Very Rev. Michael Mascari, O.P.,
Prior Provincial of the Province of St. Albert the Great,
Gives Thanks
at the Opening Mass of the 75th Anniversary
of St. Vincent Ferrer Parish, River Forest, IL, Jan. 8, 2006
On behalf of the Province of St. Albert the Great I would like to welcome all of you. I am Fr. Mike Mascari, I am the Provincial for the Central Province Dominicans. Your Eminence, Cardinal George, Fr. Dan, Dominican brothers and sisters, deacons, and especially all of you, how grateful I am for your presence and for your participating with us in this wonderful celebration of St. Vincent Ferrer's Seventy-fifth Anniversary.
In a special way I'm so very grateful to you, the people of this parish, for your commitment to Christ and for your love of our Catholic faith, a love that you have passed on to your children [and] to your grandchildren for seventy-five years. The faith here has been alive and vibrant, and how grateful the Dominicans are, Dominican brothers and sisters, for what you have done to make that faith shine in your own lives, and in the lives of all of those you hold dear.
You know, in this you have shared in the great work of my Dominican brothers and sisters, and that is, this work of making Jesus Christ crucified and risen, known and loved. For us as Dominicans, our passion is the word of God. And this passion, you as a parish have seen demonstrated for more than seventy-five years, as our brothers here have proclaimed Christ from this altar, in this church and in the little wooden church that existed here before, you have heard Christ taught in the school, you've heard Christ taught from this altar. You have heard this word of God made concrete, in your friendship to St. Pius V parish, and to the other works of justice and peace that the parish community has undertaken. This passion for Christ, this passion for His word, flows from our own Dominican life, a life that is bound together in community, a life that is bound together in study, and a life that is bound in the prayerful liturgy of the word of God.
These things Fr. Tom Noesen has tried to communicate to you, in his own love for the liturgy here, in his own efforts to make community something vibrant and real, in his own effort to, in fact, promote study in St. Vincent Ferrer. The things that we as Dominicans love, we have wanted to share with you and we are grateful for the way in which you have received those gifts. On this day, then, I want to thank you, for the ways you have made this parish of St. Vincent Ferrer strong.
And in a special way I want to thank my Dominican brothers, in particular Fr. Tom Noesen, Fr. Tony Kilbridge, Fr. Al Judy, Fr. Michael Kyte. I want to thank the Dominican sisters who worked in the parish for seventy-five years, especially our Sinsinawa Dominican sisters. I want to thank the brothers of St. Vincent Ferrer priory, who have served and helped to make this parish community strong. I want also to remember the previous friars who have served here over the years, those who are priests, those who are brothers, and in particular I want to remember past pastors like Fr. Botthof, Fr. Russell, Fr. LaPata, all of those pastors who go back to Fr. McIntyre who came here in 1931.
This has been a labor of love for us as friars, and we are grateful for this opportunity to serve you and to work with you. As we move forward it is my prayer that your own faith in Christ, your own love for our Catholic faith, will remain strong, and that it will remain vibrant. So that, in fact, your friends and neighbors will be drawn to this place where so many have been blessed by God in the past. May God bless you and all of those you love, and thank you.