Marvels of Mass

Votive candles.  What are they and why do we light them?

We have several places at Prince of Peace where you can light votive candles in church or the chapel.  So why do we do this?  Almost nothing says “Catholic” like votive candles, especially if they are placed before images or statues in a church.  The Church has a long tradition dating back to the words of Christ regarding light and the connection with candles.

“I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

This week’s question is ‘what is a mass intention’?  For the answer to this question, I am quoting Philip Kosloski from an article he wrote in 2017.  He explains it all very well!

One part of Catholic culture that is sometimes hard to understand and very often misunderstood is the custom of offering Mass intentions. When a priest celebrates Mass each day, he offers each celebration of the Eucharist for a particular person, or intention. By doing so he applies special graces from God upon that person or intention.

In many liturgical scholars’ thoughts, this feast of the Epiphany of the Lord should begin perhaps its own liturgical season, separate from Christmas and encompassing the next three Sundays.  The word ‘Epiphany’ is often referred to as a manifestation, or an experience of striking and sudden realization; its actual etymology comes from Greek and means ‘to appear’.   This weekend, with the Three Kings, we have the first of these ‘epiphanies’.  The Three Kings symbolize people gathered from the non-Jewish parts of the world at the time to proclaim the importance of the birth of this Holy Chil

Happy Birthday!  The Church celebrates its beginning today on Pentecost Sunday, when the Holy Spirit filled the hearts of the faithful, sending them out to spread the Gospel, and the Church was born.  In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of how the Holy Spirit came to rest on all of the gathered disciples, and people from across the nations could hear and understand all that was being proclaimed in their native tongue – even though all the speakers were from Galilee.  Today at some of the masses, the readings or prayers may be proclaimed in other languages – a celebra

This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension.  For some of the older members of the Church, you may remember that this Feast used to be celebrated on a Thursday and was a Holy Day of Obligation.  This Feast of the Ascension falls 40 days after Easter (when counting both the day of Easter and the Thursday of Ascension), but has in more modern times been transferred to the following Sunday as it is no longer a Holy day of Obligation.  It was possibly done so to make the solemnity of this feast celebrated more fully in churches and more fully by more people.  From the USCCB website: “Th