FEB 2021
In This Issue: 2 Celebrating the Miracle of St. Blaise Feast Day, Feb. 3 3 Sharing Love in Different Ways 4 Cathedral Provides Valuable Opportunities for Spiritual Growth During Lent 6 Holy Family Classical School: Fostering True Academic Rigor
HOLY FAMILY CATHEDRAL MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
THE READERS MINISTRY:
Making God’s Word Come Alive A
s Catholics, we are called to celebrate the Holy Mass each Sunday and on Holy Days of Obligation. The Holy Mass has many important parts, and one of those is the readings — for as stated in the second chapter of General Instruction of the Roman Missal, “In the readings, the table of God’s Word is spread before the faithful, and the treasures of the Bible are opened to them” (57). Since the readings are so important, the person proclaiming them has an essential task. Donzetta Seals and Jeri Potter enjoy filling this key role as readers at our parish. “I feel that as I practice and ask the Holy Spirit to use me to proclaim God’s Word, I make the Word come alive to the listeners,” Donzetta says. For some, this ministry might seem intimidating, but Donzetta and Jeri enjoy it and feel called to this important liturgical service. Mark Conro serves as a reader at Holy Family. “It is so important to be inspired by God’s Word, and we can heighten our own inspiration and excitement by proclaiming the Word to others,” Donzetta says. “For me, it is a humble experience to be able to proclaim the readings to the congregation,” Jeri adds. “My only aim is to hope that, in some way by my reading, I have helped even just one person in the congregation understand better what is being taught through the Bible, and perhaps they will be enticed to pick up the Bible and read further.” continued on back cover 8TH STREET & BOULDER AVE • TULSA, OK 74119 • (918) 582-6247 • TULSACATHEDRAL.COM
HOLY FAMILY CATHEDRAL Celebrating the Miracle of St. Blaise Feast Day, Feb. 3
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very year on Feb. 3, we celebrate the feast day of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr. In remembrance of this great saint, priests at parishes around the world bless the throats of the faithful at Masses on this feast day. Many of us have received this blessing — yet how many of us know the reason why St. Blaise is associated with the blessing of throats? What are the origins of this yearly ritual? Though we do not know much about the life of St. Blaise, tradition tells us that he was born to wealthy, saintly Catholic parents. Born in Armenia, he devoted his life to medicine and helping the sick. He was a physician until he was begged by the people to become their bishop. He was appointed by the Church as bishop of the Diocese of Sebaste. Around the year 313, when the Roman Emperor Licinius was persecuting the Church, Blaise lived as a hermit in the woods among animals that he befriended. One day, a group of hunters found Blaise and seized him. Upon their trip to the governor, they encountered a woman whose pig was being attacked by a wolf. Blaise commanded the wolf to leave the pig alone and, upon his command, the pig was freed unharmed. Blaise was then taken to prison, where he miraculously healed a boy who was choking to death on a fishbone. While Blaise remained in prison, the woman whose pig he had freed brought him two candles to serve as his light so that he could read the Scripture. It was from the miracle of saving the choking boy that the custom of praying to St. Blaise to cure all ail-
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ments of the throat was born. And, so, after still refusing to recant his Christian beliefs, he was suspended from a tree and his flesh was torn with iron combs or rakes. Blaise was then thrown into a lake to drown. To the surprise of his persecutors, he surfaced and walked upon the water, and he invited his persecutors to join him. They should do this, he said, to show the power of their gods. The pagans took him up on his invitation, and ultimately they were drowned. Blaise was then told by an angel to return to dry land to receive martyrdom. He was beheaded on the shore and immediately went to heaven. Because of his prison experience and his great reputation as a healer, St. Blaise’s intercession is invoked for the healing of diseases affecting the throat. The candles that the clergy place upon our throats while blessing them symbolize the candles that enlightened St. Blaise’s cell as he studied Sacred Scripture — connecting his spiritual life to the physical healing. Let us remember to invoke the intercession of this great healer upon any ailments that might be affecting us, either physical or spiritual — especially those pertaining to the throat. The blessing of the throats is done by the priest holding two blessed candles near the throat in the form of a cross. The priest says, “Through the merits and intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver thee from all diseases of the throat, and preserve thee from every other evil. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
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A Letter from Our Rector
Sharing Love in Different Ways Dear Parishioners,
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hat’s the most widely observed saint’s day in February — the one that’s kept even by those who aren’t practicing Catholics? Undoubtedly, it would be St. Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. The irony is that his feast isn’t even on the General Roman Calendar of feasts to be observed throughout the world. That doesn’t mean that he’s not recognized as a real, historical person, or as a genuine saint, but only that his influence throughout the Church has not been as significant as that of other saints. So who was St. Valentine? There are several St. Valentines, as the name was not a rare one in the ancient Roman Empire, but the saint we celebrate was a priest of Rome martyred in the late third century. Still, that doesn’t explain how his feast came to be celebrated as the day one sends letters, cards, and presents as expressions of romantic love. The truth is that the custom of sending tokens of love comes not from any direct connection with St. Valentine, but from the ancient belief that birds begin to pair off on Feb. 14. And if courtship in the natural world occurred then, it must be appropriate for humans, as well. The association between St. Valentine and love notes is a later development. Nevertheless, it’s not wrong to connect the two. Love has many aspects, and our conception of it is richer if we keep more than one of them in mind. Martyrdom is the result of loving God more than our earthly life. St. Valentine was a martyr because of his love — his love for Jesus Christ and His Church. If he had not loved God so much, he could have repudiated his Lord and saved his life. We, in turn, express our love by sending cards and gifts on St. Valentine’s Day. But isn’t that what stewardship as a way of life is — a little martyrdom? Not to push the image too far, but when we are faithful stewards, we give up a little portion of our lives out of our own love for Christ. Most Christians will not be called on to be martyrs, in the sense of forfeiting our physical lives for God. But we are called to give up some of our comforts, indulgences, and riches because of our love for Him. So then, as you prepare to celebrate and share your love with your Valentine this month, remember St. Valentine and his love for Christ. As well, keep in mind that God loves us, and return that love with your own toward Him. Loving God will be reflected in how you prioritize your use of the time, talent, and treasure God has entrusted to you. As St. John wrote (1 Jn 4:19), “We love because he first loved us.” Happy St. Valentine’s Day! Sincerely yours in Christ,
Very Rev. Gary D. Kastl, Rector 3
HOLY FAMILY CATHEDRAL
Cathedral Provides Valuable Opportunities
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s Lent approaches, it is time to begin contemplating how we may best spend these upcoming 40 days of spiritual preparation and prayerfulness. We are blessed this year to have many opportunities to draw closer to Christ and increase our spiritual awareness. By opening our hearts and minds during this important liturgical season, we answer the call to deepen our faith as we journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Following the church closures that took place during Lent last year, Fr. Gary Kastl is looking forward to the opportunity for our parish family to gather as a community for this special liturgical season. “We’re excited to celebrate this Lent and Holy Week together,” Fr. Kastl says. “In light of not having been able to celebrate in person last year, this year will be even sweeter in that we’ll be back together to pray. The reception of the sacraments when the community is there is the greatest expression of the Body of Christ alive and present in the community of the cathedral.” With Lent, we are given the precious gift of time to prepare ourselves more fully for the recollection of the Lord’s death and resurrection. “As human beings, we have a tendency to become drifters in our spiritual life, to become complacent and satisfied with the status quo,” Fr. Kastl says. “Each year, we have 40 days to become intentional in resetting our relationship with Christ and the Church, to make Christ the center of our lives. To live Lent well is to grow in a deeper appreciation of the fullness of the Paschal mystery. If we want the resurrection, we have to be willing to embrace certain little deaths as well, so Christ can become fully alive within us.” Every Friday during Lent, parishioners and visitors will have the opportunity to enter more fully into this special liturgical season. Following the noon Mass, the Blessed Sacrament will remain exposed on the altar throughout the afternoon for Eucharistic Adoration. A family-friendly Stations of the Cross will be held each Friday at 1:15 p.m. and another Stations of the Cross takes place at 6:30 p.m., followed by a solemn benediction that concludes the Eucharistic Adoration. During Holy Week, our cathedral family will be in-
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vited to participate in our Lenten liturgies. On March 28, the traditional Palm Sunday procession will take place at the 10 a.m. Mass. The Chrism Mass will be held at the cathedral the following Tuesday evening. On Thursday, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper begins at 6:30 p.m. There are no Masses on Good Friday — on this special day, the faithful are invited to the Stations of the Cross at 3 p.m. and the Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion at 6:30 p.m. The Chrism Mass, Mass of the Lord’s Supper and the Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion will all be celebrated by Bishop David Konderla. Our parish also hopes to host a “service day” during Lent, which may focus on cleaning and sprucing up the cathedral before Easter Sunday. “I think all of us have a need to get outside of ourselves and serve,” Fr. Kastl says. “I think cleaning the
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s for
Spiritual Growth During Lent
“As human beings, we have a tendency to become drifters in our spiritual life, to become complacent and satisfied with the status quo. Each year, we have 40 days to become intentional in resetting our relationship with Christ and the Church, to make Christ the center of our lives. To live Lent well is to grow in a deeper appreciation of the fullness of the Paschal mystery. If we want the resurrection, we have to be willing to embrace certain little deaths as well, so Christ can become fully alive within us.” — FR. GARY KASTL church in anticipation of Easter is like sweeping the tomb with the anticipation of the resurrection. There is something about taking out the old and bringing in the new that corresponds to our Paschal mystery.” By participating in all of the Holy Week offerings at the cathedral, we may prepare our own hearts and minds to receive Christ this Easter — and welcome in the new members of our Catholic Church. This year, at the 8:30 p.m. Easter Vigil Mass, Holy Family Cathedral will bring close to 30 new members into the Church! As we welcome our new Catholic brothers and sisters with open arms, we also continue to invite parishioners who have
suspended their Mass attendance in the last year to experience a renewal of their faith and a return to our Lord Jesus, present in our community and, most truly, in the Eucharist. “My hope now is that we use this unique time in history that we’re in with COVID and the inconveniences and trials it is throwing our way to help us grow in our faith, versus scattering the flock,” Fr. Kastl says. “My hope is that the vaccine is effective and we can taste and touch a sense of the resurrection, that the flock will come back, and that Lent will be a time for parishioners to be intentional about re-engaging and coming home to church in whatever way they are able.”
Ash Wednesday — Mass at 7 a.m., 9 a.m., 12:05 p.m., and 6:30 p.m. Friday Adoration and Stations — Adoration will be offered from 12:45 p.m. - end of evening Stations of the Cross Children’s Stations of the Cross — 1:15 p.m. on Fridays Stations of the Cross at 6:30 p.m. on Fridays Saturday Adoration and Confessions — 3-5 p.m. Check the bulletin and website for more information on “Into the Breach,” “Into the Desert: A Lenten Study on Prayer,” the Lenten Night of Mercy, and the Lenten Parish Work Day.
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HOLY FAMILY CATHEDRAL HOLY FAMILY CLASSICAL SCHOOL:
“R
igor” in most educational settings means “academic excellence,” and this in turn usually means high test scores. At Holy Family Classical School, rigor means much, much more. Over and above having high academic expectations (and even strong test scores), rigor in a classical school means seeing things as they really are, not as they seem to be. “Rocks are hard and water is wet,” observes Dr. Brown, Headmaster: “every time.” “If we do not or cannot know that,” he adds, “then what do we really know?” Yet Dr. Brown observes that there are many schools that pride themselves on their academics, all the while failing to reaffirm even the most basic, self-evident truths. For Dr. Brown and the teachers at Holy Family Classical School, teaching to the test is wholly inadequate to the real challenge of education. As Dr. Brown sees it, reality itself is the ultimate test of the quality of an education. A strong faculty and curriculum must therefore account for the reality of ourselves, the reality of the world around us, and the reality of God. “It is therefore crucially important to redefine what ‘academic rigor’ means in a classical, Catholic model,” Dr. Brown argues. “For too long ‘rigor’ has meant merely fostering a high I.Q., but that’s only one-third of the puzzle, if that!” Dr. Brown goes on to explain. In a classical, Catholic education, a rigorous and therefore “solid” foundation refers first of all to a school community’s understanding of the person. The person is a rational animal, according to Aristotle, and, according to his teacher Socrates, one with an eternal soul. Both agree that the person is made up of a body-soul unity, which is integrated and harmonious. According to the Book of Genesis, we are all made in God’s image and likeness, in the imago Dei. Male and female we were created. St. Thomas Aquinas calls us embodied souls. “What do Aristotle and Genesis and Aquinas mean?” asks 6
Dr. Brown. St. Augustine held that the person, made in the image of the Blessed Trinity, fundamentally has three aspects — mind, will, and emotion. “Most classrooms, curricula, and teachers,” contends Dr. Brown, “take account of only the first of these, the mind — the student’s entering and exiting I.Q. This isolation and reduction of the fullness of the person to a disembodied mind leads naturally to an imbalance, a lack of excellence in forming the will and the emotions, with vast implications for the mind and body as well.” The reason we tend not to like the end result of so many kinds of education, Dr. Brown explains, is that schools often make a great mistake in these first precepts, gravely misunderstanding what the person is, what reality is, and who God is. “From a classical and Catholic perspective, rigor is rooted in understanding who we are as people, and on what the world around us is,” Dr. Brown says, by way of contrast. “Rigor means having a right understanding of the person, the world around us, and God, and having this perspective means that a school is charged with forming not only the mind but also and especially the will and the emotions of each student.” Anything less is a reduction of the person to a small portion of who they are in God’s eyes. “Having a right view of the person,” Dr. Brown concludes, “is a precondition for all excellence, and for academic excellence specifically, because unless you can affirm certain underlying truths about human nature, you can never get anywhere in the pursuit of truth, goodness, or beauty. You cannot develop the mind, the will, or the emotions without first acknowledging that they all exist in any and every teacher and student.” What parents ought to be looking for in a school, he says by extension, is much more than a curricular emphasis on I.Q. “Transcending this, a truly rigorous school will focus on V.Q. or volitional quotient, as well as on E.Q. or emotional quotient.” In fact, a high I.Q. will only be properly disposed
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Fostering True Academic Rigor to truth, Dr. Brown is convinced, proraphy, a discipline whose name vided that a student is simultaneously literally means “beautiful writing.” formed in the habit of choosing the Sharing their love of writing beaugood (V.Q.) and perceiving beauty as tifully, they soon inspired several such (E.Q.). other grades in the school to join “Since the person is a body-soul them in taking up the study of unity made in God’s image, in three calligraphy. Now, practically the aspects,” Dr. Brown conjectures, whole school is in on it! “then the mind is disposed to truth, “That’s what we’re going after,” the will to goodness, and the emosays Dr. Brown, “the freedom of tions to beauty. If an education fails these children, a freedom which they to account for any of these three, it is ultimately find, paradoxically, within not fully what it pretends to be, it is the structure of the world as God has neither ‘rigorous’ nor ‘academically created it, in all its wonder and mysexcellent.’” tery and beauty!” Our students learn to recognize many elements of According to Dr. Brown, he reguClassicism in this way also alclassicism in their everyday lives, including these larly witnesses the joy that children lows children the ability to experiArchimedes screws at the Gathering Place. find when given this solid foundation, ence the good of learning as a value a structure within which they can experience the freedom of in and of itself, rather than commodifying education for expanding their knowledge of themselves, one another, and future success. God. “We all want our children to be healthy, wealthy, and “Children respond to this educational philosophy with wise, and also to have friends, but when you stop there, you joy because there is something about the order of God’s creshackle the student,” Dr. Brown says. “The child reminds ation that they find freeing,” Dr. Brown says. “When students their parent and the world around them that there is more — discover order — in their curriculum, and in their social life, and the more is the wonder and the beauty, discovering who in their playground play, and so on — they take joy in it, beand where and why you are in God’s creation.” cause they paradoxically perceive in the “rigor” of a really Dr. Brown hopes parishioners will seek to support solid education the freedom of the children of God. Holy Family Classical School and its unique vision of “The more you give students these structures, ways of education in whatever ways they are able, through prayer, thinking about themselves and the world around them in an financial support, volunteering, and one that people often ordered way, the more joy and the more freedom they have don’t consider — simply speaking well of the school and because they have a stable ground to walk on,” he adds. sharing its mission and vision with others, especially proA recent example of this freedom can be found in spective families and donors. the third-grade students, he observes. After they moved “Speak well of the school,” he says. “Go out into the through their cursive curriculum with notable skill and community and share the exciting news of all the things we speed, their teacher was inspired to foster their love of are doing, and encourage families to join!” writing beautifully through the introduction of callig-
For more information on the mission of Holy Family Classical School, please visit www.holyfamilyclassicalschool.org.
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PO Box 3204 • Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 (918) 582-6247 • tulsacathedral.com
THE READERS MINISTRY Donzetta finds this ministry to be so essential because it isn’t just part of the Mass — God’s Word is instruction for how we should live each and every day. “We all need truthful and trustworthy guidelines about how we should live our lives,” Donzetta says. This ministry has also helped Jeri grow closer to our Lord because it has increased her interest in the Scriptures. “Being a reader has improved my prayer life,” Jeri says. “It has deepened my understanding of the Scriptures and makes me want to go further to understand and ‘see what happens’ next in some cases.”
continued from front cover
“Being a reader has improved my prayer life. It has deepened my understanding of the Scriptures and makes me want to go further to understand and ‘see what happens’ next in some cases.” — JERI POTTER
Readers do not need to have prior training, but should feel comfortable speaking in front of a large group. There are less readers now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are interested in becoming a reader, please contact Monica Conro in the parish office at 918-582-6247 or by email at mconro@tulsacathedral.com — she will schedule individual trainings.