Laudetur Iesus Christus! Tomorrow Tuesday December 8 is the patronal feast of the United States, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Here are the Masses around the region:

Feast of the Immaculate Conception – Tuesday December 8

Tuesday is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the patronal feast day for the United States since 1846. If the U.S. were a Catholic Country (which we pray it will be someday), December 8 would be essentially our national feast day or holy day (e.g. holiday).  Our national shrine in Washington is named after this title of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and sits at the highest elevation in U.S. capital city. For more on this splendid feast day visit: https://www.fisheaters.com/customsadvent5.html

As Fr. Reid noted in Sunday’s bulletin, while Tuesday is not a holy day of obligation (due to the Bishop’s lifting of the Mass obligation), if you are in good health, Father encourages you to attend Mass. We have at least five Latin Masses offered in diocesan parishes tomorrow:

• • St. Ann, 6:00pm, Solemn High Mass
  • St. Jude, Sapphire Valley, 12pm (Presumably Low) (this is Fr. Barone’s parish 3 hours west of Charlotte – call parish to re-confirm)
  • St. Elizabeth of the Hill Country, Boone, 6:00pm (Low or High Mass)
  • St. John the Baptist, Tryon, 6:30pm, (Presumably High Mass)
  • Our Lady of Grace, Greensboro, 7:00pm, High Mass

Rorate Mass Saturday December 12 (Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe)

• St. Ann, 6:30am, Solemn High Mass (A Rorate Mass is a beautiful candlelight Latin Mass at dawn to herald the arrival of the Light of the World at Christmas, and to honor Our Lady)

Annual Blessing of Religious objects – Sunday December 20 

• Annual Blessing of all religious items after the St. Ann Sunday 12:30pm Latin Mass. Please bring your items to the narthex prior to Mass.
  

Friday January 1 – Feast of the Circumcision  

• St. Ann, 9am (Tentative time)
• St. Mark, 12:30pm, (High)
• St. Thomas Aquinas, (High)
  

Wednesday January 6 – Feast of the Epiphany 

• St. Ann parish – 6pm High Mass followed by blessing of water, chalk, and salt. Please bring your filled water bottles or containers, salt, and chalk. The blessing usually takes 45 minutes.
  

Reflections on the Immaculate Conception & America: Lastly, with tomorrow being our nation’s patronal feast day, we include an article by the FSSP about Fr. Jacques Marquette, the great 17^th century Jesuit missionary of the upper Midwest: https://fssp.com/a-corona-worth-spreading/

Fr. Marquette had a devotion to the Immaculate Conception and even composed a prayer which we paste below. You may wish to pray this tomorrow, and pray for the conversion of our entire nation to the Catholic Church. As Pope Leo XIII wrote about our nation in 1895, the current state of the Catholic Church in America is not ideal:

… [I]t would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. – Pope Leo XIII, Longinqua, January 6, 1895

Prayer to the Immaculate Conception (composed by Fr. Marquette):

Pray 1 Our Father and 1 Hail Mary 

Pray 4 times these words: Hail Daughter of God the Father, Hail Mother of God the Son, Hail Spouse of the Holy Ghost, Hail Temple of the entire Trinity. Through thy holy virginity and Immaculate Conception, o Virgin most pure, cleanse my heart and my flesh. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost  

Concluding with the Glory Be (pray in full three times).