Dear Sacred Heart and St. Mary on the Lake,
What a beautiful Mass we had at St. Mary on the Lake for the dedication of the new Altar. While I have tried to thank all of the people who helped make that day possible, I am sure there are some that I have forgotten—so thank you!
I have included here the prayer that Bishop prayed for its dedication. The prayer talks about the meaning and significance of the Altar, and the role it is meant to play in our lives as the meeting place between us and Christ.
“We glorify you, Lord, and we bless you, for in the ineffable Sacrament of your love, you have decreed that the mystery of the altar should be brought to fulfillment in Christ, to whom all types and shadows give way.
For Noah, a second father of the human race, once the flood had receded, set up an altar to you and offered a sacrifice, which you, Father, accepted as a fragrant offering, thereby renewing your covenant of love with the human race. Abraham, our father in faith, clinging to your word with all his heart, constructed an altar, so that by not sparing Isaac, his beloved son, he might be pleasing to you. Moses too, the mediator of the old Law, built an altar, which, sprinkled with the blood of a lamb, would mystically prefigure the altar of the Cross.
All this, Christ has fulfilled in the Paschal Mystery: for by ascending the tree of the Cross as Priest and Victim he handed himself over to you, Father, as a pure oblation, so that the sins of the whole world might be blotted out and a new and eternal covenant be made with you.
Therefore, we humbly beseech you, O Lord: pour forth from heaven your sanctifying power upon this altar, built in the house of the Church, that it may be an altar dedicated for all time by the sacrifice of Christ, and stand as the Lord’s table where your people are refreshed by the divine banquet.
Let this altar be for us a sign of Christ, from whose pierced side flowed blood and water, by which were established the Sacraments of the Church.
Let this be a festive table, to which the guests of Christ hasten with joy, so that, casting on you their cares and burdens, they may gain new strength of spirit for new paths ahead.
Let it be the place of intimate communion with you and a place of peace, where those who feed on the Body and Blood of your Son may be filled with his Spirit and grow in your love.
Let it be the source of the Church's unity and of fraternal harmony, where your faithful, gathering as one, may drink of the spirit of mutual charity.
Let it be the center of our praise and thanksgiving until we come jubilant to the eternal dwellings where we are to offer you the sacrifice of unending praise with Christ, the High Priest and living Altar.”
Fr. Ginu and I went to the Hudson High School play last week, Beauty and the Beast. We saw a good number of parishioners from both parishes that were in it. We were both very impressed. Whenever I go to something like that I marvel because there is no way I could have done something like that as a high schooler!
God Bless Fr. Todd