Dear members and friends of the Sodality of Charity,
Have a happy and blessed feast of St. Joseph. The parents of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Louis and Zélie Martin were very much devoted to St. Joseph. One of Louis’s baptismal names was Joseph, and they named both of the two baby sons they lost “Joseph.” Zélie Martin had a statue of St. Joseph and loved to pray before it. As St. Joseph is the patron of a happy death, Zélie often prayed to him for those she knew who were dying, especially asking him to allow those who had fallen away from the faith to return to the Church before they died. St. Thérèse used this prayer in honor of St. Joseph: “Dear St. Joseph, do not seek any longer a home for the Divine Child. The time of the straw and the cold is over now. The stable must not be there any more. Jesus will be born in my heart in the midst of lilies and roses.”
Our next Sodality meeting is planned for Saturday, April 24. The preparation for the Holy Week, Catechism day, and two upcoming weddings would make it too difficult to have it earlier. The exact program for the day will be posted later. But those who have the possibility to do so can join some of our volunteers tomorrow, March 20, to cover the statues and images in the church after the morning Masses, so that we are ready for the Passiontide of the liturgical year.
In the Passiontide the statues and images are covered, to commemorate how Our Lord had to hid Himself, so that His enemies would not kill Him until it the time of His Passion would start. If you have purple cloths at home, you can also veil your own statues and images, but one is not obliged to do so. The veiled statues also always bring to my mind a classic fairy tale by a German writer and collector Ludwig Bechstein (1801-1860) named The Enchanted Princess. There’s a nice recording of the fairy tale in YouTube, which lasts about 12 minutes, and you can listen it here.
Also about Holy Week: the best available Latin-English Missal for this sacred season is Abbot Fernand Cabrol’s Holy Week: The Complete Offices of Holy Week in Latin and English. It contains the best explanation and texts available in English of all the ceremonies of Holy Week, including Tenebrae. You can purchase the book here (it is also available hardcover in our bookstore).
Also mark on your calendars that this year’s Girls Camp is from Tuesday, June 15 to Thursday, June 17. Further details will follow for that one too.
Yours in Christ and Mary,
Fr. Lehtoranta
