Mass in Honor of St. Elizabeth Seton

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Let us pray. God our Father, you inspired the Church with the example and teaching of the Aurora Saint
 
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Elizabeth. As wife and a mother, as educator and foundress, so that as she
 
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might spend her life in service to your people, through her example and prayers
 
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may we learn to express our love for you in love for our fellow men and women. We
 
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ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you
 
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in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
 
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Amen.
 
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The first reading is taken from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
 
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All you who are thirsty, come to the water.
 
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You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat.
 
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Come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk.
 
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Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?
 
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Heed me, and you shall eat well.
 
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You shall delight in rich fare.
 
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Come to me heedfully.
 
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Listen that you may have life.
 
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I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David.
 
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This is the word of the Lord.
 
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Thanks be to God.
 
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The second reading is from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians.
 
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Is not the cup of blessing we bless,
 
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a sharing in the blood of Christ?
 
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And is not the bread we break,
 
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sharing in the body of Christ.
 
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Because the loaf of bread is one,
 
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we, many though we are, are one body,
 
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for we all partake of the one loaf.
 
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This is the word of the Lord.
 
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Thanks be to God.
 
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A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Saint John.
 
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Jesus said to his disciples, I have food to eat of which you do not know.
 
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Doing the will of him who sent me and bringing his work to completion is my food.
 
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Do you not have a saying, four months more and it will be the harvest?
 
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Open your eyes and see, the fields are shining for the harvest.
 
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The reaper already collects his wages and gathers a yield for eternal life.
 
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That sower and reaper may rejoice together. Here we have the saying
 
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verified, one man sows another reaps. I sent you to reap what you had not worked
 
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for. Others have done the labor and you have come in to their gain. This is the
 
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gospel of the Lord.
 
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Your Eminence the Archbishop Celebrant, your eminences, my brothers bishops,
 
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priests, and deacons, devoted religious, dear faithful people, sisters and
 
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brothers all in Christ. On Christmas Day 1803 a man was dying in the quarantine
 
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hospital in Livorno, Italy. His name was William Seton. He was a merchant from New
 
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York. His wife, Elizabeth, was by his bedside. They were both very devout, pious,
 
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Anglican Episcopalians. They talked to one another about Christmas and the
 
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mystery of God's saving power made present in Jesus. Elizabeth records that
 
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William expressed a great desire to receive the sacrament on the great feast
 
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day, but there was no priest of their church present to celebrate the Eucharist.
 
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So Elizabeth poured a little wine in a glass, recited some Psalms and some of
 
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her favorite prayers over it, and both drank. It was for them an expression of faith in
 
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the Eucharist, and an earnest of the cup of blessing that brings unity and peace between
 
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God and his people, and builds up his family in joyful hope.
 
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This touching scene tells us a lot about St. Elizabeth Seton.
 
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It speaks of faith, of appreciation for sacrament, of understanding of ministry as service to
 
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others shaped by the circumstances of time and place.
 
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Above all, it speaks of Elizabeth's ingenuity
 
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and religious determination to do everything in her power
 
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to respond to the deepest needs of other persons.
 
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Elizabeth's action says something especially significant
 
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to people who are trying to preserve
 
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what is essential to Christian well-being
 
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by adapting rites and ministries to cultural and intellectual patterns and to the urgent
 
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demands of the present time.
 
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The hunger for Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist was not a new experience for Elizabeth
 
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Seton.
 
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In a letter to her sister-in-law, Rebecca, she recalled her attitude to receiving Holy
 
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communion when she was a young girl.
 
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Remember how we were laughed at, she said,
 
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for running from one church to another,
 
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sacrament Sundays, that we might receive as often as we could.
 
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It was while she was in Italy, in a futile effort
 
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to restore the health of her dying husband,
 
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that Elizabeth had firsthand experience
 
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of the Roman Catholic Church and its devotion
 
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to Jesus in the Eucharist.
 
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Some references in her letters from there are striking.
 
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How happy would we be, she wrote,
 
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if we believed what these dear souls believe,
 
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that they possess God in the sacrament,
 
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and that he remains in their churches
 
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and is carried to them when they were sick.
 
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The other day, in a moment of excessive distress,
 
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I fell on my knees without thinking
 
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when the blessed sacrament passed by,
 
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and I cried in an agony to God to bless me.
 
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It was this hunger for a deeper
 
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and fuller Eucharistic sharing
 
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that led Elizabeth in 1805
 
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to become a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
 
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On her first communion day, she wrote in her diary,
 
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now let all go its round.
 
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I have received him.
 
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At last, God is mine, and I am his.
 
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The painful misunderstandings and opposition
 
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occasioned by her joining the Roman Catholic Church
 
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community in New York meant for her separation
 
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from family and friends.
 
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When the situation became intolerable,
 
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she welcomed an invitation from Father de Bourgh
 
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to go to Baltimore to work there
 
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with the Salpician fathers.
 
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The hunger for total dedication to Jesus
 
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in the service of others led to the opening of a school
 
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and the formation of a religious community.
 
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A newborn nation witnessed the birth
 
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of a system of Catholic education
 
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that has been the glory and the mainstay of the Catholic Church in that country
 
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for two centuries. When we place the words of today's gospel in their
 
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context, we find that the disciples returning to Jesus are surprised. They
 
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find him in an unusual situation.
 
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He is talking to a woman, a Samaritan, the kind of person
 
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with whom nice people don't associate.
 
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And what's more, he won't eat the lovely supper
 
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that they've brought him.
 
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That's not the way they planned it at all.
 
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And his only explanation is, I have food
 
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that you do not know about.
 
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We, the disciples of 1976, come to meet St. Elizabeth Seton,
 
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this American woman who identified so closely
 
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with the Lord in the Catholic Church.
 
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But she's not quite the way we would have planned it either.
 
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Here she is, a person who was baptized Protestant
 
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and educated in an atmosphere not at all sympathetic
 
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to the Church of Rome, as they called it.
 
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She is a widow in poor health herself
 
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with several small children to care for.
 
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She has no money and lacks even the moral support
 
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of close family and friends.
 
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You would hardly say that she is the typical candidate
 
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for our novitiates.
 
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Yet, she is destined to become the model, the leader, the inspiration, and the finest example of religious life in English-speaking North America.
 
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How can it be? That's the question asked by all who are specially chosen by God.
 
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That's the question our lady herself asked the angel.
 
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How shall this be done?
 
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And the answer to the question is given to us by Jesus
 
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in the sacred gospel.
 
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I have food that you do not know about.
 
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Doing the will of him who sent me
 
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and bringing it to completion is my food.
 
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If devotion to the Eucharist was the powerful force that brought Elizabeth Seton closer to God in the Catholic Church,
 
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the consuming passion of her life was to accomplish the will of God as perfectly as possible in all things.
 
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She had once written,
 
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never by a free act of the mind would I regret his will."
 
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She considered that total submission to God's providence,
 
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even in times of great difficulty and suffering,
 
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was to be her daily food.
 
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Writing to Archbishop Carroll, her friend and director,
 
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she said,
 
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I determine, dry and hard as my daily bread is,
 
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to take it with as good a grace as possible.
 
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When I carry it before the Lord sometimes,
 
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he makes me laugh at myself
 
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and asks me what other kind I would choose
 
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than that which he himself
 
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and all his followers made use of.
 
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I have food that you do not know of to accomplish the will of him who sent me.
 
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But we ask, how can we know his will? What does he want us to do?
 
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Elizabeth's answer to this question came from two sources.
 
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First of all, from the pages of the Gospels.
 
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She knew them well.
 
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It was an important part of her heritage
 
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from her Protestant background.
 
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The other clear expression of God's will for her
 
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was simply the deepest and most urgent needs
 
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of the people around her.
 
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She expressed her apostolate
 
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and the apostolate of her sisters in the rule that she gave them, simply in these words,
 
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to render to our Lord Jesus Christ as a source and model of all charity,
 
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every temporal and spiritual service in the person of the poor, the sick, prisoners, and others.
 
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They were also, she told them, to honor the infancy of Jesus Christ in the young persons
 
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whom they may be called upon to form in virtue, while they sow in their minds the seed of
 
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useful knowledge.
 
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Her inspiring message to the Church of North America and to the whole world was a call
 
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to deep Eucharistic piety and unquestioning acceptance
 
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of God's will, and an unremitting dedication
 
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to the poor of all descriptions, to the sick, invalids,
 
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foundlings, orphans, and all others who were in need
 
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of solicitude and care.
 
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Elizabeth Seton summed up her legacy to us in the last words that she addressed to her sisters.
 
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Be children of the Church. Be children of the Church, she said to them.
 
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What a beautiful expression.
 
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Could we hear a clearer call to the Eucharist, which is the summit of the Church's activity
 
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and the source from which all her power flows?
 
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Do we need a further appeal to the apostolate of charity
 
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when the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxiety of the people of this age,
 
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especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted,
 
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are to find an echo among the children of the Church?
 
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It's consoling for us to say we love the Church, that we love our diocese, our parish,
 
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our religious community, that we love the Holy Father.
 
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Some may even say they love their bishop.
 
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But we have to bring it to a very personal and practical level.
 
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Isaiah is speaking to each one of us in the first reading.
 
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All you who are thirsty, come to the water.
 
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Come receive grain and eat.
 
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Come without money and buy.
 
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Come to me poor and yet secure, the prophet says.
 
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Having nothing and possessing all things.
 
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Why spend your lives for what is not bread, for what fails to satisfy?
 
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Heed me and you will eat well.
 
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And how shall we hear him and heed him if not in the cries of the needy?
 
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The children of the Church are gathered round the table of the Lord, we pray, in the office of Corpus Christi.
 
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But we cannot expect to eat only with the pleasant and the peaceful.
 
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We must hear the insistent and disturbing voices of the lonely and the hungry and the
 
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abandoned.
 
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We cannot eat the bread of unity and drink the cup of covenant in peace while the family
 
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is divided, or the persons of another language or race are excluded, or the red man is reserved.
 
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or the migrant is locked out, or the alcoholic is shunned, or the aged are ignored, or the mental patient is forgotten.
 
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We cannot eat the bread and share the cup in peace when our sisters and brothers are abandoning our communities,
 
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whether they be religious communities or parishes, because they cannot find among
 
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the children of the Church the warmth and understanding that ought to support
 
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and sustain their lives. We must hear them say, in the streets and crossings I
 
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sought him whom my heart loves. I sought him but did not find him. Where were we?
 
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when the lonely, the frustrated, the disillusioned were seeking and looking.
 
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To be children of the Church means more than a vague sense of loyalty, more than
 
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a satisfying meal at the table of the Lord. It means being sister and brother
 
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to all whom the Lord loves. Elizabeth Seton sought Jesus in the cup she blessed
 
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and shared with her husband. She found him and received him and adored him in
 
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the Blessed Sacrament and she served him and called her sisters to serve him in
 
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in the poor, the sick, the young, and the ignorant.
 
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Mother that she was, she shared the bread of love with them
 
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and is revered by us today
 
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as the contemplative social activist
 
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and the joyful mother of many daughters.
 
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The call and the challenge of St. Elizabeth Seton
 
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is the call of the prophet.
 
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Come to me heedfully, that you may love life.
 
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I will renew with you the everlasting covenant.
 
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Come heedfully.
 
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Listen to his call, the call he made to St. Elizabeth Seton,
 
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the call he made to each one of us
 
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in baptism, religious profession, ordination.
 
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Love the life to which he has called you.
 
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Appreciate it.
 
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Restore it.
 
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Live it to the full.
 
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Make it once more the attraction to generous youth
 
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and a solace and support to the aged, the sick, the searching.
 
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He wants to renew his covenant with each one of us.
 
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and the bread that is broken and the cup that is shared
 
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are the enduring signs of the covenant.
 
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And in them, he is saying to all of us, you are my people.
 
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You are my church.
 
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Minister to one another in love.
 
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This is the end of side one.
 
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to hear side two, turn the cassette over now.

Side 2

[AI was unable to transcribe parts of the musical content later in the tape.]

Let us pray.
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As we gather together to celebrate and share the bread of life, let us also join our hearts
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in presenting these petitions to our Heavenly Father,
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recalling the hungers and needs of all mankind.
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The response is, Father, listen to our prayer, that the Holy Father, all bishops, priests,
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religious may be effective as Christian witnesses in spreading the gospel of
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Christ. Let us pray to the Lord that a deep love and hunger for the Eucharist
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may grow throughout the church. Let us pray to the Lord that inspired by St.
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Elizabeth, we may continually grow in our love of God by praying the Holy
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Scriptures. Let us pray to the Lord that the deep faith in God, which
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characterized Saint Elizabeth Seton, may be a bond of unity among all believers.
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let us pray to the Lord. That all people throughout the world may respond to the
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starving as Saint Elizabeth responded to the hungry in early America. Let us pray
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to the Lord. That the compassion of Saint Elizabeth inspire us to reach out to
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those less fortunate than ourselves, let us pray to the Lord that the sick may
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find strength and consolation in the Holy Eucharist as Saint Elizabeth did.
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Let us pray to the Lord.
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Heavenly Father, we have placed our prayers before you in complete trust.
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Inspired by St. Elizabeth's openness to your will, we ask you to grant our
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petitions through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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We who hunger daily for the Spirit have just been nourished with the liberating Word of
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God.
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As we now prepare for our encounter with God in the Eucharist, we bring Him our gifts.
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Rather, we return his gifts to us.
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Gifts which symbolize our desire to become one with him.
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Elizabeth Seton experienced the depth of hunger for the Spirit
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as she broke through the darkness of doubt and confusion
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into the light of faith. Christ became her light,
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her strength, her liberator. Two of her followers
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Sister Marjorie Walsh and Sister Victoria Nolan
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carry the candle symbolizing Christ,
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the light of faith, the light of the world.
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We, his pilgrim people on earth, like Elizabeth,
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desire to radiate his light and his love
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to our fellow men and women.
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Through the work of human hands,
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God's gifts to man of wheat and grapes are changed into bread and wine.
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Through the divine plan and the Eucharistic sacrifice, the bread and wine in turn are
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transformed into the body and blood of Jesus, our Redeemer.
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Because Elizabeth Seton lived the life-giving role of wife and mother, she grasped well
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God's plan decreed in Christ, and could say with burning conviction,
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O food of heaven, how my soul longs for you with desire.
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Alice McLaughlin Goetz, wife and mother, her husband Tom and children,
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Anne Louise, Michael, and Elizabeth Anne, present the wheat and bread,
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the grapes, and wine, and water.
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As these elements are transformed
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during the Eucharistic liturgy,
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we pray that we too may become a new creation,
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ready to respond to the hungry
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and thirsty peoples of this earth.
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The salvific word of God, recorded in sacred scripture,
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and incarnated in Jesus, liberates us
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from the human condition and for the human condition.
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Hunger and thirst, sickness and pain, suffering and death
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reflected through scripture become intelligible,
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meaningful, and loved.
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Death, which separated her from her loved husband,
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opened a new path of service for Elizabeth Seton.
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Mrs. Makaria Brown, widow, presented
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the Book of the Gospels, affirming our commitment
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to live and share the life-giving words of Jesus.
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The globe, carried by Sister Mary Angelica,
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represents all the people of the world
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who hunger for the Spirit.
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Over 7,500 Sisters of Charity in six communities,
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founded by Elizabeth Seton,
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reach out to fill the needs of mankind on six continents.
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In health, educational, social, and pastoral ministries,
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the Sisters of Charity walk among the poor
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to spread the good news of Christ,
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thereby seeking to nourish the souls
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of the human family throughout the world.
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Now, in the words of Elizabeth Seton,
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let us participate in and receive more fully
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the best of all gifts, the divine sacrifice,
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and the Holy Eucharist.
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♪♪
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♪♪
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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♪ We thank you, God, for giving us this day ♪
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♪ May all who hear our praises excel in heaven ♪
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♪ May all who hear our praises excel in heaven ♪
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♪ Amen
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♪ And he made it for me
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♪ When you're lost in the wilderness, Lord ♪
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♪ Keep us with a heart that's strong and strong ♪
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♪ God, I pray, you keep us with a heart that's strong and strong ♪
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Let us pray. Father, our comfort and peace, we have gathered as your family to praise
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your name and honor your Saints. Let the sacrament we have received to be the
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sign and pledge of our salvation. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
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The Lord be with you.
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Bow your heads and pray for God's blessings.
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May God bless you with every good gift from on high.
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May he keep you pure and holy in his sight at all times.
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May he bestow the riches of his grace upon you, bring you to the good news of salvation,
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and always fill you with love for all men.
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We ask this through Christ our Lord.
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May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit descend upon
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you and remain with you always.
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This Mass has ended.
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Let us go forth in Christ's peace. Thanks be to God.