years A, B, and C. On certain Holy Days of Obligation such as Christmas Day and Easter Sunday — because of their importance to the Catholic faith — the same readings are assigned every year. We will hear the story of Jesus’s birth on Christmas morning and the story of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Currently, in July 2023, we are in Year A/Year I.

Notice that I used the term “cycle” above. Oftentimes, we think of the liturgical year or the cycle of readings in a circular way; they repeat after a certain duration, and we’re back to where we began one, two, or three years ago. But the liturgical year and the cycle of readings can be better thought of in terms of a spiral. There’s a circular motion in a spiral, but the design of the spiral never returns to the original point. This is a better description of the liturgical year and the cycle of readings. Even though the readings repeat from year to year, you and I are different than we were the last time we encountered particular words from Scripture, and we might hear those words of Scripture very differently than before. I hear the Christmas story and the Resurrection story differently than I did three years ago, 10 years ago, or 50 years ago. My life experiences have changed me, and hopefully, my faith life has deepened. So even though the Church will not surprise you with a different passage of Scripture read on Pentecost Sunday, and you will hear the story about the Holy Spirit coming to the Apostles, you may be surprised by what God says to you in the hearing of that same Pentecost story this year.

Listen carefully, then, to the readings proclaimed in Scripture. Listen as if you’re hearing those readings for the first time. Let your life experiences interact with the Holy Word of God, and in that space of interaction, allow the Holy Spirit to enter and communicate what God needs to communicate to you. You may be surprised at how unfamiliar, new, and exciting the story seems to you.

— Josh Perry is director of the Office of Worship for the Diocese of Burlington.

—Originally published in the July 1-7, 2023, edition of The Inland See.

 

 

Deacon Scilla celebrates 20th anniversary of ordination

Posted on by Submitted Article

Deacon Gerry Scilla recently celebrated his 20th ordination anniversary.

Ordained on June 28, 2003, he has served the Essex Catholic Community since.

He and his wife, Michele, moved to Essex in 1990 as he continued his career with IBM. They became engaged in the parish, and upon his ordination as a deacon, he began his ministry at St. Pius X in Essex Center, and Michele led the religious education program for many years.

Deacon Scilla’s recruits, trains and oversees lectors, altar servers, and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.

During his years of service he has performed 125 baptisms and 43 weddings and numerous burials. For 18 years he has been overseeing the prison ministry for the Diocese of Burlington and ministering to the incarcerated every Friday evening, first in South Burlington and now in Swanton. He serves on the Diocesan Diaconate Board and has a life-time term on the parish council.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and then a doctorate in Chemistry from Cornell University.

July book review: ‘Free to Be Holy’

Posted on by Kay Winchester

“Free to Be Holy.” By Matt Lozano. Maryland: Word Among Us Press, 2023. 152 pages.  Paperback: $15.85; Kindle: $9.99; E-book: $12.99.

As I read Matt Lozano’s latest book, “Free to Be Holy,” I was reminded of something that the hospital treatment staff kept emphasizing to all of us who were undergoing chemotherapy.  “Remember,” they said, “you have cancer. You are not cancer. Who you are fundamentally as a person has not changed.”

In a similar vein, if I were to sum up Lozano’s book in a couple of words it would be this:  Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are holy people. That is who we are fundamentally, even if we still have sin and imperfection in our lives. The object, therefore, is not to become holy, but to learn to live out our inherent holiness.

“The sacrifice of Jesus makes us holy, a status we could never earn for ourselves,” Lozano begins. “Yet even though we have been made holy, we do not automatically live a holy lifestyle.  Over time the grace of God will teach us how to live as our holy status demands.”

For many people, that is something that can be difficult to get one’s head around. That is because we have some notions about holiness that just don’t stand up to scrutiny. Lozano discusses three of them, telling the reader that though these ideas may seem like holiness, they are actually, in his words, “dead ends.”

The first is what he calls the Performance Approach, in which we believe it is our own actions that make us holy. Lozano reminds us that it is, in fact, “Jesus himself – by his sacrifice, grace and merits – who makes us holy.” The problem with the Performance Approach is that if we fall short – as we inevitably will – we may feel that we are no longer holy. Lozano’s point is that we remain holy but need to recognize that we don’t always act holy.

The second false approach is similar; it states that “I am not holy now, but someday I will be.”  Again, we tie our holiness to what we do instead of who we are. The difficulty with this thinking is that as soon as we compare ourselves to others, there will always be someone who seems “holier” than we are. This leads to the false notion that “well, I guess someday I may be where that person is, just not right now.” We ignore the fact that we are already holy and in the process of learning how to live that reality – works in progress who are already beloved by God.

The third false approach is that to be holy we must somehow set ourselves apart from others.  Jesus Himself disavowed that approach when He scandalized the Pharisees – who were very good at keeping their distance from those they perceived to be sinners – by not only mingling with sinners, but eating with them. As we saw from Jesus’ words and parables, this attitude leads, not to holiness, but to the sin of pride.

These concepts occupy roughly the first half of this book; the second half might be called “practical application,” or living out the reality of our own holiness. “Walking in holiness involves the concrete, practical choices we make in our everyday lives,” Lozano continues.  “This is the territory of the Incarnation. Walking in holiness is not theoretical; it is real.”

This is an important thing to do because it reaches beyond our own, personal sanctification; living a holy life has a direct and positive effect on those around us.  Lozano illustrates this – as he does many things – with an example from his own life. He also includes a very useful chapter at the conclusion of the book describing the common obstacles and pitfalls we all encounter when trying to live out our holiness and how to overcome them.

For anyone looking for encouragement on their journey of faith, this book is a highly recommended read.

Author bio:

Lozano is the director of training for Heart of the Father Ministries and has more than 20 years of experience teaching in the classroom and around the world. He is co-author of the “Unbound Ministry Guidebook” and “Abba’s Heart.” He ministers alongside his wife, Jennifer; together they have five children.