"In the News" - 4/6/23

Welcome to In the News Show. My name is Judy Desigatis, and I'm here with my co-host, Father Bill Wehry. Good morning, Father, and good morning to our listeners. Good morning, Judy. How are you today? I'm good. I'm good. Very well. Very well. And I want to thank Joe Nowistynski for our technical assistance and David Hillowitz for our theme music that he provides to us. Okay, let's start off on a really good, happy note, because when we're recording this, it's Holy Week. We just celebrated Palm Sunday, and we have a lot of events this week leading up to the glorious feast of solemnity of Easter. So I'm going to engage Father's help, because today in the Diocese of Harrisburg, as I said when we record this, is the Chrism Mass, and there's a lot of good things around that that maybe some of our listeners may not be aware of, all the things that happen, actually, at that service. So, Father, share with us a little bit about the Chrism Mass and what will be happening today, because you'll be participating as well as all the priests of the diocese. Well, this is the Grand Liturgy. If there's any such thing as an annual mass of the diocese with the bishop and his priests and all the people invited, it's open, of course, to everybody. This is it. It is sort of the annual mass of the diocese, in my head, anyway, and it's all the oils are blessed. They're brought up, they're brought down the aisle in large glass containers, and they are blessed and then distributed to all the parishes of the diocese for the upcoming year for all of the sacraments. And it's called the Chrism Mass, named after the chrism oil, which is the mixture of olive oil and perfume used for confirmation, the first anointing of baptism, and for ordinations. And also oil of the sick is blessed and the oil of catechumens, which is only used for the first anointing of baptism, and the second anointing of baptism is chrism oil. In any case, it's glorious, it's wonderful. The cathedral is usually packed, and it's a long mass, and it is wonderful. It can be done any time during Holy Week. Customarily, it was done on Holy Thursday, but many dioceses have changed it to another day during the Holy Week because Holy Thursday is so busy. And everybody should attend at least once in your lifetime a Chrism Mass, also called Mass of the Oils. Now, what happens, the priests renew their commitment? What happens with all of the priests that day? That is correct. We all stand up and renew our solemn promises of priesthood and of celibacy, and that we all stand up to do that, and a very dramatic moment during the Mass as well. Just a word about the Triduum, what we call the Triduum. The week leads up to—the Triduum is Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday slash Easter Vigil slash Easter Sunday. It's seen as three days, the last three days until the Resurrection, and it's a package deal. The Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday—that's what it was all about. That's what Christ came to do to redeem us. And those days, the Mass of the Lord's Supper leading into the commemoration of the Crucifixion, and then the glorious Easter Vigil Mass inaugurating the Easter season, it is all considered like one day. I was sitting with a bishop and with some of my altar servers—he had come for confirmation—and one of the altar servers asked him at dinner, what's your favorite day of the Triduum? And he said, well, you know, there's no really favorite day. It's all one. It's one event. So I certainly encourage, as I do every year, my people to try to come to everything during Holy Week and just benefit from that package deal, so to speak, and get the holistic experience of the celebration of our redemption. Yeah, I agree. It's a wonderful end to Lent, and there have been times where I've missed one or two, and it does make a difference when you get to Easter, that leading up to it. So it's really a wonderful Triduum, and thank you for filling us in about the Chrism Mass and the things that are going to be happening this week. Lent ends on Holy Thursday. I don't know how many people know that, and that begins the Triduum. I was going to ask you that. When does Lent officially end? With the Mass of the Lord's Supper. Lord's Supper, okay. Lent ends, and you go into the Triduum. Right, right. Okay. Now, regarding any Easter traditions, anything from your family that you remember? No, nothing. Easter, I mean, we had the Easter dinner. When I was real small, of course, you know, Easter eggs, and sometimes we would do a little Easter egg hunt in the family. And here in the parish, we do a blessing of Easter food, and that's the Holy Saturday morning. And don't get a lot of people for that, but we do, the people do bring in the baskets of food, and that's an old custom. And no, not, I don't really, in the family, just a big Easter Sunday meal. That was a big thing. And Easter baskets, we would, when we were real small, my sister and I, the family would fill Easter baskets for us with the eggs and the candy and, you know, the chocolate bunnies, etc., etc. We did go to Mass, though. We did. It wasn't all just secular Easter bunny stuff, but we always made it a point. Never went to an Easter vigil when I was growing up, but always Easter Sunday. Right, yes, for us, too. We have traditions in our family, of course, the big Easter meal, but also Easter bread. We come from an Italian tradition, and we have Easter bread, and it's kind of a semi-sweet bread with an egg baked into it. And I think some of the other Polish and Slovak traditions do something similar, as well, and that was a big piece to it, as well. We would have, like, breakfast and coffee after Mass before the big meal, and we'd have the Easter bread, and, of course, cookies and all those things, as well. But that's something that we shared in our household, and then we would have the ham and all the fixings, and, of course, as children, as you said, we had Easter baskets, as well. And it would be extra-special dress-up. I mean, Phil dressed up, anyway, for even an ordinary Sunday Mass back when I was growing up. Not so much today, but even back then, it would be extra-special dress-up, I mean, for the ladies, you know, the Easter finery and all that. And you still – it's funny. You still do see that a little bit. People who would not dress up for an ordinary Sunday Mass do dress up for Easter Sunday Mass, and I have noticed that. A little bit of that is still hanging on, just for Easter Sunday, and maybe Christmas. And maybe you see a few here and there Easter bonnets, as we used to call them. Yeah. Or a hat that would go with an outfit or a new suit, but definitely new clothes. Well, what I do – one thing that I do is, every year – I guess I'm going to do it this year again – cook a roast leg of lamb for me and the other priest in the house. Nice. In commemoration of the Passover, lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. And I love lamb, leg of lamb. A lot of people don't like it or have never even tasted it. But I will do that. We'll sit down kind of early, about 4 p.m., on Holy Thursday, for a lamb dinner. That sounds good. That sounds good. Oh, yeah. So, just staying with a lot of positiveness, I wanted to mention that on LifeSite News this week, Archbishop Gomez from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has led a six-mile Eucharistic procession in downtown L.A. to revive faith in the Real Presence. As we know, there's a three-year Eucharistic revival going on, so it's nice to see that in the city where there has definitely been some difficulties in the past, most recently with a murder of one of their bishops, it's nice to know that the archbishop is conducting this in celebration of the Eucharistic revival, but during Lent and in preparation for Easter. So, hearing about these, I think it would be nice to have more of these in different dioceses across the country and in the world, I think. Yeah. We just did an outdoor procession, first one since I've been here with Father Peter Redding, my new parochial vicar. You know, it comes in, it's newly ordained, and it comes in with a lot of fresh ideas, which is good. And he came up with the idea of a Eucharistic procession. I was not there. I was at the other parish. We have two parishes here. But he had a canopy made. Some of the men made a canopy, four-pronged, four-post canopy to protect the Blessed Sacrament. It was a street procession around the block. It was, I think, either the Feast of the Sacred Heart or Patronal Feast. I think that's what it was, or maybe Corpus Christi, I can't remember. So, yeah, I think it's a fabulous thing. It's to be highly recommended. And that's the way it was done, 40-hour processions over in Europe, especially, were done through the street. Right, right. And I think that's even more important now with all the turmoil that's going on, to continually bring the Eucharist out to the street and to not be afraid to be out in the presence of everybody, all religions in the cities. So we're looking forward. St. John Newman, when he inaugurated 40 hours in this country from Europe, and he did a street procession the first time, and he was advised against it because there had been anti-Catholic riots. This is the 1850s. There had been anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia beforehand, but he went ahead with it. There were no incidents, thanks be to God. But that took courage to do that. Yeah, and not much different than today, it seems. That would have been the 1800s, but if you told that story with no date attached to it, I think you would still feel the same way today. There's a lot of anti-Christian or anti-faith and religion, generally. I also remember a canopy during Holy Thursday Mass, after taking the Eucharist to the Altar of Repose. So that's another focusing on the Eucharist in these traditions. I wonder if we could segue into, I mean, since we've mentioned it, segue into the vandalism that's taking place against Catholic churches in various ways. Yep, we have about two minutes to go. We can certainly talk about that. That has happened again. There was actually a tabernacle stolen from Bishop David O'Connell. He was the auxiliary bishop that was murdered in Los Angeles recently, and his tabernacle in his home was stolen. Now, thank God the host was not in there. Right. But, you know, that's something. That's still going on. I have a article from Vanity Fair from January of this year that said nearly 300 Catholic churches have been vandalized since May of 2022, with over 40 percent of those attacks coming after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson v. Women's Health Organization. And there's been more since. That report was in January. And pro-life centers as well are being attacked and vandalized. And criticism of the federal government, you know, of not really addressing it satisfactorily from the Attorney General, United States Attorney General's Office, they seem to be ignoring it. But it bears attention and concern, no doubt about it. Yeah. Well, that'll wrap it up for the first half of our show. We'll be back on the other side. So please stay with us. You're listening to 720 WHYF, Holy Family Radio. We'll be back. Please stay with us. Yeah. Time was good on that. OK. I forgot about on the beginning. Next, Father, when we start again, I want to mention about the dinner. I forgot to do that. I was going to do a PSA about the dinner. Oh, OK. Sure. So I'll do that to start off and then we can talk about Shia LaBeouf. And Shia LaBeouf. And then a couple of other astonishing power of one Hail Mary. That was a good story. And yeah. Was that a good timing? OK. OK. So I'm going to start. So because we're cognizant of the time today. So I'm going to keep I'm going to go to the next segment. Welcome back to the new show. I did want to mention a short PSA announcement that's coming up. We've been talking about it on the station. And I'm sure you've seen we have billboards around town. We have a Holy Family Radio benefit dinner that's coming up on Friday, April 21st. We'll be held at the Sheridan Harrisburg Hershey Hotel on Lindell Road in Harrisburg. Kevin Riley will be our keynote speaker. And tickets are $100 per person. There'll be a meet and greet social hour at 6 p.m. with a delicious dinner at 7 p.m. with music and door prizes. We do have a deadline for receiving reservations. That's going to be Thursday, April 6th. So this is a big fundraiser for us. If you can attend, you'll hear a great speaker and Kevin Riley, some great music, some great food. You get to meet and greet the hosts of the show and people that are behind the scenes at the station. So please consider this $100 per person. Reservations can be made at 720WHYF.com. And there's also a mailing address that you can send to for tickets and more information. Holy Family Radio PO Box 6028 Lancaster PA 17607. And you can always call us 717-525-8110. So hope to see you there. I'll be there. Looking forward to it. I'm going to be there as well. It's always a great event every year. Yeah, always a great event. So we hope you can join us. Okay, getting back to our show, we also talked about this movie before, but Shia LaBeouf, he is going to be starring in the Padre Pio film. We mentioned this quite a few months ago because they were beginning to film it, the documentary, the film. And it's going to be released June 2nd. And the actor has actually partnered with a Franciscan to actually do this show. And he was talking a little bit about his journey in making the film and how impressive it's been on his face. So we're very excited to witness this film and looking forward to having that come out. And of course, Shia LaBeouf converted to the Catholic faith. Yes, he did. During the – as a result of his introduction to Padre Pio making the movie and his introduction to the Catholic faith, has converted to full communion, received full communion with the Catholic faith, Catholic Church. And it's good to have somebody in Hollywood, not too many, who are espousing traditional Judeo-Christian values. But there are a few who are very, very strong Catholics. Certainly Jonathan Romey, who is the star of Chosen, plays the lead role of Christ, but also Mark Wahlberg, another prominent actor in Hollywood, very, very good Catholic. And Gary Sinise, did I pronounce that right? Sinise, Gary Sinise. And he played Lieutenant Dan in Tom Hanks' movie of the – and the name is escaping me right now. Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump, thank you. He was Lieutenant Dan and also a very committed Catholic convert to the faith. So God bless this Padre Pio actor and we wish the best for this show. And we hope that the theaters – I'll lobby our local theater to get it in. And also at the same time, pretty much at the same time, there's the Devil's Exorcist, the movie coming out about a father, Gabriel Amorte. He was deceased now, but he was the Rome exorcist and had written several books. I read the first one recounting tales of the possessions and the exorcisms that he's dealt with. That's Russell Crowe, who is going to be the Australian actor, was the lead actor in The Gladiator, played Maximus, the general Maximus in the movie The Gladiator. And he will be playing Gabriel Amorte in the Devil's – in the Pope's Exorcist, it's entitled. Yes, so we have some films to look forward to. And I also wanted to mention that Jim Caviezel, of course, another Catholic actor, he's gone on to do other shows that weren't necessarily Catholic related, but we know him as Jesus and the Passion of the Christ, and I'm sure that they're going to be airing that movie on all the channels this coming week. And no matter how many times you see that, it's very, very moving and very, very touching. This is the time of year, that's true, in a lot of the channels, ABC, NBC, the major networks. I guess Turner Classics as well, as AMC will be running a lot of the religious shows, The Greatest Story Ever Told, King of Kings, Ben-Hur, the Easter season, they do run a lot of those shows. Saturday night, the Ten Commandments were on, and I watched it again. Always a good story, and well, well, well done. I want to move on to something on National Catholic Register. I think this is a very positive thing. It's called The Astonishing Power of One Hail Mary. And this is a prayerful petition in Pittsburgh that changed lives. And the gist of the story is that someone was in need of prayer, and this priest that had been jogging one day kind of went past this person's house and was thinking, that person needs prayer, and offered up a Hail Mary, kind of like we do when we were kids. I don't know, some people out there might remember this. You'd hear an ambulance, and you'd say a Hail Mary. So he kind of just threw up a Hail Mary, as you might say. I know they have Hail Mary passes in football. And here he comes to find out that this Hail Mary saved this person's life. And, yeah, it was pretty amazing. It was this woman who said, let me tell you what happened last week. She blacked out at her home, and she thought she was dying. And she actually got a vision of this man who, I think it was a priest, who prayed for her. And so when she got to the hospital and she recovered, she made sure that she saw this man who would jog by her house all the time and say, thank you for praying for me. And he's like, well, how did you know I was praying for you? She said, when I was having in the hospital, I got a vision of your face, and I knew that someone out there was praying for me. So never underestimate the power of prayer or a Hail Mary. And I forget who it was that said it's better to say one good Hail Mary than a whole rosary of, you know, lukewarm Hail Mary, so to speak. So a powerful one. A powerful. It reminds me of, it's not exactly one good Hail Mary, but the rosary campaign that was inaugurated to keep Austria out of the Soviet bloc. And Austria was up for grabs after World War II. As, you know, the parts of the world being divided up between the Soviet Union and the free world. And Austria was on the brink. And they were dying. They were praying like crazy not to go into the Soviet bloc, which, of course, is atheistic communism. And they began a rosary campaign. It went on for several years. And the Soviet Union astonishingly just sort of gave up Austria to the free world. And it was miraculous. And that was a rosary that did that. Well, the same also with the, when we pray for the Lady of the Rosary in October 7th, the Battle of Lepanto. Yes. That's another powerful. Sure, sure. And just the fall of the Soviet bloc in general, I think, is miraculous. Without one shot fired, it just dismantled. Right. Through, I think, through the rosary, through prayer, and, of course, the work of St. John Paul II with Ronald Reagan and Martin Thatcher. Almost overnight, it just fell apart, dismantled. And that was amazing. I never thought that would happen like that. Right. Definitely not. And it shows you the power of prayer and the power of people working together because all of those were very important religious and political figures. And the power of perseverance and patience. That with prayer, it doesn't happen right away. It doesn't happen overnight. But, you know, it will happen. It might take a long time, maybe for the favor you're praying for. Or maybe it will come to you in a different way, maybe in an unexpected way. And it might come further down the line, but to persevere and hang in there with your teachings and the favors you're asking for. I forget who said it, but they say God answers prayers in three ways. Yes, no, and wait. Yeah, that's good. It's the wait that everybody has trouble with, at least speaking for myself. That's right. Sometimes the answer is not right now. That's right. It's wrong. That is true. That is true. I did want to mention an article on National Catholic Register, and that was actually on Fox News, too. It was a Wall Street Journal poll about religion, patriotism, and having children has diminished in importance for Americans. And it's kind of a little sad story, but maybe a way we can turn it around when you're spending time with your families this Easter. But a new poll has shown over the past 25 years that only 30% of 223 respondents overall said having children was very important to them, compared to 59% in 1998 and 43% in 2019. There was also a notable drop in patriotism from 38% compared with 70% in 1998 and 61% in 2019. And also marriage being of importance, only 43% said marriage was very important, and that has come down as well. Well, I just think that with our problems in society, the answer is talking up the glory of matrimony and the covenant of marriage and the importance of having children and how wonderful that is. And that changes the world. A kissing cousin to that would be chastity, which is the best preparation for marriage, and then entering into that love relationship with one's spouse. But not just for, you know, just for personal self-satisfaction, but also for the improvement of society. When spouses love one another vibrantly and spiritually, you know, church every weekend and prayer in the home, and then forming the children with values and virtues, sending them out into the world, all the ships rise in the tide. And we really have to – and then so much of the violence in society and so many of the, you know, the lust and the results of that will sort of diminish, will reduce. And I think that it's very incumbent upon us to be, as a priest, speaking to myself and for myself, I have to be preaching about this stuff from the pulpit. So while you're sitting around with your family this Easter, be thankful that there's marriage and there's children, and hopefully some of those percentages will increase as we go forward. Father, is there any – we have a few minutes to go. Is there any final words that you'd like to leave with us before we have a little Easter? Well, many are listening to this right in the middle of the triduum or soon thereafter. Of course, we recorded this ahead of time. So happy Easter to everybody. There's a reminder of the importance of the family dinner table. Holidays remind us of that. So many families do not sit down together very much, it's said, except maybe for holidays like Easter. So enjoy it and try to replicate it throughout the year because the family dinner table is Eucharistic. It's like a mini mass, I think. Well, Grace Before Meals, a conversation, put away the electronic devices, look at one another and speak. So may Almighty God bless you all. May the joy of Easter be with you, which we will be celebrating for seven weeks, of course, up until Pentecost, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Father, and happy Easter to all. Happy Easter to all. I just lost my...