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First of all, let me thank everybody who worked to make our Fall Festival happen last Sunday, from every person who called bingo or baked a cake with six kinds of candy, through our vendors, the bridge-building Scouts, and the Rosensteel Knights who did get the tap working, all the way up through the aptly-named Genius Committee to the “Queen” who worked really, really hard, Elizabeth Narsavage. The weather was passing perfect, so if you were on the prayer brigade for that, thank you too.
It was great fun for everybody there, and I discerned that several guests had never been with us before. You all made a great first impression! We had one accident, too, the one thing we pray and work to avoid; so there’s new work for the prayer brigade. There is always work for the prayer brigade.
This past Sunday, John Henderson, our music director, explained to me that for October, the 11:00 Mass would begin with a choral prelude instead of an organ prelude,. Not just any choral work, either: every week we will hear a different setting of the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen). We started with Guerrero, a personal favorite composer, because John spoils me sometimes. October is a month especially associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary, not least because of the feast of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary on October 7, also known as Our Lady of Victory.
We sing the Salve Regina at Mass every Sunday in the simple chant version. It is one of the four seasonal Marian antiphons that are Catholic Classics, or even Basics. We sing the Salve from Trinity Sunday through Christ the King. Then, on First Advent, we switch to the Alma Redemptoris Mater (Dear Mother of the Redeemer), which we sing through Christmas until the Presentation of the Lord. Thence we take up the Ave Regina Caelorum (Hail Queen of Heaven) which gets us through Lent, then Easter brings the Regina Caeli (Rejoice Heavenly Queen), until the Salve kicks in again after Pentecost. Possibly because the Salve has the longest season, and possibly because that familiar prayer is more deeply woven into popular devotion, it has been set to marvelous compositions many times over the centuries by the greatest composers. So, come a little early to Mass and enjoy. Other parishes don’t get this!
Today I spent two hours at the bank helping our scout troop open its new checking account. It was more arduous than any of us expected, largely for the same reason that we even needed the new account: fraud. Our scouts were hit hard by some fraudulent check writers last year, and they have been working without a functional checking account since then. Their assets were restored, after some anxious months, but they needed the new account separate from the parish accounts, with which we assist as their chartering organization. The bank’s processes have become more careful and complex, and therefore more time consuming.
We are being more careful, as well, and have switched our parish checking to a new system called “Positive Pay” that means that we notify the bank of every check before we issue it, and the bank will honor only those checks. Yes, it is arduous, inconvenient, and time consuming, and it limits what we can do with our checks. But we have already nabbed TWO fraudulent checks people tried to write on our accounts in just the last few months, so we are sticking with it.
And speaking of fraudsters, neither I nor any staffer at the rectory or school will email you and ask you to buy and send gift cards. Even if the message insists “I am in a prayer meeting” (!!! Really? Who emails about gift cards from a prayer meeting??) do not respond at all, but rather, if you are uncertain, contact us through our published email or telephone numbers. It creeps me out more than a little that anybody would be sitting at a computer somewhere in the world pretending to be me for any reason, but especially in hopes of extricating a few hundred dollars from some unsuspecting, faithful person. Now that I have learned about the remote hives of abducted, entrapped, and enslaved people who are forced to perpetrate fraud under threat of grave harm, I realize that not all of these perpetrators merit our wrath and contempt, but rather our prayers.
There is something particularly blasphemous when these practitioners of “phishing” try to present themselves as if they were fishers of men. That is not at all what our Lord intended by that term! And, as St Paul said to the elders of the church at Ephesus before his departure for Jerusalem, I (K)now that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert. (Acts 20: 29 – 31a)
Threats (fierce wolves) from without, and dangers (men speaking perverse things) within. Be alert, indeed.
Monsignor Smith
