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Sunday, January 17, 2010
SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

MONDAY, JANUARY 18, WEEKDAY

TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, WEEKDAY

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, ST. FABIAN, POPE & MARTYR and ST. SEBASTIAN, MARTYR

THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, ST. AGNES, VIRGIN & MARTYR

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, ST. VINCENT, DEACON & MARTYR
Day of Penance: Anniversary of Roe vs Wade

SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, WEEKDAY

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

* The Parish Offices will be CLOSED on Monday, January 18^th in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Words of Wisdom from Saintly Priests:
St. John of the Cross

People, then, should live with great patience and constancy in all the tribulations and trials God places on them, whether they be exterior or interior, spiritual or bodily, great or small, and they should accept them all as from God’s hand as a good remedy and not flee from them, for they bring health … (they) will cut off the roots of your sins and imperfections — your evil habits. The combat of trials, distress, and temptations deadens the evil and imperfect habits of the soul and purifies and strengthens it. People should hold in esteem the interior and exterior trials God sends them, realizing that there are few who merit to be brought to perfection through suffering and to undergo trials for the sake of so high a state.

RESPECT LIFE UPDATES

** See this week’s Respect Life bulletin inserts! **
** Includes updates on the January 22^nd March for Life! **
Bus sign-up sheet in the Russell Road vestibule.
** Includes upcoming Respect Life activities! **

Our Respect Life Mass for January will be celebrated next Saturday, January 23^rd at 8:00 AM. See this week’s Mass schedule for January’s Respect Life intention..

Respect Life volunteers are always needed. If you feel called to this important work, please contact Joe Schramm at 202-466-0555, or email at jschramm@schrammadvertising.com (This is a business phone, but you may leave a message).

Year-end tax information

Thank You for using the green forms when requesting your year-end tax letter. Those requests currently on file will be mailed the week of January 25^th, with all subsequent requests being honored as we receive them.

Please note: All envelopes and loose checks (including bank checks) dated December 2009 (or before) — and received in our office prior to January 13^th — have been posted to your 2009 fund account.

** We are no longer accepting 2009 donations! **
ALL donations are now being posted to 2010!

Now that your Christmas decorations have been safely stored away and your house put back in order — you may have come across a few household items that you no longer need. Remember that ALIVE! can use your discarded housewares and furniture. Housewares include linens, pots, pans, dishes, small appliances, lamps, etc. To donate furniture for pick-up, call 703-837-9300, press #3 and leave a message. To donate housewares, call Susanne Arnold at 703-683-5138.

SPECIAL THANKS! for the recent donations of grocery store gift cards. We had a fist-full to give Susanne during her recent office visit!! Please remember the importance of these gift cards, which provide our folks with perishable food items not otherwise available. Thanks again, and may God reward you.

Non-perishable food donations are always welcome. Leave your items in the designated baskets found in the Russell Road and office side vestibules. All such donations are given to ALIVE! — with our continued thanks for your generosity.

Lost & Found items now include a collection of hats, gloves, a few sweaters and a jacket. Reclaim your missing apparel by asking any weekend usher for assistance. This is no time to be without … Brrrr!

Are you buried in old files, records, receipts and paper? The Paul VI High School PTO can help. A secure recycling and shredding truck will be in their parking lot on Saturday, January 30^th from 10 AM until 1 PM. Your donation of $8 per box will benefit their teacher scholarship fund. Located at 10675 Fairfax Boulevard in Fairfax, Virginia.

Parish Financial Updates

PARISH UPDATES

Father Horkan’s Bible Study Series will meet this Sunday, January 17th at 7:30 PM in the Parish Center. Father’s group will complete the current discussion on Genesis, chapters 21–26. A new study will begin on Sunday, January 31st — Jacob and Esau: Conflict and Reconciliation, Genesis, chapters 26–33, and will continue on February 7th and 14th.

Please join our January SING-A-LONG at Envoy Nursing Home, located at 900 Virginia Avenue in Alexandria. The fun begins at 3 PM on Thursday, January 28^th. Come join us as we begin the New Year with an all hymn program. The winter months can be very trying for our elderly neighbors; your company and cheerful song can make all the difference! Come by and see.

Mark your calendar for a special pre-Lenten event: Our parish senior group, the STARS warmly invites all interested seniors (50+) to join them on Thursday, February 11^th in the Parish Center as our Pastor, Father Denis Donahue will help us prepare for a more fruitful Lent. Watch the bulletin for updates on this timely get-together.

News From Elsewhere

All men 18+ are invited to attend the 2010 Men’s Conference sponsored by the Diocese of Arlington. On Saturday, March 13^th at St. Joseph’s Parish Hall in Herndon, the Diocese of Arlington will host a conference that will offer men of the Diocese an opportunity to gather together and discover new ways of living out their faith in their daily lives. Confirmed speakers include: Capt. Guy Gruters, Air Force Pilot and five-year POW in Vietnam; Catholic Congressman Chris Smith of NJ; and Father Paul Scalia from the Diocese of Arlington (Pastor of St. John the Beloved in McLean, VA, and past parochial vicar here at St. Rita). Mass will be celebrated by Bishop Paul Loverde. For more information, or to learn how to register, please go to www.arlingtondiocese.org or contact Tom O’Neill at familylife@arlingtondiocese.org.

Post abortion counseling: 703-841-2504/1-888-456-HOPE
Crisis pregnancy counseling: 1-866-444-3553
* All calls are confidential and non-judgmental. *

THOUGHTS FOR THE NEW YEAR: Talk not of strength, till your heart has known and fought with weakness through long hours alone. Talk not of virtue, till your conquering soul has met temptation and gained full control. Boast not of garments, all unscorched by sin, till you have passed unscathed through fires within. — Author Unknown

THE CANONIZATION OF SAINTS – PART II

Last week’s article discussed the history and significance of the canonization of saints. This article and the next one will describe the current process the Church uses to canonize saints. The procedures are lengthy and detailed to establish with clarity that a person should be venerated as a saint. Because a saint must be a model of Catholic life, he or she must have been in the Church before the end of their life. For that reason, the Church would not canonize the likes of Gandhi, the British abolitionist, William Wilberforce, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who heroically opposed Hitler to the death. They may have been holy in their own religious traditions, but they would not be Catholic saints. In addition, canonization is based upon either martyrdom or heroic virtue, not upon the fact that someone did many good things for the Church. Thus the Church has canonized such people as Pope St. Celestine V (1294), who was a very holy monk but rather unsuccessful Pope, but has not canonized the Roman Emperor Constantine (312–337), who legalized Christianity, but waited until his deathbed to be baptized.

First, the Church usually waits five years after a person’s death to begin the process of canonization. That waiting time, which used to be 50 years, allows time for calmer emotions and more objectivity. (The waiting period was waived for Blessed Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II to build upon their example more rapidly.) After the waiting period, the bishop of the diocese where the person either died or is buried, or sometimes another bishop with an important connection, begins an investigation and, if it is going well, asks the Congregation of Saints in Rome to give its permission to proceed. If the Congregation officially allows the process to continue, the person is called a Servant of God. Some American Servants of God are: the great American preacher Archbishop Fulton Sheen; Frank Parater, a holy Richmond seminarian who died young in 1920; and Father Vincent Capadanno, a priest who was killed in 1967 while ministering to dying soldiers in Vietnam. The bishop appoints a postulator for the cause and a tribunal to investigate the person’s life. Thus, Father Daniel Mode, an Arlington priest and Navy chaplain is the postulator for Father Capadanno. The tribunal interviews witnesses, evaluates written evidence, and reads the person’s writings to get a sense of his life and spirituality, and to be sure that there is nothing heretical. If the bishop and the tribunal conclude that the cause should advance, they give the Congregation the tribunal’s report and evidence in a document called a transumptum.

If it accepts the cause, the Congregation then appoints its own postulator and tribunal to gather more information, both about the person’s life and about any miracles that have occurred through his intercession. The postulator prepares a report called a positio, which he presents to a panel of nine theologians. If the six of the theologians vote in favor of advancement, the case is then goes to a panel of cardinals and bishops. This panel carefully asks whether the person was a model of Catholic life and whether he either died as a martyr or demonstrated heroic virtue. If two thirds of that panel vote for advancement, they forward to positio to the Pope. If he agrees, the individual is declared Venerable. Father Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, was declared Venerable in 2008; similarly, the causes of Popes Pius XII and John Paul II have been advanced to the Pope, and he is expected to declare them Venerable in the spring. Next week’s article will describe the process of advancing one who has been declared Venerable to the level of blessed and then saint.

— Father Horkan