Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: March 07, 2021
Dear Parishioners and Friends,
As our Lenten observance continues on its inexorable march towards Holy Week, I first of all urge you not to give up on whatever it was you gave up! The deeper we get into Lent, we ought to redouble our efforts at self-mortification and penance. Since one of the traditional names for the last couple of weeks of Lent is “Passiontide,” we can be passionate about imitating Christ’s passion as our Lent concludes.
Now, what shall I write about in this week’s issue of The Carpenter? I know! I’ll take the time to mention a few things that I can never preach about!
I’ve made five pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and have many wonderful memories of them. They also remind me about something special that happens on Good Friday, at the solemn Good Friday service at 3 pm, the hour Christ died. I hope you’re familiar with that liturgy, which is striking in its starkness. Its main parts are Bible readings (including St. John’s account of Jesus’ passion), the veneration of the holy cross (here at the Cathedral this features a relic of the True Cross!), and holy communion. But the service includes some less important yet still remarkable moments: the prostration of the clergy on the floor before the stripped altar; the formal, intense prayers of intercession; the mournful, elegiac music; and the collection.
Say what? The collection? Since when is a collection important?
It’s true. Money collected on Good Friday doesn’t stay here in Baton Rouge. It’s sent to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and to the Franciscans who have custody of our Church’s shrines in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. There are not a lot of Christians in the Holy Land – and their numbers are shrinking every year. The Church there depends on our generosity to continue its educational and evangelistic mission in the midst of societies dominated by Judaism and Islam. The Church depends on our generosity to preserve the places so uniquely central to our faith.
But as you can see, we can hardly preach on this on Good Friday! Whether it’s the bishop or me preaching the homily that day, the more important mystery of the Lord’s passion and death takes precedence in our focus and prayer! The great need of the Church in the Holy Land gets a passing mention at most. So consider this an opportune reminder: please be generous to the Church of the Holy Land as we remember its darkest day!
And that brings up yet another collection that can never really be preached about! And I’m a bit more worried about bringing it up, since I’ve got partially selfish motives!
The special collection on Easter (both at the Great Vigil in the night and on Easter morning) helps fund our own diocesan Priests’ Retirement Fund. Once a diocesan priest retires from all assigned ministry and falls back on whatever he volunteers to do, he’s dependent not upon parishioners directly, but upon Social Security, and the pension paid to him by the Diocese of Baton Rouge. While I think our Retirement Fund is in better shape than Social Security, that’s not saying a lot! As we priests grow greyer, especially in these pandemic and soon post-pandemic times, our Retirement Fund is being stretched to its limits.
So you can expect the bishop and I to be preaching about Christ’s Resurrection on Easter – it is, after all, kind of an important truth of the Faith! But in the back of every diocesan priest’s mind will be some hope that you’ll again express your appreciation and support for us by special generosity in that special collection. And I know you will. We live this life and do this work for Jesus and for you, and neither has ever disappointed us in caring for us!
In Christ Jesus,
Fr. Paul Counce
