Ubi Petrus

Our Diocesan magazine, Parable, has a good interview with one of the nuns in the local contemplative Order, the Sister Adorers of the Precious Blood in Manchester.  Sister Christine Marie Maier entered the Cloister in 1988 and became their Vocations Director in 2008.  In this interview she discusses her early life, her path towards the Cloister and aspects of the life she loves.  I can only hope this article is read by young children (and not-so-young children) far and wide.  The world needs contemplative nuns.

Sister Christine Marie speaks with awe of the special vocation she and her community enjoy. “Contemplative prayer is mysterious; it is the highest form of prayer. This type of prayer comes through God, and you can only make yourself available to it.” Though the vocation comes as a gift, she says, the person must respond in very concrete ways. “When we make our vows, we vow to really focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ. We seek to imitate Christ, to imitate the Blessed Mother. Everything we do in our life, we do with an intention that it is going to make us a better and more complete people, because Christ Himself did everything well.

Bishop McCormack has made a series of Pastoral Assignments.  You can find the full listing here.  We must pray fervently that there will soon be a great increase in the number of “adds” to these assignments.  Lord of the Harvest, send laborers to Your fields!

Bishop McCormack has posted his Thanksgiving message for this year; it would behoove any New Hampshire Catholic to read it in full:

Although grateful for all the blessings that come to us through family and friends – and sometimes even a stranger – we know that it is God who ultimately is the giver of all good gifts.  He is the source of all goodness.  To be grateful to Him is the best gift we can receive.  What is better than a grateful heart?

Don’t forget – the kickoff rally for 40 Days for Life is tomorrow, Tues., Sept. 23 at 6:30 in front of the Planned Parenthood on Pennacook Street (off of Elm Street) in Manchester. It is only through prayer and our faithful witness that we can turn the tide of this war of evil and help to bring about a culture of life throughout New Hampshire, throughout this country, and throughout this world. I hope to see you there!

In a word … finally! I’ve been hoping someone at the right level would decide to get this Diocese involved in the 40 Days for Life movement and it appears that it has finally happened. There will be a kickoff rally outside the Manchester Planned Parenthood this coming Tuesday, Sept. 23 at 6:30 PM and then prayerful witness outside the building from 7AM to 7PM from Sept. 24 to Nov. 2.

How can you help? First, come to the kickoff meeting if you can. At least as important as that, however, is to sign up for a slot to spend an hour in prayerful witness in front of the Planned Parenthood abortuary. (If I’m not mistaken, this is another PP building where they lied on their zoning application and the local government eventually decided to let them get away with it. Evil has no shame.) If you can’t manage any time in that schedule, and that happens, then I only ask you to do whatever you can to help out the cause of the most innocent of lives – pray, fast, do pennance, any or all of the above. Parishes in the area will have signup sheets available this weekend so we can sign up for both time slots for witness and to offer any other thing we can offer. There is also a signup form on the 40 Days for Life site here – how this will be coordinated with those forms collected at parishes I don’t yet know but I’m sure that’s been planned out.

More information is available at the 40 Days for Life site, at New Hampshire Right to Life and in this PDF that has been circulated in bulletins recently. Whatever you do, however you can help, please do it. This could be the beginning of the end for Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire and the beginning of a beautiful new era of life in this state.

From the “wow, things move fast sometimes files“:

Following some discomfort experienced while exercising, Bishop McCormack consulted with his physician, who recommended a cardiac evaluation. Bishop McCormack underwent a scheduled cardiac catheterization on Friday, August 29, 2008, performed by Dr. Louis I. Fink of the New England Heart Institute at Catholic Medical Center.

Based on the results of this procedure, and at the recommendation of his physicians, Bishop McCormack elected to have coronary artery bypass surgery. The surgery was performed by Dr. Benjamin M. Westbrook of Cardiothoracic Surgical Associates at Catholic Medical Center at 2:00 p.m. Friday.

Bishop McCormack is now recovering at Catholic Medical Center and is expected to be released from the hospital within the next few days.

I know many have had and continue to have issues with many things in Bishop McCormack’s past, but it is the Catholic thing to do to pray for him now as he recovers from this surgery. At just over 73 I have to imagine, even with all the medical advances in this type of surgery in recent years, this is going to be quite a strain. May this experience help him grow closer to Christ and help him to become an even better shepherd. Mother Mary, pray for him!

I’ve been trying to find more details on this before posting on it, but since I haven’t found much I’ll put out what there is. As first detailed here, there was a very suspicious fire at Sacred Heart church in Laconia back in May, the damage from which while not catastrophic was rather expensive.

One of Laconia’s oldest Catholic churches was the victim of a hate crime.
…
Sacred candles were broken, crosses and crucifixes scattered on the ground, and pages were ripped right out of the Bible.

There was also, according to another report, significant damage to the main altar as well. Police have now made an arrest and are indeed charging the woman with arson. As bad as this sounds it’s entirely possible the woman was quite simply either insane or possessed as she is said to have spoken of ‘devils’ in the Catholic Church. The Boston Globe has this:

In court documents, police say when her pastor, Hayes Judkin of St. James Episcopal Church, visited her after the apartment arson charge, she told him there was nothing he could do as long as there were devils in the Sacred Heart Church.

As things develop I’ll be sure to post what we find. In the mean time, please pray for those affected by the fire and pray that what looks to be a very beautiful church is properly, beautifully and fully restored.

This past weekend our Diocese had the delight of her Bishop ordaining three men to the diaconate as they continue to work towards the priesthood. Chris Martel, Matthew Mason and Jonathan White were all ordained to the service of Christ and His Church this past Saturday, May 31, the Feast of the Visitation, by Bishop John McCormack. All three will be continuing their seminary formation next year after their summer assignments, Deacon Martel at Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein IL; Deacon Mason at St. John’s Seminary, Brighton MA; Deacon Jonathan White at Bl. John XXIII Seminary, Weston MA. (Deacon Mason, incidentally, assisted at my parish during the Christmas break. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he be assigned here for his first assignment? One can always hope.)

We all look forward in hope to their ordination to the priesthood next year. This would mark the largest priestly ordination class in some time, and at a time the Church sorely needs Her priests. Please pray for them, and indeed all seminarians – theirs is a calling made to many but these days heard only by a few. Ad multos annos!

Since it seems almost everyone else in the Catholic blogosphere is posting all the same bits about the Pope and I’m just so otherwise buried in varia this week I wanted to ask a simple question. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the newsletter the Diocese puts out for all our Deacons (and their wives). In the newsletter there was a question regarding the proper order for praying the Liturgy of the Hours.

Currently in these parts most everyone has learned that for the psalmody the antiphon is read by the leader, then repeated, then the psalm is read, then finally the antiphon is said again. However, the monks at St. Anselm Abbey do not repeat the antiphon after it is initially read (prior to the psalm being read) so there is question of how it should be done when training the next generation of deacons. So if there’s anyone out there that can actually take five minutes from trying to keep up with the deluge of papalblogging, I’d much appreciate the input.

Sometimes breaking a record just isn’t worth it…

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The calendar may say that it’s spring, but that didn’t stop Mother Nature from dumping more snow on the Granite State.

New Hampshire broke the record for most snowfall in one season in the last 100 years around 8 a.m. News 9 Meteorologist Josh Judge said even more snow is on the way.

Being a person who neither skis nor particularly enjoys being cold, I find no great joy in this record. My neighbor, on the other hand, is glad that he’s finally not barely breaking even on his season lift passes as compared to recent years. Time to go remove the foot or so of snow at the end of my driveway… *sigh*