What Happened This Week at St. Anthony Parish for Sept 8-15
Washington, Boston and Brazil
This week at St. Anthony parish in the Brazilian community the focus was the trip to Washington, DC.
The patroness of Brazil is Nossa Senhora Aparecida [Our Lady Appeared]. Like in Guadalupe, Mexico there is an artifact Our Lady gave to us. It is an statue of the Immaculate Conception as a black woman. This week, on September 14, there was a great celebration of this image and devotion as well as an enthronization of the image in a chapel at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.
There was a great celebration and so we have a group of Brazilian parishioners leave here at 8:00 am and arrived in Washington, DC that afternoon. They stayed at a retreat house and attended the Mass the following day and greatly enjoyed it. The retreat house was well within walking distance of the Basilica.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley was the principal celebrant along with Archdiocese of Washington, DC Archbishop Cardinal Gregory, also the Papal Nuncio and Brazilian bishop priests and laity from all over the United States, including the newest Brazilian born bishop in the United States, the Most Reverend Cristiano Barroso. The Basilica was packed. Finally, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife also attended.
The US Catholic media did not show the Mass and so I watched on YouTube via Canção Nova TV. They did a great job.
I have seen no information at all about this in the US Catholic national media. Unfortunately, the lack of coverage does not surprise me at all. I really think our country is gravely ill-served by many Catholic news media outlets. It is really tragic. CatholicTV does a good job but they are not predominantly a news outlet like others.
Our parishioners arrived back at 3:00 am Sunday morning which is the time I expected them to arrive and they were deeply excited.
I celebrated the Sunday morning masses in both Portuguese and English and Fr. Francisco celebrated the 6 pm, after a well-deserved rest. He too participated in the Enthronization of Our Lady Aparecida Mass. Usually, on Sundays I will take one Portuguese language Mass and I also do the one English language one as well. Or Fr. Francisco will do all three Portuguese language Masses and I will only do the one in English, so covering all the Masses in the morning was obviously something I was more than willing to do.
Dorothy Day Faith Forum
Every Tuesday at 6:30 pm, we have a discussion of various topics of any type and all are welcome. There are about five to seven people who usually show up and we discuss many things. The topics can be politically hot and occasionally they continue on in a private texting forum we have.
This week at the beginning of the discussion, I handed out Colin Miller’s book We Only All Saved Together which reflects on Catholic Worker Spirituality in his local parish. A great read. Tomorrow as I write this, I will be interviewing Colin Miller for our radio show/podcast.
On the Podcast This Week,
Kelsey Gillespy, author of Real Life with Mary Growing in Virtue to Magnify the Lord, will be the guest on the afternoon radio show (WROL 950am in Boston area and wrolradio.com worldwide) 3pm ET. It was a great interview where she reflects on her life as a mother in light of Mary’s life with Jesus.
I received a call this week form a listener who really appreciates our podcast. He also was surprised how well I know the Bible being that I am a Catholic and all. Yes, I try to inform people more and more about the Bible using the daily readings.
O numbered podcasts are commentary on the daily readings and V are interviews, commentaries, teachings and more. All can be found at https://www.catholicaudiomedia.com
Ministry
The way a parish works: Monday is my day for hospital duty and I received a call from one of our local hospitals of a woman in labor months early. I never had that type of call before and I immediately contacted one of our regular parishioners who is retired from working the maternity ward for another hospital.
She told me what this was about, what to expect when I get there and said that she will pray for the woman. This is how a parish works when we can work together in ministry.
Parish getting busy
So our parish is getting busier and we are working on building it up all the time.
Our post 10:00 am Mass Coffee Hour is building up as well. Adoration is going well and Mass both morning and afternoon as well as Sundays going well too.
Meanwhile, I am back to doing roughly twelve-hour days again. However, that is part of ministry.
Fr. Francisco will be blessing animals the night of October 4th details to follow.
Fr. Robert J Carr is pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA
The parish podcast is at https://catholicaudiomedia.com