1408 North Davis Drive | Arlington, TX 76012 phone: 817-460-2278 | e-mail: stmaryarl@sbcglobal.net
Search
Sacramental Life
Sacramental Life at St. Mary the Virgin!
“Sacraments are ‘powers that comes forth’ from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church. They are ‘the masterworks of God’ in the new and everlasting covenant.” -The Catechism of the Catholic Church §1116
By God’s perfect design and infinite grace, we encounter the living Christ in the sacraments. Some sacraments, like the Eucharist, we celebrate daily. Others, like Baptism and Confirmation, Marriage, and the like, we celebrate only once. At St. Mary's, we follow and love Christ fully through the sacraments of the Catholic Church. We encourage all our members to embrace the sacraments faithfully and completely.
Below you will find the information necessary to help you respond to Christ calling you in the sacraments. If you need any help, don’t hesitate to call the Parish Office at 817-460-2278.
Celebrating the Sacraments at SMV!
Baptism Parents have a responsibility to request baptism as soon as possible after the birth or even before the birth of their child. Parents requesting baptism should ordinarily be members of the Parish.
Godparents must be fully initiated members of the Catholic Church, at least 16 years of age, and leading a sacramental life in harmony with the Catholic Church. Godparents accept the responsibility of assisting parents in developing the faith life of the child. Godparents should also participate in Baptismal Preparation with the parents. Also, if the godparents are members of another parish, a letter of recommendation from their pastor is required.
To request baptism for your child, please call or email the Parish Office.
Confirmation Each baptized Catholic can and should receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. A candidate for confirmation should be already baptized and be able to renew his or her baptismal promises. Adults who have already received First Communion should be actively participating in the sacramental life of the community.
Sponsors must be at least 16 years of age and fully initiated into the Catholic Church. He or she must also be a practicing Catholic living the sacramental life in harmony with the Church.
To ask about Confirmation at SMV, please call or email the Parish Office.
Marriage In order to celebrate the Sacrament of Marriage at SMV, hopeful couples should first register in the Parish and become members in the worshipping community for three months. Couples should also make contact with the Pastor 9 to 12 months prior to the provisional date for their wedding. After an initial interview, the couple can begin the marriage preparation process.
To ask about Marriage at SMV, please call or email the Parish Office.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation Reconciliation is offered at SMV every Wednesday at 11:00am and also every Saturday at 10:00am in the Church. You can also make an appointment to make your confession another time by calling the Parish Office or by contacting our Pastor directly.
To download an Examination of Conscience, click here!
The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick Catholics may request the Sacrament of Anointing either from the Parish Office or from our Pastor directly.
The Sacrament of Holy Orders “Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time: thus it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate” (
Catechism §1536).
If you are a Catholic man sensing a call to ordained ministry, feel free to contact our Pastor. Also, be sure and contact the Office of Vocations in the Diocese of Fort Worth.
The Sacrament of the Eucharist The Eucharist is the source and summit of our Christian life. At St. Mary, we celebrate the Eucharist daily.
For a complete schedule of Mass times, click here!
Also, if you are sick, homebound, or in a care facility and would like to receive the Eucharist, please contact our Parish Office.
We also offer opportunities for Eucharistic adoration.
For more information, click here!
Septuagesima and the Pre-Lenten Sundays
By Clinton A. Brand, PhD This Sunday you may be surprised to see purple vestments and purple antependia at the altar, lectern, and pulpit – here almost three weeks before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. As part of the ongoing implementation of the new Missal approved by the Holy See for the Ordinariates, we begin a practice new to this parish but ancient and universal in Catholic worship from the 6
th century until 1969 and a custom retained in the classic Anglican Books of Common Prayer – that is, the observance of a pre-Lenten period of preparation for the season of Lent which is itself a time of preparation for the joyous exultation of Easter.
If the liturgical year rightly begins with Advent anticipating Our Lord's Nativity, the sanctification of time finds its center and axis in the Paschal mystery of His death, burial, and rising to new life. By traditional reckoning, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon that occurs on or after the day of the
ecclesiastical vernal equinox, fixed as March 21. Following the formula decreed by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and later adjusted with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, Easter can occur as early as March 22 or as late April 25. Ash Wednesday never comes before February 4 or after March 10. As we heard earlier this year in the Proclamation of the Date of Easter on Epiphany, Easter will be celebrated in 2016 on March 27, and hence Ash Wednesday comes around this year on February 10.
The holy season of Lent, then, is just around the corner. According to the traditional liturgical calendar, long shared by Catholics and Anglicans alike (together with the Eastern Churches and some Lutherans), the last three Sundays before Ash Wednesday constitute a special pre-Lenten season focused on preparing the faithful for their penitential regimen. Though this pre-Lenten season was lost for a time after the post-conciliar liturgical reforms following Vatican II, it is preseved in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and now features in Ordinariate usage. On these Sundays the liturgical color is violet, the
Gloria in excelsis Deo and the
Alleluia go silent, and the Mass propers assume a penitential character – as in Lent – but unlike Lent flowers still adorn the altar and images remain unveiled until the season actually begins on Ash Wednesday.
By this symbolism, the Church invites the people of God to voluntary self-examination and discernment to ready our senses, minds, and souls for the rigors of the coming season of repentance. While Pre-Lent is
not a period of obligatory fasting or abstinence, it is a time to look ahead and to formulate a personal rule of self-denial in order to keep a more holy Lent. In other words, by
external signs of penitence in the liturgy before the season, we are beckoned to prepare for the
internal disciplines of Lent that we may do the Lord’s bidding in sorrow for our sins, “not only with our lips, but in our lives,” and that we might rejoice all the more fervently for our deliverance from the bonds of death on the glorious feast of the Resurrection.
By ancient tradition, the third Sunday before Lent is called
Septuagesima since it numbers about seventy days until Easter, recalling also the seventy-year exile of the Hebrews in Babylon. By analogy, the second Sunday in this sequence is
Sexagesima, falling as it does some sixty days before the Paschal feast. The last Sunday before Ash Wednesday is
Quinquagesima, fifty days out from Easter.
Quadragesima is the traditional Latin name for the first Sunday in Lent or "the fortieth day" before Easter. Prominently restored in the Ordinariate Calendar, these Latinate names recall a worthy patrimony and help mark the essential transition from the festivity of Christmastide to the more sombre character of Lent.
In the medieval England, the beginning of this pre-Lenten season was popularly commemorated by the ritual “burying of the
Alleluia” just after First Vespers of
Septuagesima when
Alleluia was sung for the last time. Inscribed on parchment the word
Alleluia was interred in a casket and “buried” or locked away until its “resurrection” at the Easter Vigil. This ceremony of the
Depositio Alleluia served to illustrate the captivity of sin until Christ by His victory bursts forth from the tomb, making all things new, and giving us tongues again to sing
Alleluia! He is risen!
The Fathers and Doctors of the Church richly attest to the importance of the pre-Lenten Sundays as a call to ongoing conversion of life, a summons to turn to the Lord in
metanoia or repentance. Pope Saint Gregory the Great likened the sequence of these Sundays to the call of the householder in Our Lord’s parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16, the ancient Gospel reading on
Septuagesima). More recently, Blessed Pope Paul VI famously compared the ‘
gesimas (as these Sundays are known) to the ringing of bells calling the faithful to church at various intervals before Mass to be ready for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
The bells are tolling. Will you be ready?
(Dr. Brand is a member of Our Lady of Walsingham parish in Houston and serves as professor of English at the University of St. Thomas.)