Monday Message, September 11, 2023

KNOW

If you have not yet responded to Saturday’s meeting with Bishop Caggiano, please do so soon. We wouldn’t want to run out of food. Plus, we will be giving out Advent calendars, so be thinking about how many you need. (And you have to be impressed that these are ready!)

If your parish is hosting a Mass of Healing during this fall (or a Mass of anointing for the sick, etc.) please let me know. We are compiling a list.

This afternoon, your pastors are going to get a memo from me about the availability of Bibles for your parish. Please follow up with your pastor after the email blast goes out this afternoon.

Also, on October 21, Bishop Caggiano will celebrate Mass at the Cathedral for the 70th anniversary of the Diocese of Bridgeport. Each parish will receive a few tickets and because space is limited, every parish will celebrate the anniversary Mass in their parishes, usurping the normal setting for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Why is this important? Because the Bishop is also giving out Holy Cards to every student in our schools and parish faith formation programs. Please start planning now how you want to celebrate this anniversary (perhaps make one Mass that weekend a family Mass and invite all your students, etc.) We can discuss more on Saturday when we meet.

The diocese is looking for a few good singers. See this flyer for more information about new diocesan choirs that are being formed.

If you have realized you are no longer using as many Zoom licenses as you once did, let’s get those accounts closed. Email me with any changes.

Ministry Day is almost here. Please register, spread the word, etc. If you would like to read during Morning Prayer in English or Spanish, please let us know.

REFLECT

Like everyone else who was awake that day, I remember what I was doing and where I was on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

When my sisters visited for Thanksgiving that year, we drove to New York from my home in Delaware.  The fires were still smoldering. Bodies were still being recovered. Guards were posted ever few feet, facing the crowds, standing stoically, both protecting what was behind them and guarding those who faced them.  There was a silence, a pall over the crowd. Enough time had passed that the flyers announcing the missing were weathered. But not enough time had passed to stop people from openly weeping as they held on to the fence that had been erected.

I thought about that visit on Sunday when the bishop honored local heroes and first responders. Specifically, I remembered an encounter with a man that still gives me chills.  He was a policeman, standing guard at the fence where we stood praying.  I asked him how he did it. I wondered out loud how in the world he stood guard over a graveyard that held his brothers and fathers. I asked him what kept him coming back, day after day, to stand guard over such an awful place.

His answer stopped me cold. He looked me squarely in the eye and spoke without hesitation: “I’m a Christian. I’m a Catholic. There is so much crucifixion here, so much death, so much evil. But there is resurrection too. So I’m standing by the tomb and I’m waiting.”

There is evil in the world.  But look closer, my friends, because there is resurrection too. I pray that as you pause to reflect and remembers twenty-two years later, you listen to the man I encountered on that smoky night at Ground Zero. The promise of our faith is simple. The cross leads to the tomb. And the tomb, in its emptiness, brings us face to face with life.

That is where I find hope. And I pray you will as well.

LAUGH