Ash Wednesday is a obligatory days of fasting and abstinence for Catholics. In addition, Fridays during Lent are obligatory days of abstinence.
For members of the Catholic Church, the norms on fasting are obligatory from age 18 until age 59. When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. The norms concerning abstinence from meat are binding upon members of the Catholic Church from age 14 onwards.
St Mary will distribute ashes at the following Masses on Wednesday March 5:
6:30am at St Mary
9am at St Mary
12pm at St Mary
4pm Latin Novus Ordo Mass at St Mary
4:30pm at Holy Cross Academy (250 Stafford Lakes Pkwy Fredericksburg VA 22406)
6pm at St Mary
6pm at Holy Cross Academy (250 Stafford Lakes Pkwy Fredericksburg VA 22406)
Three things this week, connected with Lent coming soon:
1. Parish Retreat: mark your calendars for our retreat by which we hope to get Lent started with a spiritual dose of Hope! With the Holy Father dedicating the year to the virtue of Hope, our retreat speaker will speak to this theme! Father Paul Kais, is a priest of Opus Dei, and a former rugby teammate of mine in college! The retreat will be Mon/Tues/Wed March 17/18/19! Look for the ad in bulletin.
2. Pope Francis: maybe you don’t follow Catholic social media, but the day I type this there I news that Pope Francis is in the hospital with double pneumonia! Please pray for him! May the Lord bless him, strengthen him and unite his sufferings to the salvific Cross of our Savior. Jesus we trust in you!
3. BLA: this weekend after all Masses, lay speakers will share personal insights in support of the Bishop’s Lenten Appeal. We have decided to emphasize specifically, how the BLA supports youth ministry and the diaconate programs. The bulletin has two pages with detailed information about where BLA funds are allocated. By now, you should have received a mailing from the diocese about these important works. Please take some time to prayerfully consider how you might support the BLA, leading into next weekend.
Thank you.
pax,
Father John Mosimann
February 23, 2025
Concerts at St Mary This Friday February 21 at 8pm!
Please join us on Friday at 8pm for Concerts at St Mary as our very own Music Director, Joseph Ciscanick, performs work by Bach, Vierne, Dupre, and more!
Notre Dame football, grottos, the rosary, and Our Lady of Lourdes.
Much to the chagrin of Fr. Koehr, I am not a Notre Dame football fan. But, I will circle back to that.
This week we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Did you know that Our Lady prayed the rosary with Bernadette in each of the 18
apparitions? Indeed six of the apparitions were taken up solely by praying the rosary. So much of the heart of Lourdes is found precisely: Holy Mass, the rosary, and penance.
At the very first apparition, Bernadette reports that she was so shocked that she couldn’t even make the sign or the cross! “My hand was shaking. However, I didn’t let it disturb me. The Lady took the rosary she was holding in her hands and made the sign of the Cross. So I tried a second time. This time I succeeded. As soon as I had made the sign of the Cross the state of shock I had experienced left me.”
Saint Bernadette, even in religious life, struggled with formal meditation but relied on the rosary, as taught to her by Our Lady, to enrich he spiritual life. If the exhortation from Our Lady to pray the rosary was good for 19th century Europe, do we really think that the world is closer to God today?
To encourage this devotion, one thing Catholics have done is build grottos. Many parishes have built them, and so have the faithful in their yards! When I had an eagle scout build a small grotto in my last parish, Our Lady even supplied the statue to go into the grotto as a stranger dropped one off and drove away! I have wondered if they were really angels making a delivery! (You can read about this in the diocesan newspaper!
And it was visiting the grotto at Notre Dame that softened my heart to the school named for Our Lady. I went to ND for a football game mostly out of curiosity. The night before the game, I went down to the grotto on campus and was struck by the non-stop flow of people coming to pray and light a candle! Growing up my understanding of ND had been, when the news would interview their favorite dissenting priests to undermine church teaching. Yet here I saw the simple and reverent faith of regular Catholics!
So, I am still not a ND football fan; but Our Lady of Lourdes, grottos, and the rosary have reminded me that the primacy of being sons and daughters of Our Lady, who loves all of her children: ND fans, MD fans, and yes, even Eagles fans!
