I'm mindful that I haven't written in a while and I deeply regret that. As much as I enjoy writing, and especially writing about the Lord and His Church, life around the Cathedral has been too busy. My apologies to all.

We have experienced so many things in the last six weeks. We have been blessed with the births of many children and saddened by the deaths of a few of our dear friends. We've celebrated First Communion, Confirmation and had our Corpus Christi procession. Add to that the beginning work on the Cathedral roof, and you can piece together "a day in the life of the pastor."

But truly, these days have been remarkable. The presence of God has been very evident to me. Why? Because in the midst of all of the activity of the parish, there has been peace.  We're all watching scaffolding going up around the Cathedral and the progress of the new roof. There's something exciting about this because it is but an external symbol of what I believe is going on in the parish. It feels to me as if we're rebuilding in so many ways--not only the structure, but our sense of community. There are questions around the city about what's going on, and I think the questions are also being asked about what's going on inside the Cathedral. The reason I say this is because we are seeing many new faces coming into the Cathedral. This is all good, and what's more important, is that it gives us a chance to speak about Jesus.

Are you feeling renewed by being a part of the Cathedral parish? Are you interested in what's happening in the hearts of people who come to us? Join us--we're building all right, but from the heart outward.

The Magnificat reveals the spirituality of those faithful who not only recognize themselves as "poor" in the detachment from all idolatry of riches and power, but also in the profound humility of a heart emptied of the tempation to pride and open to the bursting in of the divine saving grace. The soul of the prayer is the celebration of the divine grace which has burst into the heart and life of Mary, making her Mother of the Lord. We hear the Virgin's own voice speaking of her Savior who has done great things in her soul and body. The intimate structure of her prayerful canticle, therefore, is praise, thanksgiving, and grateful joy. But this personal witness is neither solitary nor purely individualistic, because the Virgin Mother is aware that she has a mission to fulfill for humanity and her experience fits into the history of salvation. The Lord takes the part of the lowly. His plan is one that is often hidden beneath the opaque context of human events that see "the proud, the mighty and the rich" triumph. Let us accept the invitation of Saint Ambrose: "May Mary's soul be in each one to magnify the Lord, may Mary's spirit be in each one to rejoice in God; if, according to the flesh, the Mother of Christ is one alone, according to the faith all souls bring forth Christ; each welcomes the Word of God within...Mary's soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God because she adores with devout affection one God, from whom come all things... If, according to the flesh, the Mother of Christ is one alone, according to the faith all souls bring forth Christ: each one intimately welcomes the Word of God."

Benedict XVI

"Sophia" signifies the answer which emerges from the divine call of creation and election. It expresses precisely this: that there is a pure answer and that God's love finds its irrecovable dwelling place within it... From the viewpoint of the New TEstament, wisdom refers, on one side, to the Son as the Word, in whom Go dcreates, but on the other side to the creature, to the ture Israel, who is personified in the humble mnaid whose whole existence is marked by the attitude of Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.  Sophia refers to the Logos, the Word who establishes wisdom, and also to the womanly answer which receives wisdom and brings it to fruition... The figure of the woman is indispensable for the structure of biblical faith. She expresses the reality of creation as well as the fruitfulness of grace. The abstract outlines for the hope that God will turn toward his people receive, in the New Testament, a concrete, personal name in the figure of Jesus Christ. At that same moment, the figure of the woman...also emerges with a name: Mary... To deny or reject the feminine aspect in belief, or, more concretely, the Marian aspect, leads finally to the negation of creation and the invalidation of grace. It leads to a picture of God's omnipotence that reduces the creature to a mere masquerade and that also completely fails to understand the God of the Bible, who is characterized as being the creator and the God of the covenant--the God for whom the beloved's punishment and rejection themselves become the passion of love, the cross.

Pope Benedict XVI

The human race--every one of us--is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way. The Son of God will not let this happen; he cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a condition. He leaps to his feet and abandons the glory of heaven, in order to go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the cross. He takes it upon his shoulders and carries our humanitiy; he carries us all-he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep...When the shepherd of all humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed...It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God's sign: he himself is love...God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man. One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. "Feed my sheep," says Christ to Peter. Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God's truth, of God's word, the nourishment of his presence, which he gives us in the Blessed Sacrament.

Pope Benedict XVI

Please join us in praying for the people of Saint Catherine of Siena Parishes in Manchester and Charlestown. Pray, too, for the faculty, staff and students of Saint Catherine of Siena School in Manchester.

Resurrection-faith is a stepping forward along the way. It can be nothing else than a following in the steps of Christ, a discipleship of Christ. In his Easter Gospel, John has expressed very closely where and how Christ has gone and whither we are to follow him. "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God!" (Jn 20:12). He tells Magdalene that she cannot touch him now but only when he has ascended. We cannot touch him in such a way as to bring him back into this world, but we can touch him by following him, by ascending with him. That is why CHristian tradition deliberately speaks not simply of following Jesus, but of following Christ. We follow, not a dead man, but the living Christ. We aare not trying to imitate a life that is past and gone nor to turn it into a program for action with all kinds of compromises and revaluations. We must not rob discipleship of what is essential to it, namely, cross and Resurrection and Christ's divine Sonship, his being "with the Father." These things are fundamental. Discipleship means that now we can go where (again according to John) Peter and the Jews initially could not  go. But now that he has gone before us, we can go there too. DIscipleship means accepting the entire path, going forward into those things that are above, the hidden things that are the real ones: truth, love, our being children of God... Discipleship is a stepping-forward into what is hidden in order to find, through this genuine loss of self, what it is to be a human being.

Pope Benedict XVI