Dear members and friends of the Sodality of Charity,
Have a blessed Holy Thursday. Today is the feast of the establishment of the Sacraments of Holy Eucharist and Holy Orders. I am spending my Holy Week at our St. Hugh of Lincoln church in Milwaukee, WI. Despite being a small parish, we’ll do the traditional Sacred Triduum service here with our dedicated servers and volunteers, including the washing of the feet.
Because of busy March, we couldn’t have our monthly meeting in that month. We did have our traditional St. Patrick celebration, though, where some of our members partook, and wore green as the “rule of the day goes. Our Helfta hall was also decorated with green, and also with the traditional flag of the kingdom of Ireland, where a blue field features a gold harp with silver strings.
On March 24 St. Gertrude had an exceptional funeral of an infant. One of our parishioners gave birth to twin boys, but they were born very prematurely and one of the babies died. He had been baptized before he died, so he got a sad but at the same time joyous funeral with white vestments. The baby’s uncle, who is a priest, came to the funeral and did the burial part. You can listen Fr. McKenna’s funeral sermon here.
I’ve made some experiments with social media, where I could easily share our sermons, Sodality and fundraising news. Since the events of January, after which the mainstream media platforms Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become more and more partial against anyone who is for the traditional values, I wanted to support or use them no more. For Sodality I of course have this website, and recently I also made experimental media sites in VK.com, a multi-language social media site, which is mostly popular in Russia and Europe, and in MeWe, a fast-growing alternative to Facebook. In both of these platforms you have to be a registered user, so I will continue sending these membership letters too, to keep you updated about news and events.
In a short period of time there will be other social media alternatives, which I might try as well. In three of four months, Donald Trump will present his own social media site, which will give people a platform to weigh in and communicate in a free format without the fear of their comments being pulled down. In the coming weeks Mike Lindell (the MyPillow Guy) will also launch his new social media site Frank Speech, which will be a mixture between YouTube and Twitter. We can see after their launching if we could plan our meetings and activity through them.
Our next monthly meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 24. Keep also in your calendar the Girls camp dates from June 15 to 17.
I wish you all have the blessed Sacred Triduum. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the most sacred day of the year, and though it is not celebrated liturgically, it is also the feast of one of our Sodality’s patrons, St. Francis of Paola. He in fact died on Good Friday, which fell on April 2 in 1507, the year of his death. On Holy Thursday St. Francis had gathered his community around him and told them especially to have mutual charity among themselves and to maintain the zealousness of their religious life. On Good Friday he received the last rites and asked to have the Passion according to St. John read out to him, and while this was being read, he died at the age of 91, with the crucifix in his hand, and the last words of Jesus on his lips: “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”
Holy season of Easter starts at noon on Holy Saturday. God bless you for your sacrifices and prayers, and have a blessed and joyful feast of Easter. There’s a nice little fairy tale written by Oscar Wilde called The Selfish Giant, which is a good reminder for children and adults why we love our Redeemer so much. You can read it here.
Yours in Christ and Mary,
Fr. Lehtoranta
