Summer is over and now the parish season begins again in earnest! RCIA and CCD start—so if you know a child in need of religious instruction or sacramental preparation, or an adult who would like to become Catholic, now is the time to contact the parish and get the ball rolling. 

Tomorrow we celebrate Labor Day and the importance of manual labor. As Christians we honor those who work with their own hands—St. Joseph himself was a carpenter. Have a great Labor Day holiday!

Fr. Jonah here, filling in for Fr. Boniface, as (at the time of this writing) he is away on retreat. RCIA—the initiation process for those entering the Church—begins early next month, so if you know anyone interested in becoming Catholic (or if you need any of the sacraments of initiation, like Confirmation), have them contact the parish office to get connected with the program. Please pray that the Holy Spirit will move many to enter the Church this year!

The adoration chapel continues to grow as hundreds have signed up for adoration slots. My hope is that in the coming months we’ll fill all the adoration slots and have continual prayer in the center of our city. It will be transformative for all those who chose to spend time with our Lord. Please consider signing up if you haven’t already—take part in this great mission.

Today is my five-year anniversary as pastor of St. Joseph’s! It’s been a great five years and I’m honored to have been able to serve you this past half decade. I look forward to many more years to come at St. Joseph’s!

Today we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord. Normally today would be the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, but because it falls on a feast day of our Lord, Transfiguration trumps the normally scheduled Sunday. This feast is special to our parish because of our fresco of the Transfiguration in the church. It’s the oldest true fresco in the United States! May God’s light shine in our hearts this Feast of the Transfiguration!

I’ll be on vacation this week and next but will be back in time for the Cardinal’s blessing of our new perpetual adoration chapel on 7/30. I won’t be writing letters while away but will resume when I return.

It’s slow summer time so I don’t have anything new to report. We’re continuing to work to open the chapel so please pray for its success and consider signing up yourself if you haven’t already done so. It will bring many graces to your life!

Have a blessed 4th of July this week! This holiday is a great time to give thanks for what has been handed on to us—our culture, nation, and history. We should cherish the good things those before us have handed on to us and do our part to improve on what has been given to us so as to hand on more than we received. We live in a community not simply of those living today but of all our ancestors, and those who will come after us. Let us give thanks and strive to do our best for those who will stand on our shoulders. And let us give thanks to God who has made all good things possible and calls us to embody His goodness in this world. Without God all else falls apart.

We are continuing to sign people up for the adoration chapel. Please continue to pray for the success of the chapel and consider signing up yourself if you haven’t already done so. It will bring many graces to your life!

As we prepare for the opening of the Adoration Chapel we still need something very important in order to open it: adorers! The whole point of the chapel is to have people adoring God at all times. That means that we need people to sign up for hour-long adoration slots, usually on a weekly basis, to spend time with Our Lord. It’s a transformative experience to spend time in adoration and many wonderful graces flow to those who spend time adoring Our Lord. So please pray about signing up for an adoration slot. We’re unrolling the software to sign up right now and you can go to our webpage or use the QR code in the narthex to sign up. It will be time spent in the best possible way.

For the past few years, we’ve been working on building the first perpetual adoration chapel in Manhattan. We’re about to open the chapel! Cardinal Dolan will be here on July 30th to celebrate the opening blessing of the chapel. We’ll keep you informed as the date approaches. Also, we’re about to start signups for adoration slots. The hope is to have to people every hour of the week adoring our Lord. So please consider taking an hour adoration slot each week. Information about how to sign up will be coming soon.

This Tuesday we celebrate Confirmation for our religious education (CCD) students. Bishop Whalen will be here to celebrate the Mass and the sacrament of Confirmation. Please keep those about to receive Confirmation in your prayers.

Happy Pentecost! Today the Holy Spirit descended upon the Church. The Apostles would go on to begin to fulfill the Great Commission to spread the Gospel to all nations, and their works reverberate down to our day. Let us stay close to the Holy Spirit for He will do great works through us too!

This Sunday we celebrate first communion for some of our youngest parishioners! Make sure to pray for them as they receive the graces God gives through the Eucharist, The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s only through these graces that we can live our spiritual lives and grow in the holiness God calls us to, and those graces are what lead us to eternal life. Those receiving first communion are making an important step on their journey to heaven: pray that they will live well the grace they receive for the first time today.

This week we celebrate Ascension Thursday, when Christ ascended to His Father in heaven. It falls 40 days after Easter, the span of time that the resurrected Christ stayed with His apostles and disciples before ascending to heaven. Nine days after Ascension we celebrate Pentecost, when Christ sent the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and His Church. Those nine days are the origin of novenas, i.e: prayers for nine consecutive days, because the first novena was a prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit during the nine days between Ascension and Pentecost.

I have news to announce regarding the assignments for the Dominicans here. No worries though—no one is leaving, but rather our community is growing. Fr. Jonah Teller OP, whom you may remember was our summer deacon here in 2019, will be joining us as our new parish vicar. He’ll be replacing Fr. Clement Dickie OP, who will now head the Catholic Center at NYU. Fr. Isaiah Beiter OP will remain with us, continuing to serve at the Catholic Center. In all we’ll be adding a new friar here and no one is being reassigned to another community. When Fr. Jonah arrives, we’ll have five friars serving here.

Over the next few weeks, St. Joseph’s, along with other parishes across the Dominican Province of St. Joseph, will conduct the Annual Friars Formation Appeal. This appeal is critical in supporting the formation expenses of the next generation of Dominican friars. God has continued to bless our province of Dominican Friars with many vocations: dozens of friars will be sent out into ministry over the next decade.

We’re now in the Easter Season as we leave the Octive of Easter behind and await Ascension Thursday, when the resurrected Christ ascends to the Father in heaven, and Pentecost, when Christ sends the Holy Spirit upon His Church. If you’re looking for spiritual reading, this time is great to reading the Acts of the Apostles (just after the Gospel according to John). Acts recounts the adventurous early days of the Church, detailing the Apostles’ mighty deeds wrought after Pentecost. 

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, the end of the Easter Octave, and Divine Mercy Sunday. We celebrate God’s work of salvation in the world and our lives, so let us today give thanks to God for His goodness is the source of all good things.