Bulletin Board with News and Events

 During the 5:15pm Mass this coming Tuesday, November 13, we will celebrate the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Those who are anticipating surgery, the chronically ill, the disabled, and those slowed by advancing age are among those who should receive the Anointing. For several years at the Cathedral, we scheduled the Anointing for the 8:00am Saturday Mass every month. Two patterns developed. First, that early Saturday Mass was not an exclusively convenient hour. Second, there were people fairly healthy who were coming forward for the Anointing out of habit. Therefore, about a year ago, we decided to schedule one Anointing Mass per quarter and to alternate the hour between an 8:00am Saturday Mass and a 5:15pm Tuesday Mass. Certainly all are welcome to come to Tuesday’s 5:15pm Mass. It may be a few minutes longer than the normal weekday Mass, but still under an hour. Those who should be anointed, please pray with us.

 There is a line stretched across America – the poverty line. One in eight Americans hangs below that line. With our help, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development helps communities rise above the poverty line. Support next weekend’s second collection basket which will help low-income people as they work together to solve community problems, increase wages, and secure affordable housing. This annual collection throughout America is a basic Christian work of mercy. Information is available at the Cathedral doors; or check www.povertyusa.org to learn more.

Next Saturday, November 17, at 6:00pm, Mickey Mouse will parade down Michigan Avenue to turn on the Magnificent Mile’s Christmas lights. Except via the Grand Avenue underpass, you will not be able to cross Michigan Avenue from Oak to Wacker during the parade. There will be a million visitors in the neighborhood. Plan ahead if you are a Saturday evening Mass regular. If I were you, I would go to Mass on Sunday!

However, if you are brave enough to join the crowd next Saturday, stop by the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA), 820 N. Michigan Avenue, facing the Water Tower, next door to the Hershey’s Store. LUMA is opening Art and Faith of the Creche: The Collection of James and Emilia Govan. The Govan collection was assembled over 30 years and contains more than 450 creches from 70 countries; 100 examples will be a part of LUMA’s exhibit. Although traditionally displayed at Christmas by Christians, cresches in the Govan Collection also include works by Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, and Jewish artists. Styles range from baroque to folk, from grandiose to humble. Saturday, November 17 from 5:00-8:00pm, visitors will be welcomed to the exhibit free. At 6:00pm the collector James Govan will sign the exhibition catalogue.  Art and Faith of the Creche will be on display until January 26. For more information try LUC.edu/luma.

On Friday, November 16, Cardinal George and Chicago’s Auxiliary Bishops will concelebrate the 12:10pm Mass for the repose of the soul of the Cardinal’s predecessor, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin who died eleven years ago on November 14. Join us for this annual observance. While visiting Holy Name Cathedral, look up to the galeros, the Cardinal’s hats that hang above the sanctuary. The second one from the left is the one custom-made for Cardinal Bernardin by the Chicago priests. Look at the hat, and pray for Chicago’s chief shepherd, 1982-1996.

In the main vestibule of the Cathedral a plaque is mounted listing the names of Chicago’s Catholic Ordinaries, i.e. head bishops. Two of those men died in separate years on November 13; neither was especially happy to be the Bishop of Chicago. James Van de Velde, a Belgium-born Jesuit, arrived in 1849 Chicago with its 23,000 population. He was petrified. He spent a good piece of his five years here trying to get out. He finally managed to be named Bishop of an 11-parish diocese (Natchez, Mississippi) where he died after a fall on November 13, 1855. Succeeding Van de Velde, the effete Anthony O’Regan, an Irish-bred seminary professor with no interest in being Chicago’s bishop, left the city’s 60,000 citizens behind in 1858 after serving just four years, much of that term in argument with his clergy. He went to Rome and announced that he refused to return to Chicago; he never did. O’Regan died in London on November 13, 1866. On this November 13—Tuesday—pray for the reluctant shepherds of our past. More easily than they did, we are blessed to see Christ clearly on the banks of Lake Michigan.

Tuesday, November 13, is the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Chicago’s saint. Born in Italy in 1850, the youngest of 13 children (her mother, 52 years old when Frances was born, also should have been canonized!), she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart serving mostly Italian immigrants to New York, Nicaragua, New Orleans, Panama, Buenos Aires, London, Spain, France, Seattle, Newark, Scranton, Chile, Los Angeles, and her final earthly home – Chicago. Mother Cabrini lived here twice. In 1899, her community founded Assumption School for 900 students at 317 W. Erie, walking distance from the Cathedral. Mother Cabrini herself taught religion on Sunday mornings in the Assumption Church basement. Ironically, Assumption School closed in 1945 when the neighborhood in back of the Merchandise Mart turned industrial and non-residential. In the first years of the 20^th century, Mother Cabrini lived on the farm operated by her Sisters in northwest suburban/ then rural Park Ridge. She attended Mass at St. Paul of the Cross Church where she is remembered today by a beautifully landscaped prayer garden; and where, after 5:00pm Mass Tuesday, Sr. Bernadette Anella, MSC, will deliver a talk entitled “Mother Cabrini as Apostle of the New Evangelization.” Phone St. Paul at 847-825-7605 for more information. After dozens of trans-Atlantic crossings endured by a frail woman who hated sea-travel, Mother Cabrini made her final passage on December 22, 1917, from her room at Chicago’s Columbus Hospital—the institution she founded in 1905 and which remained until its 2000 closing—to her real home, Heaven. On Tuesday, ask for the prayers of a once-upon-a-time Cathedral neighbor and a Chicagoan in Heaven, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.

Fr. Dan Mayall