There will be no 9 AM or 11:15 AM Mass at St. Charles Borromeo this Sunday given the outdoor Corpus Christi Mass (see below post ). We will still have a 7 PM Mass on Sunday evening.

This Sunday, we will have an outdoor Mass and Eucharistic Adoration for Corpus Christi. We will joining with communities around the world holding Corpus Christi public processions, a tradition that dates back seven hundred years.

Our guest homilist is Fr. Dave Dwyer. Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, is a Paulist priest and Executive Director of Busted Halo Ministries. He is the publisher of BustedHalo.com and the host of “The Busted Halo Show with Father Dave,” a call-in radio talk show airing five nights a week on SiriusXM radio on which he answers questions of faith for more than 30 million subscribers. Fr. Dwyer is superb— but don’t just take our word for it, listen to an example of his preaching here.

The Mass will start at 11:30 AM in Carroll Park in Carroll Gardens. There will be no morning Masses at St. Charles Borromeo this Sunday. We will still have a 7 PM Mass.

Continue reading “Corpus Christi Outdoor Mass” →

As we prepare for Pentecost, we invite you to join in praying a Novena to the Holy Spirit. The novena begins with the same opening prayer each day, which is followed by prayer that focuses on one of the fruits or gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We started the novena on Friday, May 19 and will end it on Saturday, May 27, the day before Pentecost Sunday. We will pray it together at the start of our 5 PM parish Zoom events (rosaries on Monday and Wednesday, and Friday Vespers).

Don’t worry if you can’t join in every night. The materials are available on our parish website and in a print-friendly form in the back of the church if you want to pray one or more days on your own.

This Thursday, May 18, is the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, a holy day of obligation. We will have Mass at 12:10 PM.

Walk to Emmaus, Frank Wesley
from Art in the Christian Tradition. Source: Estate of Frank Wesley

But they urged [Jesus], “Stay with us,
for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”
So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
(Luke 24:30–32)

Fr. Smith’s Commentary on Church Fathers’ Teachings
Third Sunday of Easter
St. Clement of Rome: Letter to the Corinthians
April 23, 2023

In 2019. the Pew Research Center published a survey which indicated that only 31 percent of American Catholics believed that the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus at Mass.

Like all surveys, this is open to many interpretations but nonetheless reveals that Catholics do not know what the church teaches about the Eucharist. The American Bishops responded by promoting a nationwide Eucharistic revival. We will be participating in this on June 11^th with a deanery celebration of Mass (see the announcement in this week’s parish email).

Anything which encourages a greater love of the Eucharist is to be embraced and I hope that St. Charles’ participation will be robust. There has been much material produced for the revival, some of it very good. The church’s teaching on the Eucharist is too broad and deep to be easily transmitted and I will spend the weeks before June 11^th reviewing aspects of our Eucharistic beliefs and practices which have not been generally emphasized. Most of these insights will be from the Church Fathers. These are the great theologians from the 1^st to the 6^th centuries from both the East and Western churches. Their great value is that they will teach not only what we believe but how that belief should change our lives and that of our communities.

We will begin this week with St. Clement of Rome’s “Letter to the Corinthians.” We have encountered the Corinthians before in the letters of St. Paul. Like most of the cities Paul evangelized, Corinth was a trading center which attracted many kinds of people. The church may have begun with a strong Jewish base but had added many gentiles. They were enthusiastic but as they did not have sufficient formation in Judaism, they revealed ill-founded assumptions. We saw this in their ideas about morality, the afterlife, and worship. There was also the underlying class assumption that the upper classes were to lead in every area even religion. This was held even by many of the “lower” classes.

Paul was able to mend many divisions in the Corinthian church but the belief that human social position should determine who had positions of authority in the church remained. We see this in Clement’s letter written about 97 AD. Clement is often considered to be the 4^th Bishop of Rome and thus Pope. This is at best imprecise. The Roman church was governed by a group. These may or may not have been all ordained. Clement functioned either as the chairman of the board or its corresponding secretary. In any event, he could speak for the entire church.

We do not know if the Corinthian church wrote to the Roman church for advice or if the Roman church wrote directly to them because of rumors they had heard about its situation.

Continue reading “3rd Sunday of Easter – The Eucharist Builds the Church” →

Sunday, April 2 – Palm Sunday: 9 AM, 11:15 AM, and 7 PM Masses
Monday, April 3 – Reconciliation Monday: 8 AM Mass. Priests available for confession after the 8 AM Mass and from 4 to 8 PM
Tuesday, April 4 – 12:10 PM Mass
Wednesday, April 5 – 12:10 PM Mass
Thursday, April 6 – Holy Thursday: 7 PM Mass
Friday, April 7 – Good Friday: 3 PM Service; Stations of the Cross at 7 PM
Saturday, April 8 – Easter Vigil: 8 PM Mass
Sunday, April 9 – Easter Sunday: 9 AM, 11:15 AM Masses (no evening Mass)