ABVM PARISH COMMUNITY

  NEW GUIDELINES FOR PARISHES FOLLOWING THE LIFTING OF PANDEMIC RESTRICTIONS As has already been announced, if you have been fully vaccinated you are not required or expected to wear a face mask or covering while attending Mass or participating in any parish activity.   The Office of Worship of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia advises but does not mandate those who are not vaccinated to continue to wear a mask.   Please be respectful of a person’s choice to wear or not to wear a mask. Social distancing is no longer necessary .   Apart from the school, our buildings are at 100% capacity. The Archbishop has not yet reimposed the obligation to attend Sunday Mass and Holy Days of Obligation.   However, everyone who is healthy is encouraged to consider returning to Mass in person if they have not yet done so.   The benefits of in-person worship far outweigh other options for Sunday worship.   Consider the words of St. John Chrysostom:   You cannot pray at home as at church, where t

  THE SOUL OF THE CHURCH             The Church is the Body of Christ, with Christ the Head and we the members (cf. Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 1:22 & 5:23). Every human body needs a soul.   Its members are useless without the soul.   The Holy Spirit gives life and vigor to the Church, as the human soul animates a body.   By him, all of the members are united to the Head and work together for the same purpose.   Ipse armonia es .   St. Basil the Great boldly states that “He is harmony .”   The Holy Spirit makes the Church one in faith, in mission, in worship, in destiny, and in charity.   Because of his abiding presence the Church’s unity is assured by what the Catechism calls “the visible bonds of communion”: the “profession of one faith received from the Apostles”; the “common celebration of divine worship, especially of the sacraments”; and the “apostolic succession through the sacrament of Holy Orders, maintaining the fraternal concord of God’s family” (paragraph #815).     

MOTHER OF CHRIST & MOTHER OF THE CHURCH             By virtue of becoming the Mother of Christ Mary also became the Mother of the Church.  St. Augustine states that she is “clearly the mother of the members of Christ.”  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council state in their Dogmatic Constitution on the Church ( Lumen Gentium ) that by her charity Mary has “joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church.”  In this way she is our Mother in the order of grace.  She began to act in this role when she responded to the invitation of the angel to become the Mother of the Messiah by saying, “Be it done to me according to your word.”  “This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the Cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect.  Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continue