Mother’s Day and Blessed Mother Mary

My Dear Parishioners,

This weekend we have a lot to celebrate. As every weekend, we will celebrate God’s goodness and love for us and the many gifts that He bestows on us. We will be celebrating our mothers with a special blessing at all Masses. We will be celebrating our Blessed Mother Mary with a May Crowning and Consecration to Mary at our 11:30AM Mass. We may also be celebrating a new pope (at writing this earlier in the week, the Conclave hadn’t started yet).

This weekend we celebrate our mothers. Our mothers went through a lot to carry us to term. Our mothers sacrificed a lot to raise us. Our mothers shed many tears for us. Our mothers wore out many Rosaries praying for us. Our mothers went out of their way to make us happy. Our mothers taught us right from wrong, good from evil. They corrected us when we needed correcting and showed us patience when we needed someone to show us patience. They helped us with our homework and our school projects. They cooked our meals and washed our clothes. They got us to our practices and to our games. They cleaned our cuts and bruises and healed them with a kiss. Most importantly, our mothers got us to church so that we could know Jesus and receive Him in the Sacraments. Our mothers went without a lot so that we could have everything we will ever need to be successful in this life and the life to come. None of our mothers are perfect yet they did try, and for that, we owe them our love, gratitude, prayers, and thankfulness.

This weekend, however, we will remember a perfect mother, and as we celebrate our mother by Order of Grace, Our Blessed Mother Mary. At the Annunciation, our Blessed Mother Mary accepted the offer to become the Mother of God. At the Visitation, she revealed that all generations would call her blessed (and thus we do). At the Crucifixion, Jesus gave us the only thing He had left when we gave us His own mother “behold, your mother.”

During May, we acknowledge Mary as our mother by Order of Grace. We acknowledge her as blessed. We acknowledge her as Queen of Heaven and Earth, as she appears in the Book of Revelation. We also acknowledge her as a special gift from God who always leads us to her Son, Jesus as she instructs us “do whatever He tells you.”

I did move our May Crowning from a Monday evening to a Sunday Mass. I did so, so that the largest number of parishioners can participate in the May Crowning as possible.

At our 11:30 Mass, we will Crown Mary after our Prayer of the Faithful. We will have a beautiful hymn to the Blessed Mother as the Crown is processed forward and she is crowned. Then, together, we will kneel and consecrate ourselves to the Blessed Mother.

If you cannot be with us at the 11:30 Mass, please still join us in the consecration to Mary this weekend:

Mary Immaculate, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, health of the sick, refuge of sinners, Jesus has given you to us as our Mother by Order of Grace, and He has entrusted the entire order of mercy to you. 0 Virgin Mary, most powerful Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven and earth, in accordance with your wish made known at Fatima, we the parishioners of St. Joseph’s Parish consecrate ourselves today to your Immaculate Heart.

To you we entrust all that we have, all that we are.

We entrust to you ourselves, our families, our parish, our homes, our nation.

We give to you our hands, our feet, our eyes, our ears, our minds, our souls.

Reign over us, dearest Mother, that we may be yours in prosperity, in adversity, in joy and in sorrow, in health and in sickness, in life and in death.

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, in the presence of all the heavenly court, we choose thee this day as our Queen and Mother.

We deliver and consecrate to thee, and to thy Immaculate Heart, as your children and slaves of love, our bodies and souls, our goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all of our good actions, past, present and future; leaving to your good judgment of using all that we have and all that we are according to thy good pleasure, for the greater glory of God, in time and in eternity.

Amen.

Our Father…..

Hail Mary…..

Glory Be……

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you, save souls!

Fr. Michael J Pawelko, Pastor