HIGH POINT — Deacon Jose Vargas has been granted faculties as a permanent deacon in the Diocese of Charlotte by Bishop Peter J. Jugis, effective Jan. 25. When in residence in the diocese, he will serve at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in High Point.
Deacon Vargas and his wife Maria are seasonal residents of High Point. They visit children and grandchildren on a regular basis and when in town he will be available to help with parish activities and assist with ministering to the Spanish-speaking community.
He was ordained on May 18, 2012, for the Diocese of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and brings with him more than four years of experience as a permanent deacon in parish assignments.
— Deacon John Martino
CHARLOTTE — St. Ann Church celebrated the Feast of St. Agatha Feb. 5 with a High Latin Mass followed by a special ancient blessing of bread, called Agatha bread, in honor of her martyrdom.
Father Jason Barone, priest-in-residence at St. Ann Church, blessed the bread for parishioners using the ancient Latin blessing, and the Charlotte Latin Mass Community organized a special feast of different varieties of Agatha bread prepared by parish families.
In the Extraordinary Form calendar, Sunday also marked the close of the extended Christmas-Epiphany season and to celebrate the Cantate Domino Latin Choir along with the St. Ann’s Men’s schola led the attendees in a wassailing song (a Christmas carol) as attendees feasted on Agatha bread, apple cider and hot cocoa.
The closing of Epiphanytide also marks the beginning of Septuagesima season, the three week pre-Lent season, which prepares the faithful for Lent which begins March 1.
For more information about the Charlotte Latin Mass Community, email Chris Lauer at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit www.charlottelatinmass.org.
— Mike FitzGerald, correspondent
CHARLOTTE — Lent for Ukrainian (Byzantine Rite) Catholics begins Sunday evening, Feb. 26. The Divine Liturgy (Mass) of St. John Chrysostom will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 26, followed by a brief period of fellowship. Members will gather again in the chapel to start the Holy Season of Lent with Forgiveness Vespers at 1:30 p.m.
All Catholics of any rite are welcome to join the St. Basil Mission community as we all enter into this holy season of fasting, prayer and almsgiving.
Starting Wednesday, March 1, and continuing every Wednesday during Lent, the very ancient Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts will be celebrated at St. Basil Mission at 6:30 p.m. During this unique liturgy, Vespers is sung and Holy Communion consecrated on the previous Sunday is distributed to the faithful.
On the Sundays of Great Lent, the Divine Liturgy (Mass) of St. Basil the Great will be celebrated at 11 a.m.
All liturgies at St. Basil Mission are celebrated in English in the chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas Church, located at 1400 Suther Road in Charlotte.
Everyone is welcome to come and experience the various ancient liturgies of the Byzantine Rite.
For more information, go to www.stbasil.weebly.com.
— Catholice News Herald. File photo by Gretchen Filz, correspondent.
MONROE — Father Benjamin Roberts, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Monroe welcomed Father Matthew Kauth of St. Joseph College Seminary and some of our college seminarians at Masses Feb. 11 and 12 to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
A new mural created by local artist Lisa Autry was shared with the parish to honor the parish's 75th anniversary year. It mirrors the Agnus Dei stained glass window in the original Our Lady of Lourdes Church, now called the Chapel, which was built in 1945.
Autry, a convert to Catholicism and parishioner at St. James Church in Concord, created the new painted mural above the tabernacle in the sanctuary of the new church. She has also painted the interior of many of our parishes around the diocese. Father Roberts has contracted her to paint other decorative finishes at Our Lady of Lourdes in the future.
The parish is celebrating 75 years in May.
Bishop Peter Jugis was pastor of the parish when he received the call from Rome in 2003 to become the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte.
— Catholic News Herald. Photos by SueAnn Howell
Read Father Roberts full homily:
Listen to the homily here.
“I really like anniversaries. Not just birthdays or wedding or ordination anniversaries, but baptismal dates and First Communion and Confirmation. I like anniversaries of meeting people, of starting school, of finishing school, of big games and big days. I even like to remember, as we bring it to prayer, the anniversary of a last meeting or a last conversation before a friendship or a family relationship was changed, though not ended, when a dear one was called to the house of the Father. There are all kinds of anniversaries to celebrate.
One hundred and fifty-nine years ago today, a little girl named Bernadette gathered wood for the fire in the stone grotto next to the river in the little village of Lourdes in France. She was about her mother’s business and she met the Mother of God. No storm or lightening, no burning bush, no carved tablets of stone, the little Bernadette saw only the simple smile of the beautiful lady dressed in white with a sash of blue whose fingers held a rosary in prayer. It was just Bernadette and the Beautiful Lady that day. Three weeks later, there would be more than twenty thousand people gazing at the grotto hoping to see Our Lady. There was a spring of water now which brought the healing of heaven to the people of earth. Cures upon cures, both physical and spiritual, accompanied the daily prayers of the pilgrims. Where once there had been a stone grotto where the city left its trash, now there is a fountain of grace and glory flowing with the waters of healing and hope.
Seventy-five years ago this May, Our Lady took possession of another piece of land. She claimed another space. It wasn’t next to a poor village in France, and she didn’t make a personal appearance. Seventy-five years ago this May, the Bishop of Raleigh designated this place, near the military base in a very small city, as the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes. Our Lady seems to like those small and unexpected places. We think of the manger at Bethlehem, the home at Nazareth, the wedding at Cana, and the Upper Room praying with the apostles.
At Lourdes in France, Our Lady asked that people come in prayerful procession. She asked them to pray for sinners. She invited them to bring the sick and the suffering. She wanted them to be healed by the waters that flow from the fountain of grace and glory. She wanted that in France, and she wants it in Monroe. She invites us to join in prayerful procession each week to share in the worship of Her Son. Our Lady invites us, we who are sick and suffering with the poisons that world inflicts, to come and be comforted by the loving smile of the Loving Lady. She wants to bring us, we who know our need for mercy, to the wedding feast of the Lamb of the God who takes away the sins of the world. She wants to bring us, the children of God who gather in her house, to the waters of the fountain of grace and glory.
But then, my dear brothers and sisters, but then she wants the fountain to overflow. Like the waters that flowed through and from the Temple, Our Lady sends us as streams of grace flowing from the fountain of grace and glory in the city of the Living God.
Grace and glory flow from here to bring grace and glory to our community. When the young student is doing her homework this week and praying her prayers in preparation for First Holy Communion in May, the waters are flowing from the fountain of grace and glory. When one of our teenagers rejects an invitation to use drugs this week, then the waters are flowing from the fountain of grace and glory. When mothers are praying for patience on Tuesday and fathers are praying for wisdom on Thursday, the waters are flowing from the fountain of grace and glory. And when the children of God of every age gather to join in prayer, in worship and in the feast when heaven joins to this community, the waters are flowing from the fountain of grace and glory.
Fourteen years ago this July, God called a Bishop from this place. Now day after day, and week after week, and year after year, God calls his saints from this community. God calls you and me. Our Lady calls you and me. The Church calls you and me. Here and now, we are called to the feast of grace and glory. Amen."
‘The consecrated religious leave everything behind in order to give oneself completely to God’
‘The consecrated religious leave everything behind in order to give oneself completely to God’CHARLOTTE — Habits, veils, rosaries and pins denoting religious communities were prevalent among the more than 50 women and men religious from around the Diocese of Charlotte who attended the Mass for the World Day for Consecrated Life with Bishop Peter Jugis Feb. 4 at St. Patrick Cathedral.
The annual Mass is an opportunity for Bishop Jugis to thank the religious jubilarians and members of their communities for their dedication and service to the Church.
During his homily, Bishop Jugis said, “I look forward to this day each year to honor the vocation of consecrated life and also I look forward to this day, personally, to thank God for the witness that you give to the Diocese of Charlotte to the beauty and the holiness of religious life.”
He noted that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the World Day for Consecrated Life. St. John Paul II celebrated the first World Day for Consecrated Life on Feb. 2, 1997.
“The one question I have always had from the beginning is: why did he choose the feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple as the special day to honor the consecrated life? There must have been some kind of special connection in his mind. There has to be something evident to bring together that feast day and the consecrated life. It has to have something to do with what is at the core of the consecrated life.”
That core, he continued, is the grace that each consecrated religious has received to make a total commitment to God, leaving everything behind to give their lives to God.
“The consecrated religious leave everything behind in order to give oneself completely to God,” he continued. “It’s a radical gift of self, as you already know, that is made by your consecration ‒ radical, or to the root, or to the core.”
“So we might say that all of you are radicals,” he joked, drawing laughter from the congregation.
Bishop Jugis took great care to share his reflection on the details of the official image published by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops for the commemoration of the World Day for Consecrated Life, depicting Jesus’ presentation in the temple and how the image illustrates key components of consecrated life, such as the vows of poverty and obedience.
The image of Jesus leaving the arms of his mother and being handed to Simeon depicts the choice of leaving everything behind, he said. “Total commitment to God seems to be illustrated so well…which signifies a person totally handed over to the work of God, to the work of salvation.”
One of the jubilarians honored at the Mass, Mercy Sister Therese Galligan, knows well what it means to give oneself fully to God. She is celebrating 60 years of religious life. She has worked diligently in the areas of education, health care and providing assistance to the poor in western North Carolina over the past 60 years, particularly in her work in the Charlotte area.
“It’s gone by so quickly!” she said. “I love the opportunity for the different kinds of ministries I have been able to be involved in. I felt called to each one. I feel very blessed. I feel very energized. I am very thankful.”
Sister Therese shared that her baptism was Aug. 16 and her vow date was Aug. 16. She entered the Sisters of Mercy at the age of 21.
“In today’s Mass, it was so apparent that this was God’s plan for me,” she explained. “I was not thinking about this when I was younger. I was not wanting to go the route of religious life. I wanted to be married with children, like my mother.”
“All of a sudden, I just felt this calling,” she said. “God just turned me around and brought me here. I am very thankful. I am very blessed…there are some wonderful women that I have lived with and ministered with. They have been great role models to me, too.”
She suggests that young women considering a vocation to “listen to the call, pray about it.”
Jubilarian Sister Pushpa Jose of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who works with the poor in High Point, is celebrating 25 years of religious life.
“I like to work with the poor and sick,” she said. “That is why I joined this congregation. We need to serve the needy and sick people.”
Sister Pushpa encourages young women who enjoy serving people in that way to consider a community like hers that is hands-on within the community. “if they enjoy that, then they should do it. I enjoy that.”
Missionaries of Charity Sister Mary Martinella, who has been in Charlotte for only a month, happily celebrated her 25th anniversary with the other jubilarians at St. Patrick Cathedral Feb. 4.
“I am really happy to be a sister, to serve the Lord and His work,” she said. “I was telling the sisters (here) I feel like I am just starting – I don’t feel like it’s been 25 years! It is wonderful! God has called us and we said yes to the Lord.”
Sister Mary also explained, “To love Jesus, to give your life to Jesus, there is no best man than Jesus Christ. He is the best man. The more you give, Jesus gives you more. He is the one working through us. We are just instrument in His hands.
“God called me. We sisters are unworthy creatures but God calls us to just serve Him.”
Bishop Jugis acknowledged the significant contributions and sacrifices the jubilarians have made to the Church in his remarks at Mass and also at the luncheon that followed in the Family Life Center.
“It’s a radical way of living the Gospel, the most radical way of all the states of life within the Church,” he said of consecrated life. “The most radical way of living the Gospel here on earth. To be a light of the kingdom which is to come and is already present.”
“You have given yourselves totally to God who is your light and your salvation, so may He give you His grace every day to help you grow even closer to Him,” he said.
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter
