With summer days upon us, the tendency to cool and casual attire is understandable. The Good Lord seeks not our perspiration but our reverent love and worship, and with that principle in mind, may I make a few suggestions.

Attire at Sunday Mass should always reflect our dignity as a Christian people exercising our Baptismal priesthood in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

A good rule of thumb is that our mode of dress should be that appropriate to a dignified summer social occasion.

What is perhaps suitable poolside or patio attire may not be appropriate for reverent worship.

People attending Mass on their way to or from work often have to wear their uniform or well-worn work clothes. This is perfectly fine. Our Lord was a working man himself.

Otherwise, it is a courtesy to the Lord and our fellow worshipers that adult attire, particularly, reflect good taste and modesty. In making this plea, I register not only my own concerns but also those of parishioners who have spoken to me.

To make one specific point: “short-shorts,” worn by either sex, are not appropriate attire at Mass.

This having been said, I wish you all a time of well deserved respite during these “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer”

I’m happy to report that our old friend Father Sebastian Poovathumkal will be returning to us this summer, but only for a short while: not quite three weeks, August 10-29. But, still, it will be good to have him here. He’s as glad to see us as we are to see him; he has many friends here and he can surely use a break from his many burdensome responsibilities in his home diocese of Vijayapuram.

Another Indian priest who helped out here at Fatima in the 80’s was made a bishop some years ago. Now Bishop George Alencherry has been chosen by the Holy See to be the head of the Syro Malabar Church, with the title of Major Archbishop. What, you may ask, is the Syro Malabar Church? It is a Roman Catholic church, one of over twenty church families within Catholicism that have their own ritual and liturgical language. They’re not Latin rite Catholics, but are every bit as Catholic as we are. Sometimes we rather carelessly lump these different communities under the heading of “Eastern rite” churches, as if they’re all the same, but that’s not quite accurate. There are three different Catholic church communities in India: Latin rite (to which Father Sebastian belongs), Syro Malabar (Archbishop Alencherry), and Syro Malankara. Confused? OK, here’s the new Archbishop’s full title: Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly Mar (i.e., Lord) George Alencherry, Patriarch and Gate of All India. Now that’s what I call a title. Also, the new archbishop’s brother Thomas was telling me, he may eventually be made a cardinal. See what happens when you help out during the summer at Fatima? I’d better warn Sebastian!

Some ailing parishioners have returned home. Dr. Frank Greco is convalescing after a couple of months of hospitalization and rehab. Mrs. Maureen McTigue has come home from California after a lengthy struggle with a major respiratory infection that beset her while she and her husband were on vacation. Welcome back, both of you; I hope being back home where you belong will complete your recovery!

After a couple of delays over the last months, Irene Kollar was to undergo surgery last Monday, as you saw in a recent bulletin. Once again, however, the procedure has been put on hold, because —rather wisely—one of her doctors wants to conduct some more tests before signing off on the operation. Keep Irene in your prayers.

Also keep in mind parishioner Kevin Moloney, one of our lectors, who’s been in ill health over the last seven or eight months; he is currently in a convalescent center in Dutchess County, with intermittent stays in a nearby hospital. Our weekend sacristan, Geraldine Tancredi, has undergone surgery and faces more procedures. Keep both of these good people in your prayers.

As I admitted to you last week, I was in a state of disbelief that my fiftieth anniversary had arrived. Fifty years? How did that happen? Well, it has happened and you helped me celebrate my golden jubilee with great joy.

The warmth and kindness I have experienced these last days have been extraordinary and I am deeply grateful to all of you in this wonderful parish. Again, like last week, I’m finding it difficult to come up with the language adequate to express what I feel. So bear with me and just know that I am experiencing an enormous gratitude that has me fumbling for words, but that is deeply, deeply felt.

*****

Thanks for your kind reception of my Irish cousins who came over for the occasion. They asked to put this note in the bulletin: “The McManus clan from Ireland would like to say a very special thank-you for your warm welcome to Our Lady of Fatima parish on the wonderful occasion of the golden jubilee of our cousin Msgr. Hugh. May the Lord bless you and reward you for your efforts. Brian, Mary, Din, Evelyn.”

*****

Recently I received a letter from Archbishop Dolan appointing me as administrator of Our Lady of Fatima parish for another year. I’m grateful to him for his confidence in me and to you for your patience! Occasionally I get asked what an administrator is. “Aren’t you still the pastor?” is often how the question is phrased. Well, yes, I am, in fact, still the pastor and that’s how the Archdiocese tells us old-timers (there are 30 or so of us) to refer to ourselves. The different terminology is due to church law: a pastor is appointed for a term of six years (renewable), while a priest who is 75 or older is appointed as an administrator to a term of one year (renewable). To vary the words of the old hymn, “One year at a time, sweet Jesus, one year at a time….”

What a moment! For five years, I and my classmates had done the cheering and now it was our turn. I’ll never forget that roar from the seminarians as we, now newly ordained priests, walked into the seminary dining room and heard that roar of acclamation for us. Fifty years later, I can still hear that shout and the glorious song that followed.

It’s been some fifty year journey. Certainly none of us in May of 1961 could have imagined what would happen in the years to come. Does anyone? Be it ordination day or wedding day or graduation day, the future is unknown to us. All we newly ordained knew was that Pope John XXIII had called a church council to be known as Vatican II. We had vaguely high hopes for it. We knew that it would no longer be “business as usual,” but beyond that we hadn’t a clue. We were on the cusp of an adventure, a roller coaster ride through five decades of unimaginable drama, and we had no idea.

Coming to the 50^th anniversary of my priestly ordination has to fill me with gratitude, surprise and, yes, disbelief. (“Is it possible? Fifty years?”)

So much to say, yet so little ability to say it! As I write this, the words won’t come to me. (I hope I do better at Sunday Mass!) For now, this will have to do: I thank God for these years and thank you for celebrating with me.

At the same time another major initiative known as “Pathway To Excellence” is assessing the effectiveness of how the Catholic parochial schools are organized. This assessment seeks to achieve a more cost-efficient educational system, support for which has exacted a serious toll on parish and archdiocesan finances that can no longer be sustained.

OK, you’ve heard all this before. But there are other renewal efforts going on as well. One is called “Revitalizing the Parish through a Sense of Belonging”—a mouthful of a title, I admit, but pointing to a real and positive development of people’s ministries (and we all have one). The idea of the initiative is to get people more involved in the mission of the church by sharing their talents and skills. We’ll be taking a look at “Revitalizing” to see if it might be part of our parish’s life.

Another interesting initiative—sponsored, like “Revitalizing,” by the catechetical office of our Archdiocese—is “Discovering Christ,” a program coming out of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which seeks, in its own words, to “provide a relational context through which parish adults will encounter Christ in a deep spiritual way…..and introduces people to a personal relationship with Christ.” It remains to be seen what impact “Discovering Christ” will have on this archdiocese. I’ll keep you posted.

And then there is the major initiative about which we will be hearing a lot in the months to come: the introduction of the third edition of The Roman Missal into the worship life of the Church as of next November 27^th, the First Sunday of Advent. This affects the entire English-speaking Church, not just the United States. The new edition of the Roman Missal is more than a language event, as if it were just a matter of just polishing up the wording of the prayers at Mass. Rather, it is an effort to enhance the way we address God, speak of God, and refer to ourselves as worshipers. It really is a major liturgical reform and will require a substantial amount of work on the part of both priests and people. You will be hearing a lot about it in the fall.

Making All Things New? You want to believe!

The sense of Christ’s absence can be devastating. Especially in times of profound loss or severe illness, one can feel so alone and without hope. Where is He?

The risen Christ is very much present to us. This is the profound lesson that Luke’s story teaches us. We have to have the eyes of faith to see him, ears to hear him. But He is present to us still.

One of the loveliest teachings of the Second Vatican Council reminds us that the risen Christ is still among us in the Scriptures, in the Eucharistic food, and in the community of fellow disciples. He is present to us indirectly, sacramentally through outward signs, but He is present.

When the two disciples on the way to Emmaus recognized that the stranger in their midst was Jesus, they did so because He had explained the Scriptures to them and He had broken bread with them. (“The breaking of the bread” was what the first Christians called the Eucharist.) When they realize that it’s been Jesus who has been with them on their sad journey, they head right back to the community gathered around Simon Peter.

Ever since, we have recognized Christ in the same way. In times of sorrow, loss, and confusion remember to read the Scriptures, seek the Eucharist (or have it brought to you), and reach out to the community: call the rectory or someone you know in the parish. Call anybody. But don’t allow yourself to be alone in melancholy. Jesus is still among us if we let Him

Jesus is Lord. His Resurrection is the ultimate vindication. It means that the Father approved his ministry:
everything Jesus said, everything Jesus did. It was the stamp of approval. To bring someone back from
the grave and not just to his former earthly life but to a life of unimaginable splendor—that was God
the Father’s expression of absolute approval. Jesus is seen as the one rejected by earthly powers but
crowned with glory by the Father. The first disciples used the words of the 118th psalm: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the work of the Lord, a marvel in our eyes.”

The word “Lord” had been used exclusively in the Jewish scriptures as a name for God—or as we
Christians would say, God the Father. So when the early disciples went around proclaiming, “Jesus
is Lord,” they were saying an awful lot. To say the least, their proclamation must have raised a lot of
eyebrows. It would take several centuries for the Christian Church to hammer out the vocabulary we now use so readily: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God; Jesus is truly God; Jesus is truly God while still being truly human. But all that is implied in the proclamation of Jesus’ Lordship.

To say that Jesus is Lord is not only to say who He is, but as well what he does. It is not just a showy title
of honor—the ultimate achievement prize—but a recognition of his Lordship for us.

Jesus is Lord of my life. He is not the overlord, a divinely appointed dictator. He is my liberator.
Throughout his ministry Jesus cautioned us against giving our loyalty and obedience to false gods, such
as “Mammon,” the pursuit of money and power. All of these false gods will enslave us. Jesus wants to
save us from that slavery. That he rose from the dead proves that he can do it.

My charter of freedom is this: Jesus is Lord. None of the false gods is. I don’t have to worry about them
anymore.

Not if you live in the southern hemisphere, mate. Our Christian cousins down under are at this moment
getting their autumn clothing out of the closet and putting away the tropical lightweights they wore during the Christmas season, which occurs during the early summer.

Without thinking much about it, we Northerners presume the climate will provide us with the appropriate
environment for our great feasts—winter for Christmas, cold and garnished with snow and fir trees;
Easter, warm, with a springtime décor of tulips and forsythia. An Australian sees things differently, as you
have to do when the weather is, by our standards, all wrong—hot at Christmas, possibly chilly at Easter.
So, if you live in Australia, you have to ask yourself how you celebrate these feasts—without the weather
to set the appropriate mood. Kind of stark, isn’t it? Makes a person think.

Think about Holy Week. It confronts us starkly with the heart-pounding reality that the Son of God was
betrayed by a friend, yet had the courage and good grace to host his friends at a Passover meal and then endured show trials, horrendous torment, and an excruciating death.

Keep that in mind and we begin to see how radical the proclamation is: Jesus lives! He went through all
that suffering, all that horror, all that pain, but He lives! His enemies truly managed to kill him. Despite
all that, Jesus lives. He just didn’t merely survive his passion and death. He lives triumphantly in an
overpowering glory that was so dazzling that his closet friends didn’t recognize him. Thomas the apostle
thought the whole idea of Jesus being alive complete rubbish. Good old doubting Thomas! His doubt
makes us less ashamed of our own lack of faith. After all, to say that Jesus rose from the dead is a rather
stupendous claim. But it happened.

As I write this, I really have no idea what the weather will be like on Easter Sunday. I hope it’s a glorious
spring day, yes, with trees in full bloom, birds in great voice, skies luminously blue—an Easer Parade kind
of day. But even if it’s gray and showery, it will be a beautiful day nonetheless—because we celebrate
Christ’s victory over sin and death. He lives!

Also, the CYO basketball program attracted kids from both schools and, as I mentioned the last time,the end-of-the-season Awards Night Dinner Ceremony on March 19th was like an Academy Awards presentation.

It was these two events—the meeting and the awards dinner–that made me realize that youth ministry was a real possibility here. Indispensable to the success of such a project is adult leadership and, thank God, we have it. On May 19th, some of our parents and older teen leaders will take part in a youthministry workshop sponsored by the archdiocese. It will be interesting to see what ideas the archdiocesan leadership, which is holding a series of these meetings in every vicariate, has in mind.

In the meantime, I can report that our first social event last Sunday was a successful evening that attracted twenty young people. It consisted, at least for the time I was with them, of board games and music. (Speaking of board games, I can report that good old Monopoly is still alive and well.)

Remember that ministry to young people is one of the biggest concerns mentioned in the “Making All Things New” survey that you were asked to respond to last February. So I’ll make a point of keeping you posted.