Pastor’s Corner — August 16th, 2026
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Not a Holy Day of Obligation This Year
Due to the Solemnity being on a Saturday this year, this beautiful feast is not a Holy Day of Obligation. We still plan to celebrate the feast at our regularly scheduled 8am Mass.
Funny New “Rectory Ramble” on YouTube Channel
Some of you have already seen our new Rectory Ramble video posted on YouTube. If you haven’t, you should check it out if you want to laugh. For those who are unfamiliar with these, during COVID Fr. Joe and I, along with the seminarians, started doing weekly videos of life at the rectory for the parish. We answered theological questions submitted and gave everyone a glimpse into rectory life. It was a chance to connect with everyone during the lock down. Shortly after starting them, within these videos we started inserting fun videos or skits, mostly created by the seminarians. After COVID ended, we kept publishing these once or twice a year. Special Kudos to Annie O’Neill, our Media Coordinator and seminarian Jonathan Galvas for putting together the Summer 2026 edition. I think all of you will be surprised by this one.
Healing Service at St Pat’s this Friday (August 14th)
As you’ve seen in the bulletin, we have another Encounter Ministries healing service this weekend. Some of the healing testimonies at our last service (at the Conference) were pretty wild. If you know someone who needs healing, please consider bringing them to the service.
Excellent Article on Patriotism by Prominent Archbishop in the United States
Here are some excerpts from an excellent article published this week, “The Forgotten Virtue of Patriotism”*, by Archbishop Coakley, the President of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops.
“Let me begin with a claim that might surprise you: patriotism is not, first and foremost, a political virtue. It is a religious one. It flows from the Fourth Commandment, honor your father and mother, and it can rightly be understood as a form of familial love extended outward. Saint Thomas Aquinas classified patriotism under the virtue of piety, which he treats as a part of justice. He asks a simple question: to whom do we owe something, simply because of who they are to us, apart from any contract or transaction? His answer is that after God, we are debtors chiefly to two groups: our parents and our country. In his words, “the principles of our being and government are our parents and our country, that have given us birth and nourishment. Consequently, man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God.”1 Just as it belongs to religion to worship God, Aquinas says, so it belongs to piety, in the second place, to give honor to our parents and our country.
Notice what this means. Just as each of us owes our family something we do not owe strangers—not because our family is objectively more valuable than other people, but because of the unique relationship we have with them—so too patriotism is a recognition of a similar debt of gratitude owed to our country. It is not a claim that our nation is superior to every other nation on earth. It is a claim that this nation, with all its imperfections, is the one through which God chose to give us life, language, liberty, and the countless ordinary gifts that make everything else in our lives possible. This applies to each of us whether we are Americans, Mexicans, Canadians, Lithuanians and so on. Patriotism is a virtue for all people of every nation.
This is not a private theological opinion of mine, or even only of Saint Thomas. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the same thing in almost the identical language: “The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity” (CCC #2239). Notice that word: gratitude. Not blind allegiance, not tribal pride, but gratitude, the same virtue that should animate a son toward the mother who raised him. The Church has never asked us to love our country instead of loving God, or to love it more than we love the truth. She has simply recognized what most people already know, that we owe something real to the place that gave us life, and that ignoring this debt is a form of ingratitude….…
Now, I want to be very clear about something, because love of country can go wrong, and go wrong badly. Patriotism, rightly understood, is not the same thing as nationalism. Patriotism is not a matter of uncritically af irming everything our country has done, excusing its injustices, or treating its power and prestige as ends in themselves. Nationalism, in contrast, tends to elevate the nation to the status of an idol, something owed a total and unconditional loyalty that properly belongs only to God. It resents correction. It rejects the suggestion that the nation could ever be wrong. Patriotism, by contrast, is more like the love a good son has for his mother. He honors her, he defends her, he is grateful to her, and precisely because he loves her, he also tells her the truth when she has strayed, and he works to help her become the woman God intended her to be. A patriot can grieve his country’s sins without ceasing to love his country. In fact, that grief is often the clearest sign that love is real.
This is why authentic patriotism and Christian conscience were never meant to be enemies. Loving and serving our country is a fitting response to what we have received from it, much as a grown child feels obligated to care for aging parents, not because the parents earned it through perfect behavior, but because of the bond itself….”
He offers some specifics towards the end too. Regardless of one’s political adherences, all Catholics are to be patriotic, properly understood.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias