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Monday, May 10, 2021

FROM THE JUST TOO COOL FILE

Yesterday, Mother’s Day, I celebrated the Traditional Latin Mass at our Cathedral Basilica in Downtown Savannah. One of my Saint Anne families desired that their son receive his First Holy Communion at this Mass. The Cathedral and I were happy to oblige. (“Cathedral and I” sounds like a great book title for me to write).

The First Communicant’s four brothers served the Mass (and they serve St. Anne’s Low Mass on Tuesday evening). There is also one daughter who is the baby of the family. 

The reception followed Holy Mass and it was outside the Cathedral in Lafayette Square. Of course, those attending the TLM were not square.

It was a spectacular spring Sunday!

A bit of trivia, the First Communicant’s father made his First Holy Communion on Mother’s Day when Mother’s Day was also May 9th. His oldest brother was confirmed on May 9th (the tallest altar boy) and I, your most humble blogger, made my First Holy Communion on Mother’s Day 60 years ago. But in 1961, Mother’s Day was the latest it could be, May 14th. And in 1961 the Latin Mass was not called traditional, as there was no “untraditional Mass” at that time.

And the First Communicant and I share the same birthday, December 21 and his family has invited me over to their home to celebrate our birthdays for the last two years! How cool is that?





Four of the altar servers are the First Communicant’s brothers. Can you pick them out? They also have a sister who is the youngest:







18 comments:

Paul said...

May God bless you.

Pierre said...

Thanks for sharing this, Father McDonald. It is nice to see that tradition is for the young.

Robert Kumpel said...

What a coincidence. As I got in my car to go to Mass yesterday, I told my daughter how, on Mother's Day in 1966, I received my First Holy Communion. I still remember the event vividly--well, certain parts of it.

Anonymous said...

Way cool!!!
Good news so very needed right now...

ByzRus said...

According to our Supreme Pontiff, this is just a fad for the young........Right....I can see that.

Anonymous said...

As for birthday sharing, all it takes is 23 people to have 50/50 odds of a shared birthday, and make it 70 people and chances are 99.9% there will be two of them sharing a birthday. We discussed this in school in the early 70s, where two classrooms of kids would near surely net a shared birthday.

Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh said...

Anon 2:47 - You are correct. Most "remarkable coincidences" aren't remarkable at all.

"From a purely statistical point of view, these events are random, not meaningfully related, and they shouldn’t be that surprising because they happen all the time. “Extremely improbable events are commonplace,” as the statistician David Hand says in his book The Improbability Principle. But humans generally aren’t great at reasoning objectively about probability as they go about their everyday lives.

For one thing, people can be pretty liberal with what they consider coincidences. If you meet someone who shares your birthday, that seems like a fun coincidence, but you might feel the same way if you met someone who shared your mother’s birthday, or your best friend’s. Or if it was the day right before or after yours. So there are several birthdays that person could have that would feel coincidental.

And there are lots of people on this planet—more than 7 billion, in fact. According to the Law of Truly Large Numbers, “with a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen,” Diaconis and Mosteller write. If enough people buy tickets, there will be a Powerball winner. To the person who wins, it’s surprising and miraculous, but the fact that someone won doesn’t surprise the rest of us." - from "Coincidences and the Meaning of Life" by Julie Beck, The Atlantic, 23 February 2016

Anonymous said...

The Atlantic, another one of the "liberal" bibles.

Robert Kumpel said...

I'm not sure what all this "coincidence" talk is about, but I just happened to think that it was a coincidence that I remembered by First Communion going to Mass, then seeing that others were receiving their First Communion on that day too. O.K.., maybe it's not such a coincidence. I guess I'll have to weigh and measure every figure of speech I post here, lest I offend the sophisticated sensibilities of the language police. Yeesh.

Anonymous said...

Saying something is a "coincidence" is not using a figure of speech.

It's a misapprehension. These sorts of things may appear to be rare or unusual, but are actually rather common.

Anonymous said...

It is SO good that we have the gifted TJM, AKA Anonymous 4:51, to warn us about publications which, while factual, are tools used by Satan to lead us to perdition.

Where would we be without his perspicacious posts! Do Gratias!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous K at 4:51,

So good to know a Catholic priest’s reading and news sources consist of leftwing, hardly factual, publications. It explains a lot about his mindset

Anonymous said...

Please, TJM, tell us... Should we be reading National Geographic, Readers Digest, The Times of London, and Horse & Hound magazine?

Maybe you can reveal the dangers of Highlights for Children, The Economist, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results which is associated with the Annual IgNobel Awards?

Will we be consumed by a succubus if we keep reading them? Are we going to encounter Baphomet in the Humor in Uniform pages of the Readers Digest?

Please, let us know!!! Do Gratias!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous K,

Your competence in Latin is similar to your reading choices - wrong

Anonymous said...

"Do Gratias" is a reference to your mentor, Homer Simpson.

Now, tell us, which of the publications I mentioned is dangerous to faith and/or morals?

UK-Priest said...

I’m wondering why there is a 7th candle in the centre of the Cathedral’s altar - are you a bishop?

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

I know you wish I was, but..... that is an optical illusion as that is one of six candles on the freestanding altar in front of the old altar with six candles on its reredos.

Anonymous said...

From Fr Z's blog:
"If little boys can learn to pronounce the Latin prayers and memorize them, so can a grown up Catholic priest."