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From the Pastor: Big News of the Week
I cannot help but mention the biggest news of the week. There were so many Big News stories that it would normally seem difficult to figure out which would be the Biggest of the Big! But, as you know, the Holy Father’s death takes priority over everything else. Yes, Father Mangiafico, the holiest of Fathers, is the Holy Father of whom I write. His Requiem Mass was on Wednesday night, and it was touching to see how many of you came out to pray for the repose of his soul. The final count was 595 laypeople and 13 priests in attendance. The schola did an outstanding job with the solemn chants of the Requiem Mass. I really don’t know how they manage to learn and practice the necessary chants for such a Mass, as well as learning and practicing the chants for the “normal” Sunday Masses and special feast day Masses and other liturgies, but somehow they do. The altar boys, who turned out in huge numbers for Fr. Mangiafico, were amazing, especially considering that this is the first Requiem we have done for a priest, and there were several things different about it when compared to the Requiem for a layperson. Even though the boys knew that most of them would not have a liturgical role in the Mass, they still came to serve through prayer. Their love for Fr. M was on display in a beautiful way. May they each become holy priests like him. The ECCW put together a phenomenal spread of “snack foods” for a reception after the Mass. I was hardly expecting the victuals they provided. The ushers were there to keep the peace and give explanations to people who had never been to a TLM before but knew and loved Father from one of his many other ministries around the diocese. Set up and clean-up crews, and so many others who worked behind the scenes, also made sure that everything came off without a hitch. Canon Matthew Talarico, superior of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Order taking over Epiphany Shrine in a few months, changed his overly hectic schedule and flew in to be here with us in this time of mourning and said a few words after Mass. Bishop Parkes was in Rome (and is now taking part in the funeral ceremonies for a completely different Holy Father, more of whom I will write shortly) and sent his condolences. Representing him (and also representing himself, for he also loved Fr. Mangiafico) was Msgr. Bob Morris, Vicar General for the diocese and number two man to the Bishop. He also said a few words after Mass about his appreciation for the priestly ministry of Fr. Mangiafico. Later, in the social hall, Colonel Whiskeyman, specifically tapped (or is it trapped?) by Father before his death to say a few words, and who was dreading having to give a speech about his good friend, did a fine job telling about Father’s life as he eulogized him. Although the Mass took less than two hours, people stayed and reminisced until about midnight. Even with all of that, we still just barely scratched the surface of our love for such a holy priest. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen. Now, as for that other Holy Father who passed away and made big news, I hardly have to tell you what happened. His story is all over the media, with every news organization and even many anti-Catholic groups such as the Freemasons already canonizing him for his “humility” and willingness to change Church moral and disciplinary teachings. I received an email from a reporter who wanted a comment. Here is her message to me: Good morning, I’m so sorry to hear about the news of the Pope passing. I’m a reporter with ABC Action News, and I was wondering if I could coordinate an interview with someone from the church. I would like to focus on how this is affecting the Latin community. I know he was the first Latin American pontiff, which holds a special place for Hispanic Catholics. Please let me know. I’m available to chat any time between now to 1:00 pm. Thanks in advance, and I hope to hear from you soon! Best, [I will keep her name out of here so that her complete lack of even basic research in this matter will not cause her great embarrassment]. Somehow, I didn’t think that the true answer to “how this is affecting the Latin community” would fit the narrative she was looking for, so I didn’t respond. Anyway, pray for this Holy Father’s soul with at least as much fervor as you did/are doing for our own Holy Father. As Fr. Mangiafico often noted, priests are held to a higher standard of accountability before God, and therefore, the higher the priest is in the Church hierarchy, the more accountable they are for every thought, word, and action. So the exalted Bishop of Rome needs many more prayers than a humble retired priest. With no more room for Big News, I will leave you with this. The term “sedevacantist,” meaning “someone who claims that the Chair of Peter is empty of a true Pope,” is often (mis)used as a derogatory term to scorn those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass. Yet the Chair of Peter is very obviously empty at this moment, so right now all Catholics really are “sedes!” Add this to the fact that everyone at Epiphany will soon also be “Shriners,” so to speak, when the Parish becomes a Shrine, and get ready for some real fun, the Shriners being Freemasons! Wear those labels (and your fezzes) proudly! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka From the Pastor: Triduum and Easter
March 24-27, 2016. For some of you, it was a lifetime ago. For others, just a blink of the eye. For most, they are probably just a few forgotten days that simply blend in with all of the other days and years of your life. There really is nothing all too special about those particular dates, and I, too, had to go and look them up, for I had forgotten much about them. I wasn’t actually looking for particular dates but rather for a particular Holy Week, notably my first Triduum and Easter at Epiphany. Perhaps yours, too. There is much to be said for keeping a written account of the passing time, something that I do through writing a weekly bulletin article. Reading the short account of what it was like and comparing it to this year’s Triduum and Easter, there is much the same and yet so much different as well. I was celebrating the Traditional Triduum for the first time, since every previous year I celebrated it according to the New Order Missal (Novus Ordo Missale). I had very little knowledge of what to do and very little talent to be able to carry it out. I could barely chant, having only celebrated low Masses before this assignment, yet each of the Easter liturgies required much more chant than a regular Mass. The Easter Vigil and Mass, for instance, took 3 1/2 hours, and all of my parts had to be chanted. I think that if the schola hadn’t been so excited to be able to chant so much new material of their own, they would have each been bleeding through their ears listening to me hitting so many wrong notes, on the wrong key, and sometimes even with the wrong Latin words. And that year, we had no idea about the length of time the Vigil and Mass would take. I had guessed between 4 and 5 hours. There were several changes of vestments from one color to another, from priestly vestments to diaconal vestments and back again, and other “strange” things to consider. Fortunately, I am able to admit that I am completely incompetent at preparing for such things and following complicated rubrics, so others stepped in who managed to pull it off and keep me on track for the most part. We also had a “visiting” priest who stopped by for his first Traditional Easter, Fr. Vincent Capuano, who would become a big part of our Epiphany family in short order. The two of us blundered and bumbled our way through everything and somehow survived the blind leading the blind. This year, Fr. Alexander Agbata will be the “newbie” joining us for his first foray into a Traditional Easter. Like Fr. Vincent and yours truly back then, Fr. Alexander hasn’t even seen a TLM Easter Vigil, yet is jumping into it full of excitement. Fr. Mangiafico was going to train him to do the Deacon parts of a Solemn High Mass (which role Fr. M—God rest his soul—was no longer physically capable of performing), but he only had one session with him before passing away. That first year, we only had one Tenebrae service, on Good Friday, and I wrote that “It took 2 1/2 hours. Prayerful hours, though, and quite exquisite. I immediately had requests that the choir do all three Tenebrae services next Triduum!” Of course, the schola was eager to comply, so the following year they added the Holy Saturday tenebrae to the schedule to see if people would really show up. They did. The third year, the tenebrae of Holy Thursday, anticipated Wednesday evening, was also added, and we have had all three Tenebraes from that year onward. Those first years, I sat in the sanctuary as the prayers were chanted—not, God being merciful to all on Earth and in Heaven, by me—by members of the schola. In 2019, to accommodate the crowds of people desiring confession, I started hearing confessions during the chanting of Tenebrae. Because of the confessions, I no longer get a chance to bask in the beauty of the chants and candles, but filling the church with shiny halos as people are absolved more than makes up for my missing the rest. That First Holy Week at Epiphany was also the first time I did the Traditional Blessing of Easter Baskets using the Traditional Latin prayers. I had only blessed baskets in English and only for a few years up until that time, for I didn’t grow up with the custom and was only introduced to it by some wonderful Polish parishioners at my previous parish a few years before my transfer. Little did I know how many people would clamor for this blessing, whether it was new to them or a long-loved part of their family/parish Easter celebration. As I look back on my first Holy Week and other “firsts” that I was able to experience here, I am filled with joy for the gifts God and the Bishop gave me with this assignment. Many of you have been here with me for the entire time. Even more of you have come along for part of the journey, and all of us, I dare say, have benefited from returning to the roots of our Catholic Faith in the way we celebrate the Venerable and Ancient Rites. This year marks not only my last Holy Week at Epiphany parish, but yours as well. From now on, your Holy Week celebrations will be at Epiphany Shrine! The new pastor (or, rector, as I think will be his title) and you will have your own “firsts” to look back on fondly, too, one day. May they be as exciting, prayerful, and reverent as those I/we experienced back when the magnificent Shrine was but a simple parish! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka From the Pastor: Holy Week 2025
This is going to be the first Holy Week that Fr. Mangiafico participates in from the other side of the grave, God rest his soul. He will be greatly missed at each of our liturgies. May his new celebrations be far superior to even his holiest imaginations. There are many changes to the parish schedule, so don’t just come by at the “normal” times but check the calendar carefully. We have three “Tenebrae” services scheduled. Tenebrae is the name given to the service of Matins and Laudes belonging to the last three days of Holy Week. Holy Thursday's Tenebrae is traditionally "anticipated", or chanted the evening before the actual day. Matins and Lauds are the two early morning “hours” of the Divine Office or Breviary that is said (prayed) by all clergy, religious, and laity who use the 1962 Office. They roughly correspond to the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer in the new Liturgy of the Hours Breviary, although they are quite a bit longer. Because Holy Thursday is the day set aside by Holy Mother Church for the celebration of the Chrism Mass (where priests gather with the Bishop to renew their priestly vows or promises and the Bishop blesses and consecrates the three oils that will be used for various sacraments throughout the coming year) plus an additional Mass of the Lord’s Supper in the evening, it is often hard to find time to chant (or listen to others chant) Tenebrae that day. Therefore, it is chanted the evening beforehand. So on Wednesday, the first Tenebrae will be in the Church at 7:00 pm. It takes roughly 2 1/2 hours. Choir members will be doing the chanting and the congregation will actively participate by praying silently. I will be hearing confessions during that time. The second Tenebrae will be on Good Friday morning at 6:30 am, and the third will be on Holy Saturday at the same time. Both of those will take approximately 2 1/2 to 3 hours and I will again hear confessions as these prayers are chanted. Even if you cannot come to all three, come and experience at least one of them. If you cannot stay for the entire time, stay for as long as you can. It is a moving experience of prayer. Holy Thursday, as already mentioned, usually has the Chrism Mass in the morning, so there are no parish Masses. In our diocese, as is every arch/diocese of which I am aware, the Bishop has transferred the Chrism Mass to Tuesday, later in the morning. (It will be held at the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle in St. Petersburg at 11:00 am if any of you wish to attend in person or listen to it on the radio.) Even so, there are no morning Masses on Holy Thursday. There are, of course, people who do not remember this even after reading about it in the bulletin and still show up for the non-existent Mass, but that would never happen to you because you are making a note of it right now! We will have the Mass of the Lord’s Supper along with the Mandatum, or Washing of Feet, at 7:00 pm. At the end of that Mass, there is a procession with the Eucharist as we leave the tabernacle empty and bring Our Lord to the “Altar of Repose” for a time of Solemn Adoration lasting until midnight. After the procession and as Adoration is taking place at the altar of repose, the main altar of the church will be ceremoniously stripped and the church, emptied of Our Lord’s Presence, will be symbolically in mourning for the unjust arrest and mock trial of the Son of God. On Good Friday there are once again no morning Masses and no Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the church. But as already mentioned, there will still be some people who show up expecting both of them! More fortunately for them than for those who show up on Thursday morning to an empty parking lot and locked church, at least there will be people inside as Tenebrae is being chanted. Later, at 3:00 pm we will have the Traditional Latin Good Friday Passion and Veneration of the Cross. This includes a Communion Service as well. On Holy Saturday there is no morning Mass. After the 6:30 am Tenebrae service ends, there is a short break until 10:30 am, when we have the traditional Blessing of the Easter Baskets, a tradition which Eastern European cultures often have managed to keep alive even in many Novus Ordo parishes. The baskets, unlike the Easter Baskets filled with jelly beans and chocolate which we are now so used to giving to the children, should contain a bit of everything which you will be preparing for the great Easter Feast, the big meal on Easter Sunday which breaks the (traditional) arduous fasting of the past 40 days of Lent. Search online for examples if you are not familiar with what this type of basket holds and the symbolic reasons for each item. Please don’t be late arriving for this blessing, because each of the food items gets its own special blessing and I won’t be repeating all of them each time someone new arrives after the blessings are underway. This blessing should take no longer than 30 minutes. There is no Mass at the normal 5:00 pm Saturday time slot, for the Easter Vigil and Mass should not normally begin before dark. Our Easter Vigil will start at 8:00 pm and flows directly into the Mass. The entire service and Mass will probably take about 3 hours. On Easter Sunday, the Mass schedule will follow the normal times of 7:30 am and 10:30 am. So mark your calendars and be prepared for a holy Holy Week! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka From the Pastor: Why are the statues/paintings veiled?
This weekend when you entered the church and the social hall, the crucifixes, statues, and other images of Saints were veiled in purple cloth. It is a stark image, as if funeral palls were covering Our Lord and His Saints. It certainly catches one's attention! In the long distant past this was a common sight near the end of Lent. But for the early part of my lifetime, it was very seldom seen. Fortunately, many parishes have resumed this beautiful (in a somber way) liturgical practice, for it truly helps both the clergy and congregation focus on Passiontide (the last two weeks of Lent) in a deeper way. Lest you think that this is only done at “Traditional” parishes, here is a statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops from March of 2006: The Veiling of Images and Crosses 1. Does the new Missale Romanum allow for the veiling of statues and crosses? The Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia, provides a rubric at the beginning of the texts for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, which allows that: “the practice of covering crosses and images in the Church from the Fifth Sunday of Lent is permitted, according to the judgment of the Conferences of Bishops. Crosses remain veiled until the end of the celebration of the Lord's Passion on Good Friday; images remain veiled until the beginning of the Easter Vigil.” 2. Have the Bishops of the United States expressed the judgment on this practice? Yes. On June 14, 2001, the Latin Church members of the USCCB approved an adaptation to number 318 of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal which would allow for the veiling of crosses and images in this manner. On April 17, 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments wrote to Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, USCCB President (Prot. no. 1381/01/L), noting that this matter belonged more properly to the rubrics of the Fifth Sunday of Lent. While the decision of the USCCB will be included with this rubric when the Roman Missal is eventually published, the veiling of crosses and images may now take place at the discretion of the local pastor. 3. When may crosses and images be veiled? Crosses and images may be veiled on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Crosses are unveiled following the Good Friday Liturgy, while images are unveiled before the beginning of the Easter Vigil. 4. Is the veiling of crosses and statues required? No. The veiling is offered as an option, at the discretion of the local pastor. 5. What is the reason for the veiling of crosses and images? The veiling of crosses and images is a sort of “fasting” from sacred depictions which represent the paschal glory of our salvation. Just as the Lenten fast concludes with the Paschal feast, so too, our fasting from the cross culminates in an adoration of the holy wood on which the sacrifice of Calvary was offered for our sins. Likewise, a fasting from the glorious images of the mysteries of faith and the saints in glory, culminates on the Easter night with a renewed appreciation of the glorious victory won by Christ, risen from the tomb to win for us eternal life. 6. Why are crosses unveiled after the Good Friday Liturgy? An important part of the Good Friday Liturgy is the veneration of the cross, which may include its unveiling. Once the cross to be venerated has been unveiled, it seems logical that all crosses would remain unveiled for the veneration of the faithful. 7. What do the veils look like? While liturgical law does not prescribe the form or color of such veils, they have traditionally been made of simple, lightweight purple cloth, without ornament. 8. Is it permissible to veil the crosses after the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday? Yes. The concluding rubrics which follow the text for the Mass of the Lord's Supper (no. 41) indicate that “at an opportune time the altar is stripped and, if it is possible, crosses are removed from the church. It is fitting that crosses which remain in the Church be veiled.” So there you have it. It is still “fitting” that this be done though it is left to “the discretion of the local pastor.” It is a good, solid, theologically and liturgically sound Catholic tradition. With prayers for your holiness, Fr. Edwin Palka |
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