No Joking About Aunt Irma This Week

9/10/2017

From the Pastor:   No Joking About Aunt Irma This Week

      This week as I write my column, Hurricane Irma is a powerful storm churning away in the Atlantic and bearing down on Florida. As is my usual response when a hurricane strike is predicted to be imminent, I turned to the back of the Missal to find the Mass to Avert Storms. This is the first time I have celebrated it in the Traditional Latin Mass form because, thanks be to God, it has been many years since we were in danger of a direct hit. (In case you didn’t realize it, I have only been celebrating the TLM almost exclusively for only two years now. Before this latest assignment to make Epiphany “Tampa’s Center for the Traditional Latin Mass” I only celebrated it as a very small part of parish life in my most recent previous two assignments.) All other times I have celebrated the Mass to Avert Storms, it has been in the Novus Ordo old translation form. In the old Sacramentary (what the Missal was called) there was only one prayer that was used for the Mass. In place of the Opening Prayer (called the Collect in the TLM) was this: “Father, all the elements of nature obey your command. Calm the storms that threaten us and turn our fear of your power into praise of your goodness. Grant this through our Lord...”
      That’s a pretty simple prayer, asking God to ”calm” rather than “avert” storms, yet it worked. During the twenty-one years I have been a priest, I cannot tell you how many tropical storms or hurricanes were predicted to possibly hit the Diocese of St. Petersburg and, after the Mass to Avert Storms was celebrated, passed us by. Those that did come through were not too bad. (That statement could cause cringing for those who did experience serious damage or hurt, but overall they did relatively little damage.) Every time I prayed that Mass, though, I had parishioners who thought that if the prayers “worked” and the storm changed track, then I was (or God was) responsible for any death and destruction wherever it did hit. It is amazing how wimpy we have become! Just as few today want to pray for their sports team to win (for that means that they are praying for the other team to lose--yet isn’t that an authentic desire and, thus, an honest prayer request?) so also those same people fail to trust even the wisdom of the Mass prayers made available by Holy Mother Church.
      Anyway, I am writing this with faith that, even though Irma is a powerful category 5 storm, it will not hit here. Where will it hit? Perhaps in a place where no priest offered the Mass to Avert Storm? Really, it all comes down to God telling us to have faith, to ask for the things we want and that are good for us (as far as we can tell), and to trust Him no matter how He answers. By the time this is printed and you read it, Irma will either have hit us hard, causing much sick, derisive laughter among those who have no faith in what I just wrote, or will have hit somewhere else for whatever reason God allowed, or will have completely and unexpectedly dissipated into thin air to the bewilderment of all the meteorologists. Any way it goes, I have faith that God heard our prayers here this week and is answering in whichever way is best for us. And no, that is not a cop out. I fully expect that we will not experience a direct hit nor have tremendous damage even if affected by its wind and/or rain.
      In the TLM, the Mass to Avert Storms has three prayers which together make a humble yet quite bold plea of petition, thankfulness for His blessings, and filial trust in our Loving Father. The Collect is: “We beseech Thee, O Lord, that all wickedness being driven away from Thy house, the fury of the raging tempest may pass away. Through our Lord Jesus Christ...” The Secret is: “We offer Thee, O Lord, our praises and gifts, giving thanks for the blessings bestowed upon us and ever humbly praying that they may be continued towards us. Through our Lord...” And the Post Communion prayer is: “O almighty and everlasting God, who by chastening dost heal us and by forgiving dost preserve us, grant that we Thy suppliants may rejoice in the peace and consolation which we desire, and ever enjoy the gift of Thy mercy. Through our Lord...” Not too bad, huh?
      We will also have prayed, after the daily Masses, prayers from the Traditional Rituale Romanum, “A Procession to Avert Storms”. Within these prayers, we explicitly admit that we don’t deserve to avoid the destruction wrought by storms, yet we beg for that gift anyway as we invoke the powerful intercessory prayers of the Saints in Heaven. It ends with the acknowledgment that, should He give us chastisements from the storm, it would bring us healing and salvation, yet our prayer is that we would profit even more by accepting His mercy! When we take these prayers to heart, we certainly come out of this as victors in Christ Jesus.

With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka

Arthur Cardenas

9/20/2017 02:04:01 pm

JMJ
Dear Father,

I just found your article on the internet as I was searching for the parish bulletin. First of all, thank you for offering the TLM for us here. My son introduced me to your parish a few weeks back as one of the only places to attend the TLM. He lives in Wesley Chapel but attends Epiphany every week and I live in West Tampa and registered with Incarnation Catholic Church.
For background, I born in 1957 and remember being exposed to the TLM as a child and making my first communion in the Latin Rite. In retrospect, shortly after the Second Vatican Council closed, I remember everything changing into the vernacular rather abruptly, including what we refer to now as the Novus Ordo Missae. With few exceptions, I have always attended the NO but have recently felt a deep attraction to the beauty of the TLM. I also thank God that you are entrusted with this mission and hope that He will permit you to continue to offer up the TLM for those of us who prefer to fulfill our Sunday obligation under the TLM.
In reading your two article on Hurricane Irma, I have to admit that you made me chuckle with the Rahm [Dead Fish] Emmanuel comment about not letting a good crisis go to waste. :)
However, your comments about not having anything to worry about resonated with me and my family. We had been praying prior to and during the arrival of Hurricane Irma. This was the second time experiencing a hurricane of this magnitude in Florida. The first one was an absolutely terrible storm known as Hurricane Andrew back in 1992 and we knew how powerful these hurricanes can be. Trying to figure out an evacuation plan for my wife and I and my son and his family and my daughter and her family was daunting. Our initial plan was to Texas but there were no flights available. Our second option was to drive north, perhaps up to Jacksonville or maybe Georgia did not materialize as we could not find any hotels. Ultimately, it was a choice between a shelter in Pasco County or my son's house in Wesley Chapel. Neither of them appealed to us but there was nothing else we could do, short of hitting I-4 and heading east and hoping to find someplace to hunker down in. That was not an option either with 3 families, 3 infants under 2 years and 3 family dogs. We finally decided to take the shelter option however, the first shelter at Wiregrass School was maxed out and we were turned away. Now I kinda know how St Joseph and Mary felt when there was no room at the Inn. Thankfully, we were able to register at Seven Oaks elementary before the mad rush. We spent the night there waiting for Irma to arrive the following day. Since so much preparation had been left unaccomplished, the men decided to head back to Tampa on Friday morning to try to storm proof our two homes. However, the shelter threw a huge monkey wrench in our plans in that they wanted to move all families with dogs into the separate room in which all pets were housed. That was not something we were willing to do because the previous night, the dogs barked all night. So after some coordination and animated discussions, we decided to head back to my son's house in Wesley Chapel and ride out Irma there. After the chinese fire drill of moving our families and belongings from the shelter back to the house, we finally were able to breathe a sigh of relief. However, that house was not storm proofed either so we proceeded to board up the house, finish sandbagging, while in a driving rainstorm as Irma's rain bands made their first announcement that Irma's arrival was imminent. Thank God we did that and no one got hurt. The rest of the evening was spent monitoring the news and feeding those hungry mouths. Of course, we took advantage of the time to spiritually prepare ourselves by praying throughout the night. We pulled out our blessed candles, rosaries, Roman Missal, orthodox Catholic books from trusty Tan Books publishers, and setup a mini altar on the kitchen island. Some of us pulled guard duty during the night by praying the rosary, hoping that all our homes and families would be spared if our worst fears came to pass. We even offered prayers for those who might be losing their lives and hoped that they would not be lost for all eternity but would reach out to God in their final moments and ask forgiveness. Thank God that nothing like that affected us.
Afterwards, when the worst was over, we thanked God for his blessings and went back to Tampa to survey the damage. Praised be Jesus and His Most Holy Mother Mary that not one of us suffered anything other than downed branches. We didn't even lose power at any of our three houses. I was not aware of the prayers of the TLM for the Mass to Avert Storms that you mentioned but I am sure that this mass, along with other masses offered up by priests everywhere, and the countless rosaries said by the faithful in our areas was directly responsible for us being spared such devastation.
Since Irma has gone, we continue

9/20/2017 02:09:09 pm

...Since Irma has gone, we continue to hear of other storms like Maria which has devastated the Island of Dominica and now, as I type, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and earthquakes in Mexico, and Japan and pray that more and more people will turn to God with sincere prayers of sorrow and forgiveness so that Mary as the Mother of Mercy, may intercede with her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to mitigate these chastisements.

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