In Your Mercy Will You Help Build Up the Body of Christ?

Is your parish a lighthouse guiding and rescuing souls?

Fund raiser for the Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel in Front Royal, VA.

It's been a long, tough year hasn't it? 

2020 will go down as the dark time when most Catholic churches throughout the world turned off the lights, locked the doors, and left the flock out in the cold prey of the wolves. Public daily Mass just about disappeared. Priests continued to offer the Mass alone while folks at home were allowed to join virtually, but the bread of heaven was denied almost everywhere as clergy bowed to a "pandemic" that over 99% of people younger than 70 survived. Meanwhile many bishops levied restrictions even more draconian than those imposed by our modern-day Herods.

Here in the Shenandoah Valley, we were fortunate to have the SSPX priests from the seminary in Dillwyn, VA come to the rescue of the flock. Every Sunday several priests, brothers, and seminarians made the five-hour trip to Front Royal to offer Sunday Mass at the fairgrounds. For months we attended sitting in our cars and then moved to an outdoor pavillion. A priest sat in a chair in the field and ministered to the many socially distanced penitents waiting to confess. Meanwhile, back at diocesan parishes the priests celebrated alone and some even engaged in abominations like "drive-through Communion" or distributing hosts to be raised up by the laity during the Consecration and then distributed to their families.

Thanks be to God, my husband and I never missed a Sunday Mass thanks to the zealous priests of God and the many laity who set up, assisted in the parking, and helped in all ways to facilitate! Regularly attending the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) not only stirred up the embers of memory from childhood, but gave us the gift of silence and sublime reverence and increased love for the Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice.

When Mass was restored at our local parish, we returned to daily attendance there, but we couldn't just walk away from a community that served us so faithfully during the dark time. We prayed and pondered and decided we owed a tremendous debt of gratitude. So we continue our Sunday attendance at what became the Immaculate Heart of Mary Mission which now meets in a rented office space in Linden, VA. 

I once again used the missal my parents gave me in 1959. With a beat up binding taped together and with the inscription "To Mary Ann on her 9th birthday" in my mother's handwriting, that missal has become my weekly beloved companion. I ordered my husband a new missal, but I couldn't bear to think of replacing mine with another. 

May crowning at the chapel

The chapel has the opportunity to buy a piece of property and to build a permanent community here in the Valley, but we need help. If my blog has ever blessed you, I hope you will donate "the widow's mite" to help bring the dream of a permanent home for our chapel to reality. With the pending Vatican document that threatens to restrict the Traditional Latin Mass, Archbishop Lefebvre's sons remain a beacon of light for Holy Mother Church. The schism that threatens her doesn't come from them, but from centers of depravity like a large part of the German Catholic Church. 

Please help to provide a lighthouse here in the Shenandoah Valley to offer help and rescue in the storm. And then come and see for yourself. The door is open and the lights are on! And while you're here, come see me at Camp Kreitzer. I'll brew coffee or a pot of tea or perhaps a glass of wine for:

 Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,

There’s always laughter and good red wine.

At least I’ve always found it so.

Benedicamus Domino!

 

    Hillaire Belloc