Thanksgiving Day is always a double-feast for our parish of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes. In addition to our national holiday of Thanksgiving it is the Dedication Feast for our parish church, which was consecrated on Thanksgiving Day, 1910, 113 years ago. The front cover photo shows the church as it was in 1970, the Centenary Year of the Parish’s founding. This is how I remember the church as a boy, with the two immense fir trees on the front lawn. Our 9:00 A.M. Mass on Thanksgiving Day will be the Mass of the Dedication of a Church. The Collect prayer of this Mass expresses the thought of the sacred place where prayers to God are made and answered: O God, every year Thou dost renew the day of the consecration of this holy temple, and continue to bring us in safety to Thy sacred mysteries; graciously hear the prayers of Thy people, and grant that all who enter this temple to implore Thy blessings, may rejoice in obtaining whatever they ask. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Recently a book has appeared about the contemporary social reality of American religion entitled: The Great De-Churching: Who’s Leaving? Why Are They Going? And What Will It Take To Bring Them Back? , by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, with Ryan Burge. It argues that, across-theboard, Americans are presently falling away from the practice of church (and synagogue) going religion in such numbers that it represents a reverse of the previous religious revival “Great Awakenings” of American history, hence the coining of the term: “The Great De-Churching”.  It is a hard truth for any church congregation to face (of any religious denomination) and the existential challenges it presents to the maintenance of already well-established churches are obvious. In the midst of all of our particular challenges to keep the doors of this church of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes open, we also have to contend against these strong cultural headwinds which are outside of our control. When it comes to parish stewardship and church support, I can only appeal to your own sense of faith and to your own sense of giving back to God that “Lord’s portion” out of the total substance the Lord has provided for you. PARISH ANNUAL REPORT FY2023 Photocopies of the Parish Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2023 (end-of-June) are available in the pamphlet rack of the church vestibule. I encourage you to take them in order to have a concrete idea of the parish/cemetery’s financial state. There are some difficult numbers we are dealing with, particularly with regard to the sustaining of our parish church. Although we have been successful in keeping costs down (for those expenses under our control), these economies have been off-set by the declines in donor dollars. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you are making for the support of our parish of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes.

One hundred years ago today— November 5th, 1923, the Pastor of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Church, Father Timothy J. Danahy, died unexpectedly. He had been Pastor for 33 years. He is the priest responsible for the building of the new Saint Mary’s parish church at this location and for the renaming of the parish under the title: Mary Immaculate of Lourdes . In the 1890s Fr. Danahy made a pilgrimage to the Lourdes shrine and bathed his damaged eyes in the Lourdes spring. He received a miraculous healing of his eyes and in thanksgiving made a vow to one day build a church in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes. This church is the fulfillment of his vow. It was an ambitious undertaking and it seemed he had set himself and the parishioners of Saint Mary’s parish on an impossible task to raise money for such a grand architectural project at the top of the Elliot Street hill. (The original parish church was located on Chestnut Street, near the Charles River.) Somehow, he and they did it. The vintage photo on the front cover shows our parish church when it was first built. Fr. Danahy is the priest standing in front of the church, accompanied by his two dogs to whom he was extremely attached. Let us poignantly recall the memory of Father Danahy on this 100th anniversary of his birthday to Eternal Life, the fifth day of AllSaintstide. Let us continue to offer praise and thanks to God in this church—a church which is the votive offering of a priest miraculé of Lourdes, a testament to the goodness and compassion of God and the power of the merciful, motherly prayers of Mary on our behalf.

Our last Sunday in October, just preceding the Feast of All Saints on November 1st, is the Feast of Christ the King according to the Old Roman Calendar (in the New Calendar, Christ the King is the final Sunday of the Year, just before the cycle begins anew with Adventide). The front-cover picture is of a mosaic of Christ “Pantokrator”, which is a Greek title of God: “The All Mighty”. It is an image which depicts Christ ruling the universe from Heaven. Recently I received news from Father Salako, who as Father Provincial is visiting his missions in Niger, a country which is 98% Muslim and which has been disrupted by a military coup d’etat since the summer. These pictures show Father Salako with his missionary priests, a mission church with the faithful, and young seminarians. These pictures show as the mustard seed of faith being planted for the Kingdom of God in Africa.

Today we commemorate Pope Saint John Paul II, who reigned as Pope from 1978-2005. His Feast-day is observed today because it is the anniversary of his Installation to the Chair of Saint Peter: October 22nd, 1978. He was truly a “great man” of history: in his biography, in his contribution to the intellectual thought of Western Civilization, in his role as the World Pastor of a truly global Church. There were times during the course of his long reign when he seemed to be holding the world together by the force of his personality and the fervor of his prayers. In connection with John Paul II’s memory, I want to recall two of our late parishioners, Stan and Maria Schroter, who were of his generation and shared in the crucible experience of the Polish struggle against Nazi Germany. Stan fought with the Polish army in September, 1939, was captured and escaped six times, and the  n, after Poland was overrun, went into exile and joined the Polish Legion fighting with the Allies. Maria was among the young women of the Polish Home Army who fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. She was deported into Germany until the end of the War. Stan, who had known her family before the War, saw her name on the Displaced Persons list and took an army truck from Rome to find her. A most persistent suitor, Stan persuaded Maria to go back with him to Rome, where they were married. Their journey eventually brought them here to Newton Upper Falls and Mary Immaculate of Lourdes parish, where they raised their five children. Given their history, I thought it most poignant that each of them should have died, a year apart, flanking John Paul II’s Feast-day—Stan died on October 21st, 2016, and Maria died on October 23rd, 2017. Last Sunday’s 5:30 PM Mass was offered for the repose of their souls, at the request of their daughter Christine (Schroter) Tramontozzi. Requiescant in Pace.

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The Rosary, as it is commonly called is, technically, the Dominican Rosary. It is the form of prayer on the five-decade Rosary beads which was promoted by the Dominican religious order. With its fifteen decades of “Hail Mary’s” it mirrors the 150 Psalms of the Bible. A series of meditations is organized into the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Christlife. Another form of praying the Rosary, which is approved by the Church, is the seven-decade Rosary of the Franciscan religious order. This Rosary is known as the “Franciscan Crown”, or the Rosary of the Seven Joys of Mary.  The Seven Joys are as follows: 1. The Annunciation. 2. The Visitation. 3. The Nativity. 4. The Adoration of the Magi. 5. The Finding the Child Jesus in the Temple. 6. The Appearance of the Risen Christ to Mary. 7. The Assumption of Mary and her Coronation in Heaven. The original Crown consisted of 1 “Our Father” and 10 “Hail Mary’s”. Later, two “Hail Mary’s” were added to make up the number 72, which, according to one worthy tradition, was the age of Mary at her falling-asleep and Assumption. (It has also become customary to add the “Glory Be” doxology at the end of each of the seven decades.) Having just celebrated the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi this past week (October 4th), we do well to consider how much the preaching and the missionary activity of the Franciscan friars has shaped the life of the Catholic Church. To the Franciscans we owe such beloved devotions as the Angelus, the Stations of the Cross, and the Christmas Crib. Also, to the Franciscans we are indebted for their vigorous defense of the doctrine of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception (before its solemn dogmatic definition in 1854) and their spreading of it. The Franciscan Crown is an alternative or additional way of praying the Rosary and Catholics should feel free to make use of it as they choose.

Three Sundays ago (September 10th, 2023) a most remarkable Beatification occurred. Jozef and Wictoria Ulma and their seven children were declared “blessed” by the Catholic Church. They are blood martyrs of charity for having risked their lives to hide Jewish neighbors who were being hunted down for extermination by the Nazi German occupiers during World War II. In 1939, on the eve of the German invasion of Poland, there were 4,500 people living in the village now called Markowa (southeastern Poland), 120 of them Jews. In 1942. the Nazi policy towards the Jews went from murderous persecution to outright, organized massmurder, Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question” in Europe. The wellpublicized Nazi penalty for anyone harboring Jews was death. Jozef Ulma and his wife Wictoria were among those Poles who took the personal risk to hide Jews. They took in Saul Goldman and his four sons, Golda Gruenfeld, and Lea Didner and her daughter Reszla who was five or six-years-old. For more than a year, their families lived as one: the men tanning hides and skins for sale; the children growing into the world together, reading, helping their mothers raise their children, performing chores. Jozef, a farmer by trade, was an amateur photographer and documented the daily workings of their domestic church… (“The Good Samaritans of Markowa, Poland”, by Nicholas Tomaino. Houses of Worship, Wall Street Journal, September 15th, 2023) Betrayed by an informer to the Nazis, German officers and collaborationist Polish “Blue Police” raided the Markowa farm at 4 AM on March 24th, 1944. First they murdered the Jews. Then they took the Ulma family out front. They shot dead the parents. Finally, they shot dead all of the children: Stasia, 7; Barbara, 6: Wladyslaw, 5: Franciszek, 3; Antoni, 2; and Maria 1. After the marauders had looted the house and left, villagers came to give the victims a proper burial. There they discovered that Wictoria, who was seven months pregnant, had gone into labor during the execution and given birth to a baby son. In the beatification of the Family Ulma, this baby was included—the Catholic Church’s first such beatification of an entire family. A crowd of 30,000 people attended the Mass of Beatification in Markowa on September 10th. In their family Bible, Jozef and Wictoria Ulma had underlined passages from the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). After Jesus’ words: “Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbor to him that fell among the robbers? But [the lawyer] said: He that showed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go, and do thou in like manner”, was scribbled in the margin, “Yes!”. Despite the massacre at the Ulma farm, not all of the Jews in hiding in Markowa were betrayed. Several days after Nicholas Tomaino’s essay, the following letter appeared in the Wall Street Journal : My mother and her family were hidden during World War II by Antoni and Dorota Szylar, who were next-door neighbors to the Ulma Family. Even after the Ulmas were killed for protecting Jews, the Szylars continued to shelter my mother and six other family members for 17 months, knowing that they, too, would be killed if found out. It is a testament to the strong Christian faith of the Szylars that I am here today. RUTH OSOWSKY HEISLER Kew Gardens, N.Y .

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