Candles, Candles, Candles

Friends

Peace be with you. 

One of the things I treasure about St. Patrick’s Church is the number of people lighting candles both in the Church proper and in the Divine Mercy Chapel. It brings me a sense of consolation to see the number of people lifting up someone in prayer and visually encouraging others to do so as well, even if we don’t know exactly what is being offered up. Each candle represents a prayer and we are encouraged to unite those prayers with our own when we visually see a votive candle that is lit. It shows forth the communion we have with each other in an imperfect way while still in this imperfect world. 

The challenge, nonetheless, with offering candles for people is that they cost money for the Church to purchase. After taxes, the six-day plastic candles are costing us about $3.10 and we ask people to donate $3.00 per candle. That means we are currently losing about .10 per candle. We tend to make up this difference when people are overly generous and give more than $3.00. In an effort to make up the difference in cost, we could ask people to donate $3.50 or even $4.00 or $5.00. However, I decided to get a little creative and solve two problems at once. I’ve heard from some people that they are frustrated by the fact that the 6 day candles are rarely available. After all, it takes 6 full days for one of those candles to be exhausted. So, I looked into purchasing 3 day candles. They cost less so we can stick with the $3.00 suggested donation and we’ll be able to rotate the candles a little quicker. A person lighting those candles will still have the consolation of knowing that their intention will be held by our loyal prayer warriors for several days but we’ll be able to accommodate more prayer intentions throughout the week because the candles will have a shorter duration. The good thing is that the 3 day candles fit into the same holder as the 6 day ones did. We’ll also keep a stock of 6 day candles for the sanctuary lamps in the Church and Chapel and for adoration. 

Lastly, I’m writing this on the day after the most recent Vatican document on the dignity of the human person. I haven’t had a chance to read it but I’m hoping to do so and have a fuller treatment of it in next week’s bulletin. At first glance, it appears it’s going to upset some pro-life people because of its embrace of Cardinal Bernadin’s “seamless garment” terminology and upset other people because of its critique of surrogacy and the gender ideology movement. Without wanting to get ahead of myself, I would ask you to read the document and not listen to the commentators. There is clearly a movement in non-church media to create a rift between the (evil) Vatican bureaucracy and (good) Pope Francis even though Pope Francis has echoed these sentiments in various speeches. I’ll have more to say next week.