Sunday Preview for Forty Hours

Hello Everyone,

 

We look forward to beginning the forty hours devotion tonight in the main church.  In case you missed my earlier posts, here is a schedule and explanation of the events on Friday, and here is a schedule and explanation of the events on Saturday.   Here is a link to the full schedule for forty hours.  With that, I wanted to continue the previews of each day and talk about the schedule and activities on Sunday.  The main activity on Sunday will be the closing, solemn vespers at 4:00 PM with visiting preacher Msgr. Steve Rohlfs preaching, along with many visiting clergy and great music and prayer.  There will be a reception hosted by the CCW after the evening prayer.

12:00 AM – 7:00 AM 

Silent prayer.  As mentioned before, each hour is dedicated to various intentions, but these hours will be time for you to come and spend time with the Lord in the main church in the peace and quiet of the night.

7:00 AM Divine Office: Office of Readings

I explained in my post about Friday what these are.  Briefly, though, we will once again pray the “Office of Readings”, which will consist of psalms and readings from Scripture and a saint or church document.  It generally takes about fifteen minutes.  Booklets will be provided for all of these “Divine Office” hours, since we know this is new to many of you.  The rosary will then be prayed at 7:30 AM, as usual, followed by Mass at 8:00 AM.

8:00 AM Mass with Homily by Deacon Najarian

I introduced Deacon Najarian in my post describing the Saturday events, but we are blessed to welcome Deacon Najarian this weekend to preach all of the Masses.  Deacon Najarian used to be a surgeon and the chief of surgeons for Saint Joseph’s Hospital and United Hospitals before becoming a deacon.  He now serves as a permanent deacon for the parish of Saint Charles Borromeo in Saint Anthony and also teaches at the Saint Paul Seminary and in the diaconate formation program.

9:00 AM Divine Office: Morning Prayer, followed by the rosary

We will pray the next “hour” of the Divine Office at 9:00 AM after beginning our Saint Joseph’s novena.  Booklets will be provided once again.  We will pray the psalms, canticles, and Scriptural readings that people pray throughout the world, heeding the Lord’s call to “pray without ceasing”.  We will then pray the usual rosary that precedes the 10:00 AM Mass.

10:00 AM Mass with Homily by Deacon Najarian

11:00 AM Worship Music with Guided Meditations and Reflections

We look forward to welcoming our worship band to play after the 10:00 AM Mass.  Make plans to stay after Mass and pray for a while.  We are blessed with very talented musicians here at Saint Timothy’s and our worship band will help us praise and adore the Lord with more contemporary music and instruments.  This will immediately follow the Saint Joseph’s Novena.  There will also be guided meditation and reflections during this time.  Again, this would be a great hour to plan to attend in general and especially would be good for those who would like some live music and reflections to guide their prayer.  Sometimes, we can get distracted in our quiet with the Lord and this will help us to focus and to pray with our hearts and minds.

12:00 PM Divine Office: Midday Prayer and Angelus

We will pray the third “hour” of the Divine Office at noon, followed by the Angelus.  Both are very brief prayers.  Midday Prayer should only take about five minutes and the Angelus should take a minute or two.  Both prayers are good opportunities to set aside time during the busy day to make sure we are asking for God’s help and remembering his presence.  The Angelus, as you may know, is a great prayer that is often recited at noon and 6:00 PM that asks for Mary’s help in a special way.  The rest of the hour will be silent prayer with the Lord.

1:00 PM Quiet Prayer

This hour will be spent entirely in quiet with the Lord.  The intention for this hour is to pray for those who have left the Catholic Church.

2:00 PM Quiet Prayer

This hour is also a time for quiet prayer with the Lord.  The intention for this hour is to pray for the Holy Catholic Church.

3:00 PM Divine Mercy Chaplet

At the beginning of this hour, we will pray the divine mercy chaplet together.  This is a simple prayer that is prayed with the rosary beads that asks for God’s mercy upon us and on the whole world.  It is traditionally prayed on the hour that Christ died, the “hour of mercy”.  It only takes about five minutes to pray and then the rest of the hour will be dedicated to quiet adoration as we prepare for our solemn vespers.

4:00 PM Closing of Forty Hours Devotion.  Solemn Vespers with Msgr. Rohlfs and Visiting Clergy

It was great to see so many of you come to this evening prayer last year with the Archbishop.  It would be great to see a full church once again as we close our devotion with this solemn evening prayer, intended to be the highlight of the devotion.  Anne Pribyl and the choir and musicians have been preparing great music for our prayer.  We will be blessed with many visiting clergy, including our former pastors.  I’m grateful to the CCW for hosting a reception at the school afterwards.  “Vespers” is another word for the “Evening Prayer”.  It is the same prayer generally that we pray on Saturday night from the Divine Office.  The only difference is this one will be “solemn” which means that the psalms and canticles will be chanted and we will have a choral meditation and some additional liturgical details such as a procession.  Msgr. Steve Rohlfs will be preaching.  He currently serves as a spiritual director at the seminary.  He has served as a vicar general, a rector of the seminary in Maryland, and much more.  He has had many experiences within his time as a priest.  Again, we will have programs for you so that you can follow along and pray with us on Sunday.  Once evening prayer is complete, there will be a procession by the clergy with the Eucharist around the church followed by benediction.  This will all be outlined in the program.  This is a great opportunity to come together as a parish and celebrate our faith in the Eucharist on “Gaudete” Sunday.

5:00 PM Reception, Saint Timothy’s School.  Hosted by the CCW

We hope you can join us after the evening prayer and benediction for a reception at the school, hosted by the CCW.  After praying together throughout the weekend and celebrating our faith in the Eucharist, it will be good to come together and have a reception in the school as a parish.

I hope we have a great devotion this weekend.  As a reminder, it begins tonight at 8:00 PM.  I hope this is a fruitful time for our parish to come together and pray for each other, pray for the world, pray for those who are suffering, and just be in the presence of the Lord.  God bless your weekend ahead.

Father Meyer

 

Saturday Night Preview for Forty Hours

Hello All,

Continuing my post from yesterday which introduced the forty hours devotion more generally and previewed Friday night’s events, here is a preview and explanation of what will happen on Saturday.  Again, I look forward to praying with all of you and coming together as a parish during this season of Lent to slow down, take some time to be with the Lord, and pray for each other.  The main highlight on Saturday will be the presentations by Michelle Steele and Angie Jendro on prayer, fasting, and detachment, which are essential to Lent and our spiritual growth.  Here is a link again to the full schedule for the weekend.  I hope this can be a helpful reference and a helpful explanation of each of the events listed briefly on the main schedule.

Saturday, March 10th

12:00 AM- 8:00 AM 

These hours will be dedicated to quiet prayer and adoration in the main church.  Come spend some time with the Lord when others are sleeping and in the peace of night with the candles highlighting the Lord’s throne on the altar.  Each hour is dedicated to a specific prayer intention but of course you can pray for whatever you would like.

8:00 AM- Divine Office: Office of Readings.  

As I explained yesterday, the “Divine Office” are the prayers that bishops, priests, and deacons promise to pray every day.  There are five of these times of prayer within the divine office.  The laity is encouraged but not required to pray these prayers as well.  Each time of prayer is called an “hour”, even though they do not take an hour.  The “Office of Readings” takes about fifteen minutes.  As with all of these communal prayers, booklets will be provided for you to follow along.  We will recite psalms together and then the focus of the “Office of Readings” is to meditate on a Scriptural reading as well as a reading from one of the saints or church documents.  The rest of the hour will be devoted to quiet prayer and adoration.

9:00 AM – Divine Office: Morning Prayer.

This is the next hour of the Divine Office.  We will recite psalms together, read from Scripture, recite intercessions, the Lord’s Prayer, and more.  This takes about ten or fifteen minutes and the rest of the hour will be dedicated to quiet prayer.  As mentioned before, these are the same psalms and prayers that every cleric and sister and others are praying throughout the world.  It is a way for us as a Catholic Church to “pray without ceasing” as Saint Paul asks us to do.

10:00 AM – “The Journey of Prayer: Finding Happiness and Freedom in the Lord” presentation by Michelle Steele and Angie Jendro

This is one of our main presentations for the Forty Hours Devotion.  Click here for a flyer with more information.  “Feeling pulled in too many directions?”  “Always worried what other people think?”  “Tired of dryness in prayer?”  “Feeling like your prayers are going nowhere?”  “Quick, easy tools to make your prayer more fruitful and rid you of things that keep you from happiness.”  “Practical advice, everyday examples, and personal stories.”  These are some of the quotations from the flyer.  Michelle and Angie come highly recommended and we look forward to welcoming them to Saint Timothy’s.  This will be a PowerPoint presentation and they will take turns presenting on prayer, different types of prayer, and tips for praying.  This should be a great way to grow deeper in prayer during this Lenten season and help during adoration and prayer at home.  Their second presentation will be at 2:00, which will give a break perhaps for prayer, reflection, lunch, and more for those who plan to attend both presentations.

11:00 AM – Confessions

The presentation will wrap up during the beginning half of this hour and there will be an opportunity for confessions and quiet adoration and prayer.

12:00 PM – Divine Office: Midday Prayer

This is the third “hour” of the Divine Office that we will pray today.  This is one of the briefest “hours” in the Divine Office and will only take about five minutes.  It is a way to call to mind God’s presence and ask for his help during the middle of the day when things can get busy.  The rest of the hour will be dedicated to quiet, individual prayer before the Eucharist.

1:00 PM – Quiet Adoration

This hour’s intention is to pray for our first communion students but the hour will be prayed in silence and quiet in any way that you would like.

2:00 PM – “Lenten Spiritual Growth: Fasting and Detachment” Presentation by Michelle Steele and Angie Jendro

This is the second presentation by Michelle Steele and Angie Jendro, our visiting speakers for the day.  This presentation will focus on fasting and detachment.  One of the three pillars of our Lenten spiritual call is fasting, along with prayer and almsgiving.  It is something that the Lord did for forty days in the desert.  We find detachment and fasting to be essential to the spiritual lives of the saints and it is essential for all of us to live good and holy lives.  Christ speaks so frequently about taking up our cross, denying ourselves, and following him.  Listen to Michelle and Angie speak about these important topics.  We all need to detach from certain things in this life and deny ourselves to grow in virtue and holiness.  This should be a great presentation and help for us.

3:00 PM – Divine Mercy Chaplet

When the 2:00 PM presentation concludes, we will pray the divine mercy chaplet.  This is a very simple prayer and devotion that asks for God’s mercy upon us and on the whole world.  Pope Francis and others have spoken of the special urgent need for the world today to experience and feel God’s merciful love and this is a great devotion to help us to do that.  It is traditionally prayed at 3:00 PM, the hour of mercy, when Christ died on the cross for our sins.  It generally only takes about five minutes to pray.

3:30 PM – Confessions

4:00 PM – Rosary

4:30 PM – Mass with Homily by Deacon Najarian

 

We are blessed to welcome Deacon Steve Najarian to preach the Masses this weekend.  Deacon Najarian is the deacon at Saint Charles Borromeo parish in Saint Anthony, Minnesota.  Quoting from his biography on the website, Deacon Stephen Najarian was born and raised in Northeast Minneapolis.  Before becoming deacon, he served for twenty years as a surgeon and as Chief of Surgery at both United Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul. He remains a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Deacon Najarian gave up the practice of medicine upon his ordination in 2003 as a deacon of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and has been in full-time ecclesial ministry since that time.  From 2005-2012, he was on the diaconal formation team for the Diocese of La Crosse and for the past several years has also been an instructor in the deacon formation program for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. From 1995-2005, he served on the Archbishop’s Bio-Medical Ethics Committee. From 2010-2012, he was the Associate Director of Pastoral Formation at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity and from 2010 to the present he has served on the faculty of the St. Paul Seminary teaching Pastoral Theology, the Sacrament of Marriage, and Biomedical Ethics.

6:00 PM – Divine Office Evening Prayer

This is the fourth “hour” from the Divine Office.  We will once again pray the assigned psalms, readings, canticles, and more that the Church prays throughout the world.  We will have booklets so that you can follow along.  This hour takes about ten or fifteen minutes to pray and the rest of the time will be dedicated to quiet prayer.

7:00 PM – Quiet Adoration

This hour will be entirely devoted to quiet, individual prayer before the Lord.  The intention for this hour is to pray for confirmation students in a special way.

8:00 PM – Gethsemane: Soft Music and Reflections.  Confessions.

This should be a great hour of prayer as well.  We welcome our seminarians to help us in a special way during this time with soft music and read reflections.  There is an opportunity to go to confession during this time as well.  Sometimes, it helps us to have some meditative, Christian music played live and some meditations read to help us in our own prayers, to think about things in a new way, to express our love for the Lord, and more.  If you like something more than just quiet prayer and appreciate having something to focus upon or pray along with, this would be an especially good hour to attend.

9:00 PM – Quiet Adoration

This hour is also set aside for quiet prayer and adoration.  The listed intention is to pray for those who are dying or have died.

10:00 PM – Divine Office: Night Prayer

This is the final “hour” of the Divine Office for the day.  It takes about five minutes and then the rest of the time will be quiet adoration with the Lord.  Once again, the night prayer concludes with “May the All-Powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death” and was traditionally meant to be the last words that someone would say or pray before going to sleep.

11:00 PM Youth Group Holy Hour

All are certainly welcome to come and pray during this time but the youth group will be praying during this time in a special way.  It will be great to have their participation in our forty hours devotion.  Come join them and pray for all youth and faith formation students.

12:00 AM –

The rest of the night will be devoted to quiet prayer and adoration until 7:00 AM on Sunday when we will pray the Divine Office Office of Readings.  Once again, come in the peace and quiet of the night to adore the Lord.

I will write more about the events on Sunday soon.  I wanted to explain some of the activities that are mentioned on the schedule and I hope this can be a helpful reference to some of you as you begin to prepare or attend the prayers this weekend.  Let’s continue to pray for each other and all those in our families and community in the days ahead.

Father Meyer

 

 

Friday Night and General Forty Hours Preview

Hello Everyone,

I hope you’re having a good week.  As you know, we will be hosting a forty hours devotion at Saint Timothy’s, beginning on Friday night.  We’re excited to host this weekend of prayer and adoration once again this year.  It was great to see so many of you come last year.

First, for those who may be new to this devotion, we will be moving the Eucharist into the main church from the adoration chapel.  This is the consecrated host that we know and believe to be the real presence of Jesus Christ.  As you can see in the picture above, we move some extra candelabras into the main church to highlight and honor the Lord in a special way and add to the prayer.  People can come to adore throughout the weekend and pray in quiet and peace.  We also will be having a number of opportunities for communal prayer.  Any unfamiliar prayer, such as the “Divine Office”, will come with a special booklet that you can pray along with us.  Whether you want to say some prayers in quiet with the Lord or join us for some group prayer activities or talks, I am hoping that our whole parish will be able to take some time during this season of Lent to be with the Lord in a special way this weekend.  We can pray for our families and others, ask for God’s help in our own lives, and simply be in the peaceful presence of Christ.  We will also offer a booklet that will include some prayers that you might want to say before the Eucharist on your own and other reading material in case you would like some particular prayers or meditations to reflect upon or pray.  The full schedule is here.  Each hour has been set aside to pray for a particular suggested intention.  You can, of course, pray for anything that you would like and there are no spoken prayers or activities associated with these prayers, but you might want to come at a certain hour to pray for that particular intention.

With that, I’d like to give a preview of the evening on Friday night.

8:00 PM – At 8:00 PM, we begin our forty hours devotion.  While the ceremony itself is very simple, as we will simply move the Eucharist from the chapel to the main church, sing the “O Salutaris Song” while incensing the Blessed Sacrament, read the Gospel, and then have a homily followed by 45 minutes of quiet adoration, we are blessed to welcome Msgr. Aloysius Callaghan, rector of the Saint Paul Seminary to help us to open the devotions.  Msgr. Callaghan will preach a homily that will set the tone for our weekend and then we can spend some quiet time in prayer.  It would be great to see many of you join us for this opening homily and exposition.

9:00 PM – We will pray the rosary together in the main church.  I’m sure many of us are familiar with this prayer, but for those who are not, you can simply follow along.  Friday is set aside for meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries.  We will meditate on these mysteries of Christ’s life within our hearts while reciting Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s.  We ask for Mary’s help and protection upon us, our loved ones, and our parish.  The intention for this hour formally is to pray for our Pope, our bishops, and our priests.

10:00 PM – We will pray night prayer from the Divine Office.  Priests and deacons promise to pray the divine office five times a day when they are ordained.  The entire Church is encouraged to pray the same.  It is a way of consecrating our entire day to the Lord and to make sure we are taking time throughout our day to pray.  The divine office involves psalms from the Scriptures, Scriptural reading, and other prayers.  Recognizing that this is new to most of you, I will lead the Divine Office and give instructions during these times.  We will have special prayer booklets for each of the Divine Office hours.  You can pray the same exact prayers that every single bishop, priest, deacon, and lay person is praying throughout the world, whether they are halfway across the world or near to home.  Traditionally, the night prayer is the last prayer that one says before going to sleep.  The closing line is “May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.”  Night prayer is one of the shortest prayers in the Divine Office and will only take about five minutes.  Once night prayer is complete, the rest of this hour will be devoted to silent prayer and meditation with the Lord.

11:00 PM – This hour is completely dedicated to silent prayer with the Eucharist, as are the remaining nighttime hours until 8:00 AM on Saturday morning.  Again, each of these hours has a special intention assigned to it.  This hour is dedicated to Christian Unity.  It is always a powerful experience to be praying with the Lord during the night, when it is very peaceful and quiet.  Feel free to stop in and say a prayer or spend an hour in the presence of the Lord during these night time hours.  The candles from the candelabras will help light the altar and church throughout the night.

I will continue writing about the events on Saturday and Sunday in the days ahead.  As a reminder, please make plans in a special way to attend the closing evening prayer and benediction on Sunday at 4:00 PM.  Anne Pribyl, the choir, and musicians are preparing wonderful music.  We will have visiting clergy, including our previous pastors, and a nice reception hosted by the CCW in the school afterwards.

Let’s pray for each other and our parish and families throughout this weekend.  I hope to see you there.

Father Meyer