Friends in Christ,
Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. The first reading in the liturgy for Sexagesima Sunday (February 23, 2025) – the second of three Sundays in the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima – includes Saint Paul’s mention of a man “caught up to the third heaven” who “heard secret words . . . not granted to man to utter” (or presumably to understand). In the Gospel reading, when asked by His disciples why He speaks to the people in parables, Jesus tells them: “To you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God, but to the rest in parables: that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”
Our Lord’s enigmatic response to His disciples, who had not understood the parable of the sower themselves, echoes Isaias (6:9): “And he said: Go, and thou shalt say to this people: Hearing, hear, and understand not: and see the vision, and know it not.” Jesus frequently made use of parables that conveyed the meaning of His message in an indirect manner that sometimes baffled those who heard the stories He told. Like a parabola curving from point A to point B, His discourse on such occasions did not follow an easily charted straight line from beginning to end, but took an indirect route to reach its conclusion.
This approach could be mystifying even to His disciples until they became accustomed to it. Sometimes it served the Lord’s purpose by intentionally cloaking the deeper meaning of his words so that those who heard would hear and not understand. This was particularly the case for those parables in which He specifically targeted the Jewish authorities while disguising them as stock figures in His simple stories.
At the end of the parable of the sower, as told by Luke in the Gospel for Sexagesima, Jesus cried out, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” The underlying message of the story, perhaps softened somewhat by the parabolic format, is a hard one: Sadly, many will hear the word of God but, for various reasons, not keep it in their hearts. Only those with “a good and perfect heart, hearing the word, [will] keep it, and bring forth fruit in patience.”
The season of Septuagesima is meant to be a period of prayer and solemn reflection during which we prepare ourselves to embrace wholeheartedly the word of God in Lent, inculcating the same by means of prayer, fasting, penance and good works.
Calendar of Special Observances
Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962.
DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)
Sunday, February 23 – Sexagesima Sunday (II)
Monday, February 24 – St. Matthias, Apostle (II)
Tuesday, February 25 – Feria (IV)
Wednesday, February 26 – Feria (IV)
Thursday, February 27 – St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, Confessor (III)
Friday, February 28 – Feria (IV)
Saturday, March 1 – Immaculate Heart of Mary (III) – Our Lady on Saturday (IV) – Feria (IV)
Sexagesima Sunday
The
links provided below can be used to download printable copies of the
Proper Prayers for Sexagesima Sunday with English or Spanish
translation, followed by commentary by Dr. Michael P. Foley.
Latin Mass Schedule: Sexagesima Sunday (February 23, 2025)
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
11:30 a.m., Saint Thomas Aquinas
12:30 p.m., Saint Ann
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
8:30 a.m., Saint John the Baptist (Tryon)
9:00 a.m., Our Lady of the Angels (Marion)
1:00 p.m., Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock)
2:00 p.m., Our Lady of Grace (Greensboro) **Special Time for February 23rd only**
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
12:00 p.m., Prince of Peace (Taylors SC)
1:00 p.m., Our Lady of the Lake (Chapin SC)
Note: Travelers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in the regular schedule of Sunday Mass times.
Latin Mass Schedule: Weekdays (February 23-March 1)
Charlotte Area Latin Masses
Saint Ann – Wednesday, 6:00 p.m.
Saint Thomas Aquinas – Thursday, 7:00 p.m.
Saint Ann – Friday, 7:00 a.m.
Saint Thomas Aquinas - 1st Saturday Mass, 10:00 a.m. (followed by blessing of religious objects) (Mass will feature a multi-parish children’s choir)
Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses
Our Lady of the Mountains (Highlands) – Tuesday, 9:30 a.m.
Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – Friday, 8:30 a.m.
Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock) – Friday, 9:30 a.m.
Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – 1st Saturday, 8:30 a.m.
Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock) – Saturday, 10:00 a.m.
Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses
Prince of Peace (Taylors SC) – Monday-Friday, 12:00 p.m.
Prince of Peace (Taylors SC) – Saturday 8:00 a.m.
Note: Travelers are advised to contact parish offices to confirm weekday and Saturday Mass times, since local schedules are sometimes subject to change without notice, especially on or around holidays, holy days of obligation and other special feast days.
Ash Wednesday Schedule: Wednesday March 5
The following is a listing of announced Latin Masses for Ash Wednesday. If more Masses are scheduled we will include them in future updates.
Wednesday March 5
Saint Ann – 6:00 p.m. (Low)
Our Lady of Grace (Greensboro) – 12:15 p.m. (Low)
Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – 6:30 p.m. (High)
Our Lady of the Lake (Chapin SC) – 10:00 a.m. (Low)
Prince of Peace (Taylors SC) – 12:00 p.m. (Low)
Prayers for the Holy Father
The U.S. Bishops Conference is asking for prayers for Pope Francis during his illness and has published the prayer below, which can also be found at this link. [Prayers for Pope Francis]
~
O God, shepherd and ruler of all the faithful, look favorably on your servant Francis, whom you have set at the head of your Church as her shepherd;
Grant, we pray, that by word and example he may be of service to those over whom he presides so that, together with the flock entrusted to his care, he may come to everlasting life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Announcements
**Time Change for Latin Mass at Our Lady of Grace this Sunday February 23** – For this Sunday only, the Latin Mass will be offered at a special time of 2:00 p.m. Please mark your calendars accordingly.
Special Multi-parish Children’s Latin Mass Choir on Saturday March 1, 10:00 a.m.
– Saint Thomas Aquinas’s 1st Saturday Latin Mass on Saturday March 1
will feature sacred music by a special multi-parish children’s choir
from Saint Thomas Aquinas, Cathedral of Saint Patrick, and Saint Michael
parishes, as part of its 2nd annual Children's Choir Festival.
Fr. Ripperger to Offer Lenten Mission at Saint Thomas Aquinas (March 7-8) – Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish is blessed to welcome back Fr. Chad Ripperger, SMD, to conduct its Lenten Parish Mission on Friday, March 7th, and Saturday, March 8th, at 7:00 p.m. each night. Fr. Ripperger is a former member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter who became an exorcist and founded the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother (the Doloran Fathers). Please note: The mission will be oriented to adults, and will not be appropriate for young children. Registration is required. The registration form is available at the following location: Lenten Mission Registration.
Traditional Carmelite Lenten Enrollment – Lent will commence in less than two weeks on Ash Wednesday on March 5. To prepare, we share a wonderful Lenten offering by the Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel of Pennsylvania and Colorado. Our readers are invited to enroll those in need this Lent in order to benefit from 40 Masses and 40 days of prayer and penance by the Hermits. Click on Lenten Enrollment at the link provided below. Enrollment will remain open until Tuesday, March 4, the last day before the beginning of Lent.
The Hermits will be offering the following for the benefit of those enrolled:
40 Traditional Latin Masses celebrated according to the Carmelite Rite;
40 days of prayer according to the Divine Office, as well as other daily prayers, and
40 days of fasting and penance.
These benefits may be secured for those most in need, whether living or deceased. There is no charge for enrollment, but the Discalced Hermits survive entirely on alms received from the laity to support their apostolate. Please remember the Hermits in your almsgiving now and during the Season of Lent, recalling the words of Saint Lawrence Justinian regarding the benefits of the Mass:
No human tongue can enumerate the favors that trace back to the Sacrifice of the Mass. The sinner is reconciled with God; the just man becomes more upright; sins are wiped away; vices are uprooted; virtue and merit increase; and the devil’s schemes are frustrated.
To learn more see this inspiring video. To enroll in the Lenten Enrollment, click here.
Fasting and Abstinence Disciplines During Lent
For those looking to practice the traditional Lenten disciplines in place prior to 1962, we share a helpful 2010 document from Mater Ecclesiae Latin Mass Chapel in Berlin, New Jersey, which explains the differences between the traditional Lenten rules for fasting and abstinence and the current rules. [Discipline of 1962 for Fast during Lent]
*NEW* Consecration of those Governing to the Blessed Virgin Mary – Fr. Chad Ripperger has composed an updated prayer for our nation and government, Consecration of those Governing to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which may be found at the end of this update or downloaded here.
Holy Face Devotions
Prayers of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus are offered each week at the following churches on the indicated days:
St. James (Concord) – Monday, 10-10:30 a.m. (in the cry room)
St. Mark – Tuesday, 5:30 p.m.
St. Thomas Aquinas – Tuesday, 6:00 a.m.
St. Ann – Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. (following 7:00 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)
St. Michael the Archangel (Gastonia) – Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. (following 8:00 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)
St. Vincent de Paul – Tuesday, 8:40 a.m.
Holy Spirit (Denver) – Tuesday, 10-11:00 a.m. (following the 9:15 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)
St. John the Baptist (Tryon) - First Saturday, 9:30 a.m. (after 8:30 a.m Latin Mass)
Note: Days and times may be subject to change due to holidays.
“Jesus, Your ineffable image is the star which guides my steps. Ah, You know, Your sweet Face is for me Heaven on earth” (from Canticle to the Holy Face by Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, the 19th century Discalced Carmelite nun who took the name in religion, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face).
Novena to the Holy Face (Begins Sunday February 23)
Sunday begins the annual novena to the Holy Face of Jesus, in preparation for the feast of the Holy Face which traditionally occurs on Shrove Tuesday, March 4 (the day before Ash Wednesday).
To participate in the novena, please pray this prayer daily from Sunday February 23 - Monday March 3.
Oh my Jesus! Cast upon us a look of mercy. Turn Thy Face towards each one of us even as Thou didst turn to Veronica, not that we may see It with the eyes of our body, for we do not deserve to do so. But turn It towards our hearts, that being sustained by Thee, we may ever draw from that powerful source, the vigor necessary to enable us to wage the combats we have to undergo. Amen.
Through the merits of Thy Precious Blood and Thy Holy Face, O Jesus, grant us our petition (state intention here) ...
Mary, our Mother, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us.
A longer Holy Face Novena can be found at this link.
Latin Mass and Liturgical News
The Reading of Genesis in Septuagesima by Greg DiPippo, New Liturgical Movement (February 16, 2025). [Reading of Genesis in Septuagesima]
Rugo Stone Design and Fabricate a Cosmatesque Influenced Altar by Shawn Tribe, Liturgical Arts Journal (February 17, 2025). [Rugo Stone Design]
The Magnanimous Contrite Heart by Michael P. Foley, New Liturgical Movement (February 14, 2025). [The Magnanimous Contrite Heart]
Ave Regina Caelorum by Greg DiPippo, New Liturgical Movement (February 3, 2025). [Ave Regina Caelorum]
Meménto: Newsletter for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, Published by the North American Province of the FSSP (Septuagesima & Lent February 2025 Newsletter). [Meménto]
Saints and Special Observances
Saint Anne Line is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales condemned for their Catholic faith and executed by the government of England between 1535 and 1679. Canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970, the Forty Martyrs are memorialized as a group on October 25th, the date of their canonization, in the revised (post-1962) liturgical calendar. Convicted of harboring a missionary priest who celebrated the outlawed Latin Mass in her house, Anne Line was hanged in 1601. She was the third of three laywomen among the Forty Martyrs, following Margaret Clitherow who was executed in 1586 and Margaret Ward who met the same fate in 1588.
Born Alice Higham around 1563, she was the daughter of a well-to-do Puritan, William Higham of Dunmow in Essex. She took the name Anne when she converted to Catholicism along with her brother, William, and Roger Line, whom she married in February of 1583. Both men were disowned by their fathers, and Anne was deprived of her dowry, for renouncing Protestantism. Roger Line was subsequently arrested while attending a traditional Mass and forced into exile in Flanders where he died in 1594.
Following her husband’s death, Anne was recruited by Fr. John Gerard, S.J., a priest on the Jesuit mission to England and Wales, to maintain a house he had acquired in London to serve as a refuge for covert missionaries. Fr. Gerard would later escape from imprisonment in the Tower and live to write an autobiographical account of his service on the mission. “In charge of this house,” he wrote of Anne Line, “I put a very good and prudent widowed lady, who was later to receive the honor of martyrdom.”
When I decided to establish the house . . . I could think of no better person than her to put in charge of it. She was able to manage the finances, do all the housekeeping, look after the guests, and deal with the inquiries of strangers. She was full of kindness, very discreet, and possessed her soul in great peace. She was, however, a chronic invalid – she was always suffering from one ailment or another.
Anne often expressed to Fr. Gerard her desire to win a martyr’s crown but said she thought it unlikely she would do so because, as a woman, she believed there was little chance she would have the opportunity. “However, she told her confessor some years before her death,” Bishop Challoner wrote in his Memoirs of Missionary Priests, “that . . . a former confessor of hers, who ended his days by martyrdom in 1586, had promised her that if God should make him worthy of that glorious end, he would pray for her that she might obtain the like happiness.” She also described to the same confessor a vision in which the Lord appeared to her, carrying his cross and beckoning her to follow Him. She interpreted the vision to mean that martyrdom awaited her.
When Fr. Gerard escaped from prison, Anne gave up the house he had established and leased another where she provided apartments for priests who had returned to England as undercover missionaries. The way in which her martyrdom came about is described by Bishop Challoner:
On Candlemas day, 1601, the pursuivants having some intelligence, or suspecting that Mrs. Line entertained a priest, beset her house at the very time that mass was actually beginning. However, as the door was strongly barred and fastened, they were forced to wait some time before they could come in: and, in the meantime, the priest, a Mr. Page, “had leisure to unvest himself and make his escape” [here quoting “Dr. Champney’s manuscript history,” according to a footnote].
The priest-hunters failed to capture their man or to find any real evidence that a Latin Mass had been celebrated in the house. Nevertheless, they took Anne Line into custody and brought her to trial before Lord Chief Justice Popham, “a bitter enemy of the Catholics.” As directed by the judge, the jury delivered a verdict of guilty on the charge of having harbored a seminary priest. The judge sentenced her to die and sent her to Newgate to await execution on the next day, an event described by Bishop Challoner:
When the keeper acquainted her with the dead-warrant being signed, and when afterwards she was carried out to execution, she showed not the least commotion or change in her countenance. At Tyburn, when she was just ready to die, she declared to the standers by, with a loud voice — I am sentenced to die for harbouring a catholic priest; and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish with all my soul that where I have entertained one I could have entertained a thousand. She suffered before the two priests; and Mr. Barkworth, whose combat came on the next, embraced her body whilst it was yet hanging, saying, — O ! blessed Mrs. Line, who hast now happily received thy reward. Thou art gone before us; but we shall quickly follow thee to bliss, if it please the Almighty.
Anne Line was executed, along with Fr. Mark Barkworth, O.S.B., and Fr. Roger Filcock, S.J., on February 27, 1601. In the Catholic dioceses of England, she is memorialized together with Saint Margaret Clitherow and Saint Margaret Ward on August 30th, but the date of her personal feast is that of her martyrdom, February 27th.
Sources: Challoner, Bishop Richard, Memoirs of Missionary Priests (Manchester: Mark Wardle, 1803); Gerard, John, S.J., The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012).
Closing Commentary
Finally, as we continue into the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, we turn again to The Liturgical Year of
Dom Prosper Guéranger for a reflection on Sexagesima Sunday which, in
the readings for Matins (in the Divine Office), focuses on Noe and the
deluge and the opportunity to escape it in our own lives through the
practice of the virtues:
Sexagesima Sunday
The earth is deluged by sin and heresy. But the Word of God, the Seed of life, is ever producing a new generation, a race of men, who, like Noah, fear God. It is the Word of God that produces those happy children, of whom the Beloved Disciple speaks, saying: they are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [St. John, 1. 13]. Let us endeavour to be of this family; or, if we already be numbered among its members, let us zealously maintain our glorious position. What we have to do, during these days of Septuagesima, is to escape from the Deluge of worldliness, and take shelter in the Ark of salvation; we have to become that good soil, which yields a hundred-fold from the heavenly Seed. Let us flee from the wrath to come, lest we perish with the enemies of God: let us hunger after that Word of God, which converteth and giveth life to souls [Ps. xviii]. [Sexagesima Sunday]