Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 06, 2025

Friends in Christ,

Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday is the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. The Gospel reading for last Sunday featured the Parable of the Good Samaritan who came to the aid of a traveler badly beaten by robbers. Two members of the Jewish religious hierarchy, a priest and a Levite, had passed him by before the compassionate Samaritan came to his rescue. The Gospel for this Sunday tells of an actual Samaritan who is himself a victim: one of ten lepers who cry out to Our Lord for mercy as He is making His way to Jerusalem. Jesus heals them all and tells them to go show themselves to the priests; but only the one Samaritan returns to glorify God and give thanks. Jesus says to the man, “Were not ten made clean? and where are the nine? There is no one found to return and give glory to God, but this stranger. And he said to him: Arise, go thy way; for thy faith hath made thee whole” (Luke 17:17-19). Afterwards, Jesus continued His journey to Jerusalem, knowing that there He would be branded a stranger – a Galilean foreigner – and condemned as an undesirable alien.

Note: This Monday (September 8, 2025) is the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is the 460th anniversary of the establishment of Catholicism in today's United States. Please see our historical piece at the conclusion of this update.

Calendar of Saints and Special Observances

Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962.

DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)

Sunday, September 7 – Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (II)

Monday, September 8 – The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (II)

Tuesday, September 9 – (USA) St. Peter Claver, Confessor (III) – St. Gorgonius, Martyr (IV) – Feria (IV)

Wednesday, September 10 – St. Nicholas of Tolentino (III)

Thursday, September 11 – Ss. Protus and Hyacinth, Martyrs (IV)

Friday, September 12 – The Most Holy Name of Mary (III)

Saturday, September 13 – Our Lady on Saturday (IV)

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The links provided below can be used to download printable copies of the Proper Prayers for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost with English or Spanish translation, followed by commentary by Dr. Michael P. Foley.

 
 
 


Latin Mass Schedule: Sundays

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)
 
  • 1:00 p.m., Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock)
 
  • 1:30 p.m., Our Lady of Grace (Greensboro)
 

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 (September 8 - September 13)

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.
 

Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses

  • Our Lady of the Mountains (Highlands) – Wednesday, 12:00 p.m.
 
  • Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – Friday, 8:30 a.m.
 
  • Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock) – Friday, 9:30 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.
 

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.

Father Reid’s Homily on Suffering and Charity

This past Sunday Father Reid offered an excellent and instructive homily on suffering and charity in light of the times and circumstances we are living in today, particularly about the Latin Mass. We encourage all readers who may have missed it to review the text version at this link.

Announcements

First Sunday Potluck – This Sunday September 7, St. Thomas Aquinas parish will hold its 1st Sunday potluck after the 11:30 a.m. Latin Mass. Please consider bringing a dish, drink, or desert to share.

Prayer Request: In your charity, please pray for the healing of Tony Reitz from a rapidly progressing Lymphoma. He is the brother-in-law of Amanda Banville who attends the Latin Mass at Our Lady of Grace. Pray also for Tony’s wife and young children.

SAVE THE DATE: Saturday September 20, 7:30 p.m., Concert of Sacred Choral Music benefiting Saint Thomas Aquinas Church – Please mark your calendars for an important sacred music event at Saint Thomas Aquinas parish. The event will feature sacred choral music provided by the Saint Thomas Aquinas Adult and Children's choirs. It will offer traditional sacred music - including Latin and will feature special guests, St. Joseph College Seminary Quartet: Fr. Matthew Kauth (violin); Fr. Brian Becker (cello); Seminarian Matthew Sie (clarinet) and Fr. Kolbe Murrey (violin).

A wine and cheese dessert reception will follow. The event benefits the parish’s capital campaign project. If you’ve spiritually benefited from the sacred music at Saint Thomas, this event may be of great interest to you. 

SAVE THE DATE: Sunday September 28, 12:30 p.m. – Michaelmas Potluck & Celebration. The Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society will host a potluck after the Saint Ann 12:30 p.m. Sunday Latin Mass for the Feast of the Dedication of Saint Michael the Archangel, which occurs the next day. All are invited. 

Holy Hidden Highways Substack – A new Substack page by Saint Ann parishioner Rachel Shrader has just been created. The site (paid subscription) will feature articles on her travels around the Catholic world including visiting churches and traditional parishes. Although the topics will not be exclusively related to the Latin Mass, Ms. Shrader has previously written for the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) newsletter and the Substack topics may be of interest to readers. The site is: https://holyhiddenhighways.substack.com/

St. Michael’s Lent (now thru September 29) – As you may have read in the Catholic News Herald (or seen the posters in parishes) several faithful across the diocese are participating in an ancient penitential practice called St. Michael’s Lent, currently promoted by a group, Exodus 90 and anciently practiced by St. Francis of Assisi. It began August 15 (Assumption) and continues for 40 days ahead of the Feast of St. Michael on September 29. For those who feel called to amplify their prayers or penances for the Latin Mass this season, please click here to learn how to participate.

Daily Holy Face Chaplet for Sacred Liturgy (perpetual novena) – For the preservation of the Traditional Latin Mass, it has been recommended to all friends of the sacred liturgy in the diocese to consider continually praying the powerful Holy Face chaplet, under the banner of Our Lady of the Holy Name. To pray the chaplet, please see this link.

National Latin Mass Pilgrimage – Saturday October 11, Washington, D.C. Begins at the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More in Arlington and concludes at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew in Washington D.C. To learn more click on this link.

Cardinal Burke’s Prayer for Pope Leo XIV – His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke has released a prayer for Pope Leo XIV. Please see the prayer at the end of this update and consider praying this daily for the Holy Father as he leads the Church.

PDF copies can also be accessed at these links: [English] [Español] [Latin]

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, 10:00 a.m. & 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)
 
  • Saint Elizabeth of the Hill Country (Boone) – Third Tuesday, at 6:45 p.m. after Mass in the Youth Room
 
  • St. John the Baptist (Tryon) - First Saturday, 9:30 a.m. (after 8:30 a.m Latin Mass)
 
  • League of St. Martin Monthly Meeting in Gastonia – The League of St. Martin is a Holy Face apostolate that meets monthly to pray the Chaplet of the Holy Face of Jesus. For additional information regarding the League contact ericpieper@me.com for additional information.
 
  • League of St. Martin Monthly Meeting in Clemmons – The League of St. Martin apostolate is meeting monthly in Clemmons to pray the Chaplet of the Holy Face of Jesus every 3rd Friday at 6:00 p.m. at Holy Family Church in Clemmons. For additional information contact: amandamratledge@gmail.com or danielleparent@proton.me
 

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).

Latin Mass and Liturgical News

 

  • The Quam oblationem by Dr. Michael P. Foley, New Liturgical Movement (August 29, 2025). [The Quam oblationem]
 

  • Bringing Beauty Back to US Churches Through Liturgical Carpentry by Bénédicte Cedergren, National Catholic Register (September 1, 2025). [Liturgical Carpentry]
 

  • Book Review - Mantilla: The Veil of the Bride of Christ by Anna Elissa by John Paul Sonnen, Liturgical Arts Journal (August 22, 2025). [Book Review – Mantilla]
 

  • Cardinals Burke and Sarah Back Global Push for First Saturday Devotion at 100 Years by Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register (August 30, 2025). [First Saturday Devotion]
 

Saints and Special Observances

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been celebrated by Christians for fifteen centuries or more as an event of world-historical and, indeed, cosmic proportions. The birth of Mary Immaculate made possible the birth of the One who was to come, the Savior of the world, Son of God Himself, Our Lord Jesus Christ. While there is nothing to be found in the canonical gospels regarding the birth of Our Lady, Tradition holds that she was the daughter of Joachim and his wife, Anne. Their story is told in the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal text which has existed as we know it today since the second century of the Christian era.

Like other notable couples in the history of the people of God (Abram and Sarai, Elcanna and Anna, Zachary and Elizabeth) Joachim and Anne were facing the onset of old age in a state of childlessness. Fearing that they had fallen out of favor with God, they devoted themselves to prayer and fasting until, at last, an angel appeared to Anne and told her, “The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.”

Later, according to the same text, “Joachim brought the child to the priests, and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations.’” Mary would later exclaim, in her encounter with Elizabeth described in the first chapter of the Gospel According to Saint Luke, “My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:46-48). Mary’s parents decided, along with the priests of the Temple, that the child should be given to God as a consecrated virgin. Her eventual marriage to Joseph was understood from the start to be a chaste union that would produce no children – and yet, at the start, there was already a Child.

The Protoevangelium of James is not a canonical gospel; that is to say, it is not unequivocally held by the Church to be the result of divine inspiration. Nevertheless, over the past eighteen hundred years, it has provided essential background for the life of a central figure in the history of the Church: Mary, the Mother of God. The Church has been celebrating her birth since at least the sixth century, as evidenced by the inclusion in a compilation of that period a hymn to be sung at Marymas. The earliest documentation of a liturgical commemoration has to do with the sixth century dedication of the Basilica Sanctae Mariae ubi nata est (“Basilica of Saint Mary where she was born”). Originally built in the fifth century, the basilica was located on the site in Jerusalem where the home of Joachim and Anne was believed to have stood.

The Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary was widely celebrated in Eastern churches in the seventh century, and September 8th came to be accepted by consensus as the appropriate date for the commemoration of the Virgin’s birth. When the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was finally pronounced by Pope Pius IX in 1854, he established December 8th as the date on which Joachim and Anne conceived their daughter because it preceded the long-accepted date of her birth by exactly nine months.


Closing Commentary

We offer, in closing, an excerpt from the commentary of Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, on “September 8 – The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” followed by a link to the full text of the commentary from The Liturgical Year.


September 8 – The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Let us celebrate the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; let us adore her Son, Christ our Lord. Such is the invitation addressed to us today by the Church. Let us hearken to her call; let us enter into her overflowing joy. The Bridegroom is at hand, for his throne is now set up on earth; yet a little while, and he will appear in the diadem of our human nature, wherewith his Mother is to crown him on the day of the joy of his heart, and of ours. Today, as on the glorious Assumption, the sacred Canticle is heard; but this time it belongs more to earth than to heaven.

Truly a better Paradise than the first is given us at this hour. Eden, fear no more that man will endeavor to enter thee; thy Cherubim may leave the gates and return to heaven. What are thy beautiful fruits to us, since we cannot touch them without dying? Death is now for those who will not eat of the fruit so soon to appear amid the flowers of the virgin earth to which our God has led us.

Hail, new world, far surpassing in magnificence the first creation! Hail blessed haven, where we find a calm after so many storms! Aurora dawns; the rainbow glitters in the heavens; the dove comes forth; the ark rests upon the earth, offering new destinies to the world. The haven, the aurora, the rainbow, the dove, the ark of salvation, the Paradise of the heavenly Adam, the creation whereof the former was but a shadow: all this art thou, sweet infant, in whom already dwell all grace, all truth, all life.

Thou art the little cloud, which the father of prophets in the suppliant anguish of his soul awaited; and thou bringest refreshment to the parched earth. Under the weakness of thy fragile form, appears the Mother of fair love and of holy hope. Thou art that other light cloud of exquisite fragrance, which our desert sends up to heaven. In the incomparable humility of thy soul, which knows not itself, the Angels, standing like armed warriors around thy cradle, recognize their Queen.

O Tower of the true David; citadel withstanding the first shock of Satan’s attack, and breaking all his power; true Sion, founded on the holy mountains, the highest summits of virtue; temple and palace, feebly foreshadowed by those of Solomon; house built by Eternal Wisdom for herself: the faultless lines of thy fair architecture were planned from all eternity. Together with Emmanuel, who predestined thee for his home of delights, thou art thyself, O blessed child, the crowning point of creation, the divine ideal fully realized on earth.

Let us, then, understand the Church when, even on this day, she proclaims thy divine maternity, and unites in her chants of praise the birth of Emmanuel and thine own. He who, being Son of God by essence, willed to be also Son of man, had, before all other designs, decreed that he would have a Mother. Such, consequently, was the primordial, absolute character of that title of mother, that in the eternal decree, it was one with the very being of the chosen creature, the motive and cause of her existence, as well as the source of all her perfections natural and supernatural. We too, then, must recognize thee as Mother, even from thy very cradle, and must celebrate thy birthday by adoring thy Son our Lord.

Inasmuch as it embraces all the brethren of the Man-God, thy blessed maternity sheds its rays upon all time, both before and after this happy day. God is our king before ages: he hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth. “The midst of the earth,” says the Abbot of Clairvaux, “admirably represents Mary. Mary is the center of the universe, the ark of God, the cause of creation, the business of ages. Towards her turn the inhabitants of heaven and the dwellers in the place of expiation, the men that have gone before us, and we that are now living, those who are to follow us, our children’s children and their descendants. Those in heaven look to her to have their ranks filled up; those in purgatory look for their deliverance; the men of the first ages, that they may be found faithful prophets; those that come after, that they may obtain eternal happiness. Mother of God, Queen of heaven, Sovereign of the world, all generations shall call thee blessed, for thou hast brought forth life and glory for all. In thee the Angels ever find their joy, the just find grace, sinners pardon; in thee, and by thee, and from thee, the merciful hand of the Almighty has reformed the first creation.”

[September 8 The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary]


September 8, 1565: The Founding of America's First Parish, Saint Augustine (Florida)



Monday September 8 is not only the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is the nativity of Catholicism in the United States as the first parish of this country was established 460 years ago in Saint Augustine, Florida.

On this date, Pedro Menédez de Avilés, Captain-General of the Spanish Indies Fleet, after a two-month harrowing voyage from Spain, disembarked from his ship onto this new soil, and giving thanks to God, kissed a cross planted in the ground by his chaplain (America's first "pastor"), Fr. Fransico Lopez de Mendoz Grajales, as the Te Deum was chanted.

Menédez, the newly appointed governor of this first permanent European settlement in today's United States, proclaimed the land “Nombre de Dios”, in the Name of God. Fr. Lopez then offered a Mass in thanksgiving, followed by a feast with the Timucuan natives who were present to see these new arrivals and this “new” religion – hence the first Thanksgiving Day in America’s history.

The settlement and parish were named after Saint Augustine, for it was 12 days earlier, on his feast day August 28, 1565, that Menédez first sighted the land known as La Florida (the name La Florida already being given by Ponce de Leon on Easter Saturday 1513 during his exploration voyage near the same location).

Thus September 8, 1565 began the first permanent European settlement in today's United States of America, the first Thanksgiving, the first parish Mass, and as historian Michael V. Gannon wrote in The Cross in the Sand,

'It was also the beginning of the parish of Saint Augustine and of the permanent service of the Catholic Church in what is now the United States."

Gannon continues, "From that place, for 198 uninterrupted years, priests and laymen would carry Christianity and civilization into the wild interior: first diocesan, then Jesuit, and finally Franciscan missionaries would drop their lamps of faith and knowledge into the darkness as far as Virginia to the north, and Texas in the west, and write their names into one of the least known but most heroic chapters of American and Catholic history."

~

Featured below are photographs of the birthplace of Catholicism in America (preceded by descriptions).

  • Site of where Fr. Lopez (America's first pastor) held the cross kissed by Governor Menédez upon landing at Saint Augustine, Florida
  • Painting of Governor Menédez and Fr. Lopez in the Saint Augustine Cathedral
  • Rustic altar at the reported site of the first parish Mass on September 8, 1565, offered by Fr. Lopez at Mission Nombre de Dios, Saint Augustine, Florida
  • Current Cathedral of Saint Augustine, Florida (1797)
  • Current Mission Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche (1915), first established in 1615
  • Statue of Our Lady of La Lache (Our Lady of the Milk), an ancient Marian devotion from Bethlehem that was introduced by the Spanish to Saint Augustine and honored also by the Timucuan native converts
 

Happy birthday to the Catholic Church in the United States America!

Our Lady of La Leche and Saint Augustine, pray for us!