visible rhetoric

Today we celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Mother. This is a unique celebration because birthdays are not usually celebrated in the church. When we celebrate the feast of the saints, we do not celebrate their day of birth but their birthday to eternal life – their death, in short. But there are three exemptions to this rule.

Today we bury a familiar sight in the cathedral for so many years. She was my parishioner for 3 years and a half when I was first assigned here 15 years ago, and she was my neighbor for eleven years when I was assigned in the seminary. Our meetings were not really that long to permit me to know her intimately. It was always passing, literally passing – usually on that street corner as Seminario St. turns right to the Cathedral.

The feast of the Queenship of Mary was instituted by Pius the XII in 1954. It is to be recalled that it was Pius XI who had instituted the liturgical feast of Christ, the King in 1925 to emphasize the primacy of Christ who will rule and bring lasting peace to a world torn by turmoil during the early part of the 20th century. This was done after the so called Great World War or what we call now in history as World War I. Pope Pius XII deemed it appropriate to institute the liturgical feast of the Queenship of Mary to emphasize Mary’s participation in the work of Christ, the King, and he did it also 10 years after the war known as World War II, just when the world was entering into what we now refer to in history as the cold war.

You ask me to reflect with you on the unity of the clergy and the laity. What is unity? What does unity consist of? A parish priest once declared, I am the captain of the ship. We have only two rules in this parish: first, the captain is always right; second, if the captain is wrong, refer to rule number one. And so one day a parishioner was asked, “Ma’am, is there unity in the parish where you belong?” “Yes of course,” the lady answered, “whatever the parish priest says, we follow.”