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Today marks the 58th anniversary of the day the first Mass was offerred by Father ( later Monsignor) Willaim Delaney in the newly established Parish of Saint James. He was the first pastor and started today, Columbus Day, on the celebration of the Sacraments that has continued to the present day. This morning I offered Mass in the Chapel and remembered him and all those 58 years at the altar. It must have been a daunting task to come to undeveloped land in a brand-new and quickly expanding collection of communities and begin to establish places and times to gather Catholic men, women, and children (themselves mostly newcomers) into a coherent and cooperative community of Faith.
Also daunting was the voyage of the Genoese seafarer Christopher Columbus who in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain finally sighted land and came ashore on what he thought was Asia 517 years ago today.
He was not (as mythmakers would have it) trying to prove "the world was round" ( NO sane person in 1492 thought that) but was attemtping a "quick way" to the "Indies" AND to open up a new and vast field not only for Spanish possession, but for the Catholic Faith he professed devoutly.
We'll leave aside now the revisionism and the polemics that surround the image of "The Admiral of theOcean Sea" today; but let me remark that he headed every sheet of his log with a prayer in his own hand:
Jesus cum Maria, sit nobis in via!
Jesus with Mary, be with us along the way!
Not a bad prayer, then as now.
Amen.
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