Lent is upon us. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. As a simple and gentle reminder, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence and the Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence. We will again have three Masses each weekday (9:00 AM, 12:10 PM & 7:00 PM) with Confessions preceding each Mass. I ask for your understanding in advance as there will be some days when I will not be able to hear Confessions at noon due to funerals. While I wish and encourage everyone to take advantage of the Sacrament of Penance during Lent, I also ask for your consideration. I am the only assigned priest here and we have many people desiring and needing to come to Confession, so please be merciful and DO NOT come for a merely devotional confession. Likewise, I ask that you please do not delay and come at the last minute. DO COME, but please do not wait until Holy Week. On Fridays, we will pray the Stations of the Cross three times: after the 12:10 PM and 7:00 PM Mass and, at 5:00 PM there will be special stations for families with small children. For those who come to 12:10 PM Mass on Friday, we will also have a free tuna fish sandwich lunch. You can take it back to the office, or stay and enjoy it with the others who come to Mass and Stations.
Lent leads up to and is the preparation for Easter, the celebration of Christ’s victory over sin and death. The culmination of our Lenten Journey is, of course, the Mass of Easter. This year at the Easter Vigil, we will be blessed to welcome 70 new Catholic adults into the Church through the Sacraments of Initiation and the Profession of Faith. Some of the soon-to-be-Catholics come from other Christian backgrounds, while others come from non-Christian religions, and still others from no faith background. What unites each of them is that they have heard the call and invitation of Jesus to become Catholic and live the rest of their lives as members of His Church. During Lent, please pray for these sisters and brothers as they begin their final preparation to enter the Catholic Church. Pray also for their families and continue to pray for many more converts to our beautiful Catholic faith.
You may be familiar with the Initiation process and the celebration, known as the Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). Recently, the bishops revised the rites and issued a new translation in English to conform more faithfully to the original Latin texts. Perhaps the “biggest” change is in the title of the ritual book itself. It is now titled, the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA). This corresponds to other ritual books, the Order of Celebrating Matrimony, the Order of Baptism, the Order of Penance, and the Order of Christian Funerals. So, we will now refer to both the process of formation and the collection of the various rites as the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults or OCIA. A rose by any other name…
As I write this letter our Holy Father, Pope Francis, is in the hospital, and his condition is listed as critical. Please continue to pray for him. On a less somber note, our archdiocese is preparing to welcome our new archbishop on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, March 25. Archbishop-elect Joe Vasquez will be the Ninth bishop and Third Archbishop of Galveston-Houston. Please pray for him as he begins his pastoral ministry as the chief shepherd of our archdiocese. While many may wish to attend the Mass of Welcome and Installation, the Co-Cathedral is simply not large enough to hold everyone, so it will be by invitation only. The Mass will be live-streamed for those who wish to watch.