I ask in advance for your forgiveness. I'm being like those doting fathers who insist on boring their friends with the latest snapshots of their children. The above picture shows our Eighth Grade boys at The Atonement Academy. They had just finished serving at Mass (try dividing up the jobs amongst that many!), because today's school Mass was the last time our graduating Seniors and Eighth Graders attend as students. The other students attend until the end of this next week; graduates are made to feel special by allowing them their own "early departure." Of course, most of them will probably show up anyway — our former students tend to think of the Academy as their "other home." The Eighth Grade girls sang in the choir, and they provided a charming setting of the Mass written by the great French composer Jean Langlais when he was only eighteen. We celebrated the Ordinary Form of the Mass in Latin, which is our practice on Fridays. On the other weekdays we celebrate using the Anglican Use, but it's important for our students to be able to participate in Latin, so we do that on a weekly basis.
Of course, we commemorated St. Augustine of Canterbury today. It was a great opportunity for me to speak of the life of this great missionary bishop, who did so much to lay the foundation for the particular spirituality which forms the very Patrimony that the Holy Father has asked us to preserve, nurture and share. St. Augustine is depicted in the triptych which forms the reredos behind the High Altar, so the students see him every day, along with St. Gregory the Great, St. Alban, and the Venerable Bede.
An interesting piece of information — our Eighth Grade boys outnumber the total number of parishioners we had when we began the parish in 1983. A growing Patrimony indeed!
Related posts:
St Augustine of Canterbury: a 'Celtic' perspective"Train up a child in the way he should go…"Some Pictures From "Becoming One" GatheringSchedule for the San Antonio Gathering"Becoming One" Report from Canada
Fr. Christopher G. Phillips is the pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, Texas, where he has served for the past twenty-seven years. He is the founding pastor of the first Anglican Use parish, erected in 1983 under the terms of the Pastoral Provision. Fr. Phillips was ordained as an Anglican for the Diocese of Bristol, England, in 1975. After serving as Curate for three years at St. Stephen Southmead, he returned to the United States and served in two Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Rhode Island. In 1981 he left the Episcopal Church and moved with his family to Texas, where he was subsequently ordained as a Catholic priest in 1983. Fr. Phillips and his wife, JoAnn, have been married for forty years. They have five children, all grown and married, and two grandchildren. 