June is always interesting, liturgically. This year is no different. The Feast of the Sacred Heart falls on the third Friday after Pentecost and that almost always puts it in the month of June (it can be as early as May 29th and as late as July 2nd). This year, it fell on Friday of last week, June 24th. Normally, that would be the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, but that got moved to the following Saturday. Normally, we would solemnize the Feast of John the Baptist on the following Sunday, but Sacred Heart is one of those few feasts which gets solemnized by default. That was the Mass Father celebrated – a solemn feast, and so Father wore gold vestments rather than white. Of course, by now, you know the rule of thumb: a feast that calls for gold vestments also calls for Mass II (for Solemn Feasts). The question is asked, “Why not Mass VIII?” Apart from the fact that Mass VIII is like a badly cooked steak (way overdone), it is less fitting than Mass IIas it is designated For Ordinary Feasts. We paired that with Credo III.
For the Processional, we sang To Christ the Prince of Peace, a hymn very much in keeping with the theme of the Sacred Heart. Among other beautiful phrases, it contains the line:
Deep in His heart for us, the wound of love He bore; that love wherewith He still inflames the hearts that Him adore.
As the Offertory, we sang Tota Pulchra Es for Our Lady.
At the Communion, again for the Sacred Heart, we sang the sublimely beautiful Lauds Hymn for the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Cor Arca.
This Sunday also happened to have been the first opportunity we had to celebrate our patron, Saint Anthony of Padua. For the recessional, we sang all four verses of Saint Anthony, We Turn to Thee – twice! We had an overflow crowd join us to celebrate our patron and it took unbelievably long for the procession to form up outside.
In procession, we carried the statue and our prized relic of Saint Anthony. We sang Blessed Francis, Holy Father in honor of Saint Francis, then sang the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus. We concluded the procession with Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above.