Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: October 28, 2018
It’s GRAND Day! Everyone who’s ever been a grandchild (this means YOU!) will be prayed-for and honored at the 10:30 Mass, and then invited to the Parish Hall and the grounds of Cathedral Square afterwards for a party! Children and their parents and grandparents are especially invited to attend together! Please plan to come and enjoy hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, ice cream, soft drinks, music, a petting zoo, pony rides, face painting, caricatures, balloons, our “round the block train,” and much more also!!
Something won’t be happening after the 10:30 Mass this Sunday, though: we’ve rescheduled our monthly administration of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick here at the Cathedral. The celebration of this Sacrament (along with the special Blessing with the Relics of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, C.Ss.R.) will now be after the 4pm Vigil Mass on the First Saturday of the Month, starting in December. If you know of someone who likes to attend this, please be a good neighbor and let them know of this schedule-change.
Finally, don’t forget that there’s a Holy Day of Obligation this week: All Saints’ Day on Thursday, November 1. Masses will be offered here at 7:30 am and 12 noon. Later that afternoon I’ll again bless the graves at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery on Main Street at 4 pm and at historic Highland Cemetery at 7 pm. Please attend if you wish!
While in south Louisiana All Saints’ Day is often a special day due to the family tradition of sprucing up plots in our cemeteries, throughout the rest of the world All Souls’ Day is by far the more popular. This is day when we remember in somber prayer all who are not saints, and especially our own family members and friends. Their lives of faith, aided now by our prayers for them and the purification God wills for them in what is popularly known as “purgatory,” shall win them eternal rest. Although there’s no obligation to worship that day, our solemn Commemoration Mass for the dead will be at 12:00 noon on that day, Friday, November 2.
In fact the entire month of November is dedicated to the Holy Souls in purgatory. To highlight our devotion to earnest prayers for the dead, we light our Easter Candle each day in church, and place there our Parish’s Book of Remembrance. You can write in this book the names of those departed loved ones, for we remember this “purgatorial list” every week at Mass long after November is over! Please join the rest of the Church throughout the world in lifting up to God’s mercy all those who have gone before us in faith!
In the rest of this issue of The Carpenter quite a few other events that are coming up here at your Cathedral are listed. How many of them are on your calendar already?
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Fr. Paul D. Counce
