Forty Hours 2014 at Holy Innocents in NYC - Opening Mass

These are pictures of the opening Mass of the Forty Hours Prayer (Devotion) at the Church of the Holy Innocents this past weekend (from Friday November 7th, 2014 through Sunday, November 9th, 2014).

Part of the intentions of many people participating in this beautiful traditional devotion was thanksgiving for the fact that the Church of the Holy Innocents has been allowed to remain open by the Archdiocese of New York.

In time for this devotion, there were newly refurbished Altar candlesticks and Cross (which arrived a little before the time of the Mass), along with the Monstrance that is used (more or less) only once a year.

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Photos taken by Mr. Arrys Ortanez

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XXI Sunday after Pentecost - Church of the Holy Innocents

These are pictures of the Sung Mass at the Church of the Holy Innocents (midtown Manhattan) on Sunday, November 2nd, 2014 at 10:30am. It was the Mass for the 21st Sunday after Pentecost. It was a beautiful Mass, with a lot of servers, beautiful music (Palestrina), and a big congregation.

 

It was at the end of this Mass that the administrator of the parish announced the final decision that the Church of the Holy Innocents will remain open. Many people were very happy: many cried, others clapped, and they were all very emotional and relieved that their spiritual home will still be nourishing them with the daily traditional Mass.

At the end of Vespers and Benediction (which takes place every Sunday at 2:30pm), a solemn Te Deum was sung in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in thanksgiving for the good news that the Church of the Holy Innocents will remain open.

 

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Photos taken by Mr. Arrys Ortañez

 

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ALL SOULS' DAY - Holy Innocents Church, NYC

On November 3rd, 2014, the Church of the Holy Innocents in midtown Manhattan (NYC) will be observing the Commemoration of All Souls' Day with a traditional Solemn Mass at 6pm.

The Choir will sing Critobal Morales' Missa pro defunctis for 5 voices.

Fr. Carlos Viego will be the Celebrant of the Mass.

Tapers will be distributed to be held at the Gospel, during the Canon, and for the Rite of Absolution.

 

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RESPECT for the dead is not an exclusively Christian sentiment … But it is Christianity that has strengthened, transformed and elevated these deep-seated sentiments of our common nature. They are no longer vague and uncertain; they are sustained and sanctioned by revealed truth and, in particular, they rest upon the central dogma of our faith, the resurrection of the dead. The dead body will come to life again. Nay, it is not dead, but sleepeth. It is only buried—typically, no less than really, laid in a narrow “cell,” in a place of “rest,” “in a hostelry,” to await the angel’s trumpet call at the end of time.

 

Catholic teaching regarding prayers for the dead is bound up inseparably with the doctrine of Purgatory and the more general doctrine of the Communion of the Caints, which is an article of the Apostle's Creed. The Council of Trent (Sess. XXV) defined, “purgatory exists, and the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar.”

 

Before the death of Christ, to die was seemingly to fall into nothingness, or, at least, to lose the body for ever, the spirit to grope its way through shadows of the unknown. Christ expelled those shadows with His light, and because good Christians now belong to Christ, not to the devil, they are Christ's to live and to die with Him; and therefore, death opens up to them on their departure from this life prospects of unalloyed happiness