January 28, 2024

fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

by Fr. Boniface Endorf, OP

Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,

This Friday is Candlemas, also known as the Presentation of the Lord. It’s called Candlemas because there is a special blessing of candles at the beginning and then a procession. We’re continuing the tradition started last year and holding this special candle blessing and procession at the 7pm Friday evening Candlemas celebration. We’ll bless the church candles we’ll use throughout this year, and you can bring your candles that you want blessed. It starts in McGuire Hall at 7pm, and after the opening candle blessing we’ll process into the church for the rest of the mass. I encourage everyone to attend that evening—it’ll be a grace filled night. We’ll still also have our normal 12:10pm daily mass that day too, but without the candle blessing.

This Saturday is the Memorial of St. Blaise. At our 12:10pm daily Mass we’ll have the St. Blaise throat blessings.

The 2024 Cardinal’s Appeal now begins and I encourage you to pray about supporting the Archdiocese of New York this year. Details to come. If you give, make sure to mark St. Joseph in Greenwich Village as your parish.

Mass Tidbit:

At this point in the Mass we pray the Our Father. We start by naming God as Our Father, which is a gift He gives us—we are by nature His creations, but His children only by the grace of His adoption of us. He adopts through the graces won for us by Christ, who took our human nature to Himself. So we are very privileged to by able to relate to God not simply as our creator, but as our Father, with all familial intimacies.

Next, we say “who art in heaven.” We recognize that He is beyond this world, beyond the universe we live in and that He created. He transcends all we can sense or experience and thus is primarily known through faith, through believing what He has told us through Christ.

We pray then “Hallowed be thy name,” meaning ‘may your name be holy.’ We are recognizing God as the source of all holiness and goodness. We are able to call upon God’s name because He has shared it with us as a gift and so we can address Him on intimate terms. This great gift should not be abused, but used to remain close to God, the source of all holiness so that we too can be holy, reflecting the holiness of God. In that we find the joy we’re made for—in praising God we find joy.

God Bless,
Fr. Boniface