Letter from the Pastor
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July 13, 2025I am always amazed how Pearl River “empties out” as soon as school ends! We become a ghost town during the summer months! The good news is that there is no waiting at the restaurants, (not sure about the bars). Even our Mass attendance goes down during the summer months. I joke about opening a St. Margaret’s Annex in LBI each summer.
Every week, our loyal ushers take a count of the people attending Mass. As of now, we have 6 Masses with the average attendance during the summer months of July and August is between 500-600 adults and children. The largest attendance is at the 4:30 PM Saturday evening Mass, then the 5:30 PM Sunday evening Mass, followed by the 7:30 AM, 10:30 AM, Noon and then the 9:00 AM.
I have been asking parishioners their thoughts of combining just the 4 Sunday morning Masses during the summer months to two: 7:30 AM and the 9:00 AM combined to an 8:00 AM Mass. And then combine the 10:30 AM and Noon to an 11:00 AM Mass. This would just be for the summer months. The rest of the year the Mass schedule would stay as it is now.
Your thoughts? email me at fr.raaser@smparish.com. Nothing is definite, and nothing would take place until July and August 2026. We have a whole year to decide.
Which brings up another summer reminder: there is no vacation from attending Mass on Sundays (or Saturday evening) and The Assumption, a holyday of obligation, which is August 15th. There is a growing wrong idea that when school ends, so does going to Mass. Unlike our other Christian or our Jewish or Muslim brothers and sisters, who attend their services whenever they wish, Catholics are obliged under serious sin to attend Mass every week. It is not an option for us. It’s a privilege to attend Mass.
Sunday Mass is the highest form of worship that we can give God. The Mass is the bloodless Sacrifice of the Cross re-presented to us here and now. It is the entire Church: saints, the living and those in purgatory, worshipping our God at the same time. Therefore, one of the Church’s five precepts or laws (remember them?), insists that we must go to Mass every Sunday and Holy Days of Obligation, to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
To deliberately miss Mass on the weekend is spiritually harming oneself, dishonoring God and a serious (mortal) sin. It is tantamount to saying that one has better things to do than to love and worship God.
It means that one places something or someone (including oneself) in first place, ahead of God.
This is why a person, who deliberately misses Mass, must confess the sin in the sacrament of penance before receiving Holy Communion.
There is a fantastic website to help you find Catholic Masses as well as confession schedules: www.masstimes.org . Social media is another place to look for assistance in finding churches and sacramental schedules.
As the nuns used to tell us in school, “There is no vacation from God!”