Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of All Saints, and tomorrow the Commemoration of All Souls. Together with the vigil held the evening prior to All Saints, these three days encompass the triduum known as Allhollowtide. It comes from the Old English words "eall" meaning "every", "hollow" meaning "holy", and "tide" meaning "time". The word Halloween is really just the Old English way of saying All Hallows' Eve, meaning the Night before All Holy's (Saint's) [Day].

As announced last weekend, our parish is launching the Vocational Formation Program for our children: an ambitious program designed to help foster a culture of vocations in the parish and cultivate a desire to discern priesthood and religious life in the program's participants. It was completely unintentional, but the day we are launching the Program, November 1, just so happens to be the start of National Vocation Awareness Week in the Catholic Church in the United States. When things like this seemingly too perfectly coincide, it's sometimes referred to as "God-instances".

On Friday, we traveled 200 miles to the northeast to a small town overlooking the Adriatic Sea to visit the Basilica of the Holy House in Loreto, where Fr. Robert celebrated Mass. This Basilica is built around and protects a very special building located right in its center, that being the Santa Casa.

Today in Rome on our young adult pilgrimage, Fr. Robert is celebrating Mass at the Mamertine Prison, the oldest prison in Rome. It sits directly adjacent to the Roman Forum on the northeastern slope of the Capitoline Hill, and Tradition holds that at separate times, St. Peter and St. Paul were once imprisoned here in the prison's subterranean dungeon during their trial before their martyrdom.

Hanging above the altar at OLMC is a large crucifix, with a 6-foot-tall corpus of Christ painted in the Ionic style. As I'm sure you know, OLMC is not alone in having a crucifix, as every Catholic Church is required to have a crucifix on or near the altar for the Mass. But why is that?

At the Mass, there are many things said or read throughout the Mass, but around 70% of everything that is said is not being said to us in the pews. So to whom are these words being addressed?

The sixth chapter of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) is dedicated to sacred music. The document states that: "The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art. The main reason for this pre-eminence is that, as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy“(SC,, 112).

Throughout lands of the former Roman Empire, one will encounter triumphal arches: a very large stone archway supported by two massive stone piers, sometimes with two accompanying smaller archways on each side of the center large one, with a passageway running through it below the arch, but not made for the purpose of supporting any structure above it crossing the passageway.