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Sixteenth Sunday of the Year
23 July 2007
Dear Friends in Christ,
The Diocese of Charleston this week receives the blessing of six new priests to serve the Church in South Carolina, and all of us are invited to participate in the various celebrations surrounding this great grace. The six men to be ordained (and their home parishes) are Fathers Bryan Babick (The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Charleston), Michael Cassabon (St. Mary’s, Greenville), Timothy Gahan (Good Shepherd, Columbia), Jeffrey Kirby (St. Joseph’s, Columbia), Andrew Trapp (St. Mary’s, Aiken), and Jeremi Wodecki (Holy Family, Hilton Head).
On Thursday 26 July from 5.30 to 6.30 pm, we will have a Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration to pray for the six ordinands. The Rector of the Pontifical North American College in Vatican City will preside at this liturgy, and two priests will hear Confessions. This Holy Hour on Thursday will replace our normal Wednesday afternoon Holy Hour for this week only, and I invite you to come support these six men with your prayers in the night before their sacred ordination.
On Friday 27 July at 6.00 pm, the Bishop of Charleston will ordain our six new priests during a Mass in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center on Lincoln Street in downtown Columbia. Our Bishop invites all Catholics in South Carolina to join in this diocesan celebration, and there will be plenty of seats inside and parking outside. Please join us if you are able to attend, and we still have a few seats available on the chartered bus which will take pilgrims from St. Mary’s to the Convention Center and back on Friday. Please contact the parish office if you’d like to ride with us.
On Saturday 28 July at 10.30 am, Father Cassabon will celebrate a simple Mass of thanksgiving at St. Peter’s Church on Assembly Street. Anyone who stays in Columbia after the ordination on Friday evening is welcome to attend this Saturday morning Mass.
Then on Sunday 29 July, Father Cassabon will return to his home parish to celebrate a Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving at 11 am. Please join us for this extraordinary moment of grace in the life of a new priest and of this entire parish. Immediately after that Mass, Father Cassabon will greet visitors in Gallivan Hall and administer his first priestly blessing.
We pray constantly that God will call more men to the service of the Church in the priesthood, and in these six vocations, the LORD is answering our prayers. Let us respond to this gift with gratitude and support these men with our presence and with our prayers. If you don’t have prior obligations on Friday evening, I hope to see all of you in Columbia as our Bishop by the laying on of his hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit joins these six men to the apostolic succession in the Order of Priests.
Father Newman