From the Director of Sacred Music & Liturgy - October

Greetings brothers and sisters in Christ! I hope that you enjoyed celebrating the feast of our beloved patroness St. Thérèse and that our parish novena prayer to her is bearing fruit in your lives.

In my monthly bulletin column (of which this is the first installment), I hope to offer you a glimpse into the month ahead, pointing out any noteworthy feasts, devotions, or prayers that may help you and your family to enter more deeply into the seasons of the liturgical year and bring the prayer life of the Church more fully into your own ‘domestic churches.´

The Church dedicates the month of October to the Most Holy Rosary. Of particular note is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on Monday, October 7. Originally called Our Lady of Victory, this feast commemorates the victory of the Christian fleet against the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, a victory that Pope Pius V attributed to the many rosaries fervently prayed for this intention by the faithful throughout Europe.

If your family doesn’t already pray the rosary regularly, this may be a good month to start! You don’t necessarily have to launch right into an entire family rosary every day; praying a single decade between dinner and desert creates a useful reset button or ‘prayer break´ and helps establish the habit of prayer in the home. As Pope St. John Paul II said, “With the Rosary, the Christian people sit at the school of Mary and are led to contemplate the beauty of the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.”

On October 31st, America will gain another Blessed when Fr. Michael McGivney (1852-1890), who founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882, is beatified at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, CT. McGivney will be the first American priest to be beatified. He died of pneumonia complications at the age of 38, but some scientists think that the ‘influenza´ outbreak which led to his death may have in fact been yet another coronavirus. As you might imagine, this makes him an especially important intercessor for our time.

Our Lady of the Rosary, Fr. Michael McGivney, and St. Thérèse the Little Flower: pray for us!