Posts tagged with 'Meetings'

Saturday 12/20 meeting cancelled

December 19th, 2008

Based on the forecast for Friday, we thought it prudent to cancel the monthly Serra meeting for December.

The weathermen have now upped the snow accumulation totals for Friday and are saying we could get up to a foot. The storm is supposed to wind down “early in the morning” on Saturday, but that means a lot of shoveling to get out of those driveways!

So let’s all stay safe and warm in our homes on Saturday morning and pray for one another. Hopefully we can gather on the 3rd Saturday of the New Year of grace: January 17th.

See you then, God-willing! A Blessed Christmas to you all.

Posted in Meetings

Sat 9/20 meeting with Mr. Daniel Kennedy

September 14th, 2008

Just a reminder that our next monthly meeting is this Saturday, September 20th. Our guest speaker will be Mr. Daniel Kennedy, father of Rev. Daniel Kennedy who passed away in January of this year. Mr. Kennedy will talk about Fr. Kennedy, his son’s vocation and his love for the priesthood.

Also, please check your calendars and see if it would be possible for you to help Fr. Dan Hennessey and the Vocations Office with the Altar Server Appreciation Mass and ice cream social on Saturday, October 4th at the cathedral. Volunteers are needed to man the tables and are asked to help out in any way possible! For more information on this event, please visit the Vocations Boston page on the Altar Server Appreciation Mass, or register an altar server for the event at the online registration form.

See you this Saturday!

Posted in Events, Meetings

Next meeting: Saturday July 19

July 13th, 2008

Our next meeting is this coming Saturday, July 19th at St. Mary’s in Waltham. We will be honored to have Fr. Mike Harrington, Assistant Director of Vocations for the archdiocese, as the celebrant for Mass at 8:30 AM. (Fr. Dan Hennessey is making his way “Down Under” for another “intimate gathering” with the Holy Father at World Youth Day in Sydney!)

Michelle Dickson and Loretta Gallagher will report on their participation at the Serra National Conference held in South Bend, Indiana in June. One thing we can tell you: there is great excitement from Serrans all over the country about the future chartering of the Serra Club of Boston — and that joy is very contagious !! So please, everyone, try and bring a friend to the meeting so we can reach our quota of members for club chartering in the spring!

The sale of the “Pray for Our Priests” magnets is going really well. Thanks to the June 8th article in Our Sunday Visitor (a national publication), we have had many requests for them from all over the country. We now have lapel pins for sale also. They will be available at the meeting.

One of our members, Geraldine DiBenedetto has been invited to talk about Serra on radio and also represent Serra Boston at an upcoming Catholic festival in North Andover. The Adopt-a-Priest Apostolate is almost ready to roll and you can hear more about that on Saturday. So a lot is happening and all are invited to share in the excitement !!

See you Saturday, God-willing. If it is warm, we will have that much more to “offer up” on behalf of our seminarians, priests and religious (not to mention Fr. Dan and all those traveling to Australia for World Youth Day)

Posted in Meetings

Spiritual Motherhood

June 23rd, 2008

At our meeting on Saturday, June 21, we discussed the practice of “spiritual motherhood” discussed by the Congregation for Clergy, and shared personal stories and practical benefits of providing priests with this form of support.

Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, explained the practice of spiritual motherhood:

“Regardless of age and marital status, all women can become spiritual mothers for a priest,” he explained. He said the commitment implies praying “for a specific priest and thus accompanying him for life,” usually anonymously.

Cardinal Hummes added, “This, as history tells us, produces great spiritual fruits for priests” who “spend their whole life, even with their limits, for God and for their neighbor […] preaching and cultivating the good, helping people.”

More of Cardinal Hummes’ remarks are available at Zenit.org: Priests need prayers.

In a document published in 2007, the Congregation for Clergy wrote of spiritual motherhood, giving some historical examples:

Independent of age or social status, any woman can become a mother for priests. This type of motherhood is not only for mothers of families, but is just as possible for an unmarried girl, a widow, or for someone who is ill. It is especially pertinent for missionaries and religious sisters who have given their lives entirely to God for the sanctification of others. John Paul II even thanked a child for her motherly help: “I also express my gratitude to Bl. Jacinta for the sacrifices and prayers offered for the Holy Father, whom she saw suffering greatly.”(13 May 2000)

Every priest has a birth mother, and often she is a spiritual mother for her children as well. For example, Giuseppe Sarto, the future Pope Pius X, visited his 70-year-old mother after being ordained a bishop. She kissed her son’s ring and, suddenly pensive, pointed out her own simple silver wedding band saying, “Yes, Giuseppe, you would not be wearing that ring if I had not first worn mine.” Pope St. Pius X rightfully confirms his experience that, “Every vocation to the priesthood comes from the heart of God, but it goes through the heart of a mother!”

One sees this particulary well in the life of St. Monica. Augustine, who lost his faith at the age of 19 while studying in Carthage, later wrote in his famous “Confessions” regarding his mother:“For love of me, she cried more tears than a mother would over the bodily death of her son. Nine years passed in which I wallowed in the slime of that deep pit and the darkness of falsehood. Yet that pious widow desisted not all the hours of her supplications, to bewail my case unto Thee where her prayers entered into Thy presence.”

The full document is available for download at the Congregation for Clergy web site, or at the link below:

Congregation for Clergy: Spiritual Motherhood for Priests (PDF)

At our last meeting of Serra Boston, Fr. Dan noted that there was a groundswell of support for vocations in the archdiocese of Boston. For example, the St. John Vianney Society, a women’s prayer group which meets every 3rd Saturday for Eucharistic Adoration and prayer for vocations at St. Mary’s in Waltham. The society was started spontaneously as a way to gather women to pray for vocations to the priesthood – about a month BEFORE Our Sunday Visitor published an article on spiritual motherhood in their May 25 issue!

Attendees at the meeting shared stories about supporting priests, praying for priestly ministry, and the practical nature of spiritual motherhood. No human being is meant to be alone, and all too often the “human” side of priests is overlooked as people view them as something other than men. It greatly helps when priests can interact with their community and socialize with others.

Here are links to several publications we talked about during the meeting:

Our Sunday Visitor
Our Sunday Visitor: Eucharist and Motherhood article (paid subscription required)
Congregation for Clergy
The Pilot

Our next meeting will be Saturday, July 19 at 8:30am at St. Mary’s Parish (133 School St, Waltham, MA). We hope to see you there!

Posted in Meetings, Recap

Our Sunday Visitor and other events

June 19th, 2008

Serra Boston was featured In the June 8th edition of Our Sunday Visitor. Page 3 had a sidebar article telling of our “Pray for Our Priests” car magnets, with an accompanying photo. Fr. Mike Harrington, Assistant Director of Vocations for the Archdiocese of Boston, was quoted in the article. To date we have received requests for the magnet from Missouri, Indiana, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Maryland and Massachusetts. Clearly, the word is spreading fast!

Serra USA is looking into the possibility of getting involved with the distribution of the magnets on a national level. Two of our club members, Loretta Gallagher and Michelle Dickson, will be attending the national Serra conference in South Bend, Indiana from June 19-22, meeting Serrans from all over the country and attending various Serra workshops. We have been asked to present a short report on Serra Boston to the Vocations Committee; they are impressed with all we have done in so short a time.

Serra Boston was also in the news recently in the Vocations issue of the Pilot issued the weekend of the ordinations (May 23). We took out an ad congratulating the new ordinandi, and there was an accompanying article about Serra Boston. We have received several thank you notes from the seven newly ordained priests, thanking Serra Boston for the gift of a clerical shirt and collar. We are only too happy to have provided them, thanks to the donation of a generous benefactor!

Next meeting

At our next meeting on June 21, Fr. Dan Hennessey will give a talk on the recent Vatican document describing deep prayer and Eucharistic Adoration for an increase in vocations and the sanctification of the priesthood. There will be a day of Eucharistic Adoration in St. Mary’s chapel following the Serra meeting until 7:00 PM, sponsored by the St. John Vianney society. Why not invite some friends to join and spend some time in prayer in front of the Blessed Eucharist?

That’s all for now. Thanks for all your wonderful support and encouragement — we ARE making a difference in helping to create the culture of vocations that we all desire so deeply for our beloved archdiocese.

See you Saturday, God-willing!