I know, I know, I’ve been negligent in posting this week – again – and I don’t have a very good excuse – again.  But tomorrow’s a new week; maybe I’ll do better.

I’m not going to post tomorrow; but you can watch Mass on the parish YouTube channel.

Mass is live at 10; replay will be available afterwards.

We survived April.

I think.

Anyway, welcome to May, and while May is dedicated in a special way to our Blessed Mother, it starts with a feast in honor of her holy spouse, Saint Joseph.  And since Saint Joseph is the patron of one of my parishes, we’re treating it with the solemnity that is its due.

So you can watch our Mass, and catch my homily, live at 8:15 AM on our YouTube channel.  It will be available for replay shortly after the Mass ends.

Today’s first reading tells the story of the martyrdom of the deacon Saint Stephen, the first martyr of the Church.  I’m a big fan of his, so that’s what I ramble about today.  Enjoy.

Pictured:  the tomb of Saints Stephen and Lawrence, Basilica of Saint Lawrence-Outside-the-Walls, Rome

Better get this done before the day gets any further away from me.  Today’s responsorial psalm comes from psalm 119, so I just kind of blather on about it and sort of try to relate it to the first reading.  Today’s readings can be found here, if they help make sense of this at all.

So why is it a big deal that we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of churches?  I try to answer that question here.

As a bonus, enjoy some photos of Holy Trinity Church, which was dedicated today in 1970.

So this is a rare one…not only do you get a Saturday post, but you’re going to get two of them.

Today the church is celebrating the feast of Saint Mark, evangelist, but I’m not…I’m celebrating a very specific, higher rank of feast.  But that’s for part two.

This part tries to explain the differences between different liturgical celebrations.  If you were ever wondering what the difference was between things like solemnities, feasts, and memorials, my hope is this will help answer those questions.

I’ll be back later with more on what I’m up to today.

I mean it this time, darn it.  No more slacking off.  Well, there might be some slacking off.  But for today, at least, I offer you this.  (I’ll warn you, it’s about 20 minutes long.)

No, I wasn’t really on vacation…where could I go, anyway? Everything’s shut down…

But I basically took all of last week off, because I generally try to do as little as possible during the Octave of Easter.  Normally it’s to recover from all the craziness and business of Holy Week and the last days of Lent…and I suppose this year was no different.  For sure, it wasn’t physically exhausting…but it was emotionally exhausting.

Anyway, come tomorrow morning, I’ll be back at it, and you can watch.  I’m the main celebrant and homilist for our grouping’s livestreamed Mass.  Check out our YouTube channel at 10:00 AM on Sunday.

Two images to consider while (whilst?) I talk at you today… the first is this:

And the second is this:

Enjoy.