The Feast Of
The Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Mary
On Saturday, August 15, 2015, Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Church of the Holy Innocents will have a Solemn Mass at 1:00 PM celebrated by Msgr. Joseph Ambrosio (from Newark, NJ).
This year, the Feast of the Assumption marks our parish’s Fifth Anniversary of the uninterrupted daily celebration of the Latin Mass at the same High Altar that was solemnly and triumphantly consecrated in 1901.
At the end of the Mass, there will be Benediction of the Bl. Sacrament and the solemn Te Deum will be festively chanted.
Holy cards with the image of Our Lady being assumed into Heaven will also be distributed to the faithful.
After Mass and Benediction, there will be a reception in the parish hall.
All are encouraged to join the celebration!
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It will rise again!... The Mass... will rise again! ... Thus Jesus -- for Whom there are no irremovable nails -- will restore to our Mother, the Church, the object of so much of His and our love: the Mass... for which the martyrs died...
~Tito Casino
Since the formal re-introduction of the traditional Mass at the Church of the Holy Innocents in 2008, the parochial life of the parish has displaced, to some extent, its reputation of being a “commuter parish.” There is now a very strong, stable, active, and vibrant traditional community that has made Holy Innocents its spiritual home every single day of the week.
The faithful parishioners at Holy Innocents have worked hard to make it a very beautiful and welcoming spiritual home for all those who share a love for the traditional Mass and all the treasures the Church offers in Her ancient practices and immemorial ceremonies.
The traditional Mass officially returned to Holy Innocents on Saturdays at 1 PM in the summer of 2008. In January of 2009, Fr. Thomas Kallumady added the Mass on Wednesdays at 5:15pm. Then, on November 30, 2009 (the 40th anniversary of the newer form of the Mass), the traditional Mass was extended to all the days of the week, except Sundays, and the time was moved to 6 PM.
It was also in 2009 that we started to celebrate, as solemnly as possible, the annual Feast of Corpus Christi. Since 2010, this Feast has been celebrated every year with an outdoors procession around midtown Manhattan, which gives faithful members of the community a chance to express their joy at the opportunity to make such a public expression of their faith in the Most Blessed Sacrament in the middle of New York City.
Slowly (but steadily) the attendance began to grow and more parishioners began to make a great commitment to support the traditional Mass at Holy Innocents. Numerous Altar servers, volunteer singers, and many other volunteers and donors began to offer their time, money, and prayers for the increase and for the preservation of the traditional community. This was done due to the awareness that having the traditional Mass available every day (not just on Sundays) was something that should be neither under-appreciated nor easily neglected.
Then, on Sunday, August 15, 2010 (by Divine Providence, we can be sure!), the traditional Mass community began to have the Mass on Sundays at Holy Innocents, thereby making it the only parish in the Archdiocese of New York to have the traditional Mass daily. Additionally, since 2011, Holy Innocents has also been the only parish in the Archdiocese of New York to have traditional Sung Vespers every Sunday of the year.
Holy Innocents has witnessed many magnificent things in the past 7 years:
Ø Low Masses, Sung Masses, Solemn Masses, and several Pontifical Masses;
Ø Big Solemn events/Feasts, festal Masses, as well as penitential ones;
Ø Young priests, older priests, new priests and visiting priests;
Ø Priests from this Archdiocese, as well as priests from other Dioceses, and even priests from outside of the country;
Ø Solemn Blessed Sacrament processions, Forty-Hours devotions, and the all-night vigil on first Fridays;
Ø Baptisms, First Holy Communions, Confirmations, Funerals, and many weddings;
Ø And much, much more.
In addition to all of this, Holy Innocents is the only parish in NYC where the Holy Week ceremonies have been carried out according to the 1962 Liturgical books for the past 6 years (since 2010).
Therefore …
If you have ever been fortunate enough to benefit from what the parochial life of Holy Innocents has offered; if you have ever been fortunate to partake in the traditional services, rites, and ceremonies, you should join us this coming Saturday to celebrate what Holy Innocents, among all the hundreds of parishes in the Archdiocese of New York, has been able to achieve, expand, promote, and preserve … even when it was not easy to do so!
Moreover, while part of the celebration is that all these things have already taken place, the bigger part of the celebration is that, by Divine intervention, under the guidance of Fr. Leonard Villa, we still are and will be able to continue to have all these beautiful immemorial traditions in the future!
If you cannot attend, simply keep our parish community in your prayers.
So our Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that liturgy, of the days when Cæsar ruled the world and thought he could stamp out the faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as to a God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of unsolved problems, in spite of later changes, there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours.
~Fr. Adrian Fortescue
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