A Weekend of Blessings at Saint Patrick Parish

When I look back at weekends when I served at Saint Patrick Parish, this will certainly be a weekend I remember. For me the weekend started Friday evening. I traveled with almost sixty members of our parish to Feed My Starving Children in Eagan, Minnesota and helped pack food that will be shipped to Guatemala. (Ironically, that is where our Sister Parish is located.) Maybe some of the food we packed will reach the village where our Sister Parish is located. 

Weekend events continued Saturday evening. Our Bishop presided at our 5 PM Mass. Deacon Pat Sorrells, a seminarian from the Diocese of Fargo who has been with us the past three years, was with us and preached his first homily for us. We serve as the teaching parish for Deacon Pat while he is attending Saint Paul Seminary. Having been a part of Deacon Pat’s formation, it is exciting to see him now that he is ordained a deacon and in his final stage of formation prior to being ordained a priest. 

At the end of Mass on Saturday evening, I was able to read an indult presented to our parish by our Bishop. An indult is a permission granted by a church authority for which he has authority to grant that which is typically outside the norm. The indult our bishop presented to us allows us to name our Eucharistic chapel in honor of Blessed Father Solanus Casey. It further allows us to take on Blessed Solanus as our Co-Patron, along with Saint Patrick. 

A patron Saint serves as a powerful intercessor before God. A patron Saint is an advocate and defender. Further, a patron Saint is a Spiritual model and a reminder that we are a part of a universal Church, which includes members even in heaven who are there to pray for us. What a tremendous blessing to have two great patrons interceding for us. One was a great missionary and the other a great witness to the compassion, love, and healing power of our God. May Saint Patrick and Blessed Father Solanus pray for us!

For the Masses this past weekend, we celebrated the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. For the first time we put out our relic of the True Cross. We recently had a gold crucifix restored. It has a place where our relic fits perfectly. The relic is two small splinters of the wood of the Cross. We are looking forward to preparing a proper place for this to be permanently on display and available for veneration. We have relics of other Saints we will be bringing out in the future. 

I GOT TIME hosted a social after all of the Masses. We are working hard to make sure socials are hosted every weekend. They are a great way to connect and visit with one another. This past weekend the volunteers reported being “pushed to the limit” with the great turnout. It extended the festive nature of the Mass.

Speaking about Mass, I have promised for several years to sing one Sunday with our Praise Company Choir. This seemed like the perfect weekend. After attending three practices, I won’t say I was ready, but the choir was. I sang with the basses. I am not sure I was of much help, but it was the first time I had ever sung with a church choir. It definitely gave me a greater appreciation for the patience, hard work, commitment, and talent of our musicians. How someone can look at a note on a piece of paper and know exactly what to sing will always remain a mystery to me. I can’t imagine the work that one goes through to play an instrument as well as our musicians play or sing as well as our vocalists do. 

Maybe I will sing with them again someday. Either way, I am glad I did today on such a wonderful feast as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. As I mentioned to someone at the end of Mass, following our choir and congregation joining with a variety of instruments, including three trumpets, we truly lifted high the cross today. As Deacon Pat reminded us, only in the context of Christian faith does it make sense that we glory in such a horrible instrument of death – a good reminder for us living today. In the midst of the violence we see and hear about on an almost daily basis, our faith gives us a reason to still hope. The cross, a sign of death, has become a sign of Christ’s glory.

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