Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Friends in Christ,

Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday (February 9, 2025) is the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, which, due to the late occurrence of this year’s Easter, falls in its proper time of February (instead of November as it occurred last year). In the parable pronounced by Jesus in the Gospel reading for this Sunday, the enemy who came and oversowed cockle among the wheat represents the devil. The servants of the property owner – who, discerning the evil deed, wish to pull up the bad weeds – are the angels ever anxious to do the will of God. But the goodman (who represents God Himself) tells them to let both wheat and cockle grow until the harvest lest in rooting out the weeds, wheat be uprooted too. At the time of the harvest (the Last Judgment) the cockle is to be collected first and bound in bundles to be burned (in hell). Then will the wheat be gathered into the goodman’s barn (which is Heaven).


Calendar of Special Observances

Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962.

DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)

Sunday, February 9 – Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (II)

Monday, February 10 – St. Scholastica, Virgin (III)

Tuesday, February 11 – The Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate (III)

Wednesday, February 12 – Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Confessors (III)

Thursday, February 13 – Feria (IV)

Friday, February 14 – Feria (IV) – Commemoration of St. Valentine, Priest and Martyr (IV)

Saturday, February 15 – Feria (IV) – Saints Faustinus and Jovita, Martyrs (IV)


Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

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


Latin Mass Schedule: Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (February 9, 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)

  • 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 (February 10-February 15)

Charlotte Area Latin Masses

  • Saint Ann – Wednesday, 6:00 p.m. (Farewell reception for Fr. Jones after Mass)

  • 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) – 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.

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.


Announcements

Father Jones Farewell Reception - Wednesday February 12, 7:00 p.m. – Saint Ann will be sponsoring a farewell reception for Father Jones after the 6:00 p.m. Latin Mass on Wednesday February 12. A light reception will be held in the Allen Center. Many did not have a chance to say goodbye Father, so this will be an opportunity to thank him and wish him well on his new assignment.

FSSP’s Annual Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes (February 2-10) – Please join the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), in their ongoing annual novena and consecration to Our Lady of Lourdes which began last Sunday February 2 and concludes Monday February 10. All friends of the FSSP and Latin Mass are invited to participate and pray the consecration prayer on February 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The novena is organized in thanksgiving for the Holy Father’s support for the FSSP’s “practice and charism” in offering the Mass of 1962. Novena and Consecration to Our Lady of Lourdes [Download the Novena]

Epiphany kits, chalk, and salt available at Saint Ann after 12:30 p.m. Latin Mass – If you missed the recent Epiphany blessings, the Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society has limited supplies of blessed chalk and salt, as well as individual Epiphany water bottles, available for pickup. Please stop by our information table at Saint Ann after the 12:30 p.m. Sunday Latin Mass while supplies last. Additionally, as a reminder, Saint Ann and Saint Thomas Aquinas (and a few other parishes) also have Epiphany water available at their Holy Water fonts in the narthex while quantities last.

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.

*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).


Latin Mass and Liturgical News


Saints and Special Observances

The Apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes this Tuesday (February 11) commemorates the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto at Lourdes on February 11, 1858, and seventeen subsequent dates.

The Soubirous family was desperately poor and lived in a squalid one-room dwelling that had formerly been the city jail. Bernadette was asthmatic and, perhaps because of poor health, a slow learner who had yet to master the catechism.

Bernadette went out on the fateful day with her sister, Toinette, and a friend named Jeanne Abadie to collect firewood. While the other girls had only their sabots on their feet, Bernadette had yielded to her mother’s insistence that she wear stockings and take the family cape to shield her against the cold. When the girls reached the rocky promontory known as Massabielle, Toinette and Jeanne decided to wade across the shallow canal that ran nearby in order to seek wood along the bank of the River Gave.

Reluctant to remove her stockings in order to follow, Bernadette watched her sister and their friend make their way through the icy cold water to the other side of the canal and walk away along the Gave. When they disappeared from view, she changed her mind and, leaning against a boulder, she began to pull off a stocking. What follows is her own account of what happened next.

I had hardly begun to take off my stocking when I heard the sound of wind, as in a storm. I turned towards the meadow, and I saw that the trees were not moving at all. I had half-noticed, but without paying any particular heed, that the branches and brambles were waving beside the grotto.

I went on taking my stockings off, and was putting one foot into the water, when I heard the same sound in front of me. I looked up and saw a cluster of branches and brambles underneath the topmost opening in the grotto tossing and swaying to and fro, though nothing else stirred all round.

Behind these branches and within the opening, I saw immediately afterwards a girl in white, no bigger than myself, who greeted me with a slight bow of the head; at the same time, she stretched out her arms slightly away from her body, opening her hands, as in pictures of Our Lady; over her right arm hung a rosary.

Frightened, Bernadette stepped back, wanting to call the other girls but lacking the courage to do so. She lowered her gaze and rubbed her eyes, thinking that she must be seeing things. When she looked up again she saw the girl smiling “most graciously and seeming to invite me to come nearer.”

Then I thought of saying my prayers. I put my hand in my pocket. I took out the rosary I usually carry on me. I knelt down and I tried to make the sign of the Cross, but I could not lift my hand to my forehead: it fell back.

She watched as the girl stepped to one side and turned towards her, holding her own large beads in her hand. When the girl in the grotto crossed herself, Bernadette lifted her trembling hand and found she was able to make the sign of the cross. “After that,” she recalled, “I was not afraid.”

Reciting the Rosary while the other slipped her beads through her fingers but did not move her lips, Bernadette took in every detail of her appearance. She wore a long white dress that covered her from head to toe and an equally long white veil. On each foot was a yellow rose, and around her waist was a blue sash that hung beneath her knees. Even the yellow chain of her rosary and its well-spaced large white beads were taken in by Bernadette as she knelt in prayer.

"The girl was alive, very young and surrounded with light. When I had finished my Rosary, she bowed to me smilingly. She retired within the little niche and disappeared all of a sudden."

Thus was concluded the first of the 18 apparitions that would later be commemorated on February 11th each year as the Apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes. Pressed by the local priest, Fr. Peyramale, to ask the Lady her name, Bernadette finally obtained an answer on the Feast of the Annunciation: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Born on January 7, 1844, Bernadette Soubirous died in the convent of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers on April 16, 1879. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8th, 1933.

Source: Saint Bernadette Soubirous, 1844-1879 by Abbé François Trochu, translated by John Joyce, S.J. (Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1985).


Closing Commentary

In closing, we share a commentary extracted from The Liturgical Year of Dom Prosper Guéranger on “Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.” A link to the full text of the great liturgist’s commentary follows the extract.


Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

The Kingdom of Heaven, here spoken of by our Lord, is the Church Militant,- the society of them that believe in him. And yet, the field he has tilled with so much care is oversowed with cockle; heresies have crept in, scandals have abounded; are we, on that account, to have misgivings about the foresight of the Master, who knows all things, and without whose permission nothing happens? Far from us be such a thought!

He himself tells us that these things must needs be. Man has been gifted with free-will; it is for him to choose between good and evil; but, God will turn all to his own greater glory. Heresies, then, like weeds in a field, may spring up in the Church; but the day must come when they will be uprooted; some of them will wither on the parent-stems, but the whole cockle shall be gathered into bundles to burn.

Where are now the heresies that sprang up in the first ages of the Church? And in another hundred years, what will have become of the heresy, which, under the pretentious name of The Reformation, has caused incalculable evil? It is the same with the scandals which rise up within the pale of the Church; - they are a hard trial; but trials must come.

The Divine Husbandman wills not that this cockle be torn up, lest the wheat should suffer injury. First of all, the mixture of good and bad is an advantage; it teaches the good not to put their hopes in man, but in God. Then too, the mercy of our Lord is so great, that at times the very cockle is converted, by Divine grace, into wheat.

We must, therefore, have patience. But, whereas it is when the men are asleep that the enemy oversows the field with cockle, it behoves us to pray for Pastors, and ask their Divine Master to bless them with that Vigilance, which is the primary condition of the flock being safe, and is so essential a quality in every Bishop, that his very name is, - one who watches. [Fifth Sunday after Epiphany]