On October 18, the Feast of St. Luke, we met for our monthly Mass and meeting. Fr. Dan Hennessey gave an excellent homily, reflecting on the Gospel passage that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Luke 10:2) and the need to create a culture of vocations to allow young people to respond to their call.
During our meeting, we discussed the following topics:
- The Vocations Boston office is researching the possibility of opening Perpetual Adoration chapels in each of the 5 regions of the Archdiocese. The chapels’ mission would be to pray for the sanctification of priests, and to pray for an increase in vocations.
Several Serrans suggested that Saint Patrick’s in Natick already has Perpetual Adoration, and that Tewkesbury had a “rolling retreat” format that allowed each parishioner and family to commit to 1 hour of adoration.
Serrans are asked to pray for this initiative.
- We were blessed to have Doug McRoy, President-Elect of Serra US, attend the meeting. Doug shared the excitement that Serra US had about Serra Boston, and encouraged us to reach out to Serra US for any help we needed.
Doug also gave an overview of the Serra US committees (on vocations, membership, programs, and communications) and spoke about Serran activities such as the 31 Club, the parish contact program, and the traveling chalice.
During the meeting we referenced several PDFs available on the Serra US web site, which are available at the links below:
- Serra Club Manuals (links to all PDFs)
- Serra Club Vocations Manual (direct link to 6.4 MB PDF)
- Serra Handbook for Parish Vocation Activity (direct link to 2 MB PDF)
Thanks to Doug for attending our meeting!
- We continue to discover more about the previous Serra Club of Boston, which was active in the 1950s. Michelle Dickson has done a great job researching the old Serra Club, though its history seems to disappear around the 1970s.
Michelle discovered an old issue of the Serra Magazine, which had photos and articles of the Serra International conference which was held in Boston on June 25-29, 1955. Several thousand Serrans from around the globe attended the conference, as well as Cardinal Cushing (who was very active in the club) and the mayor of Boston. We passed around two photos from the event – one showing a packed ballroom at the Copley Hotel, and one showing the Serra International shield that appeared in the Boston Public Garden.
The image gallery below shows several of the black and white photos from the magazine (all photos are copyright 1955 Serra International).
- Anyone with information about the older Serra Club is encouraged to contact us at information@serraboston.org.
- Mary and Francis Jesch shared their experiences attending the last meeting of Serra Colorado. The Colorado club offers a “Serra Salute,” in which over 400 people filled a ballroom to honor priests and religious in their archdiocese.
The next meeting of the Serra Club of Boston will be on Saturday, November 15 at 8:30am at St. Mary’s Parish in Waltham.
We hope to see you there!