Letter from the Pastor
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March 19, 2023We are the Champions
This year we have three CYO championship teams! Congratulations to the boys and girls, their coaches and the parents. I would like to thank Kevin Whelan for his dedication and his hard work along with our CYO Board. They do great work organizing and running our basketball program, from the basketball clinic for our youngest (kindergarten) to our 8th graders. This year we fielded 20 teams with 238 athletes.
Our champions are 4th Grade Girls with Coach Denise Caunitz; the 4th Grade Boys with Coach Jim Denman; and the 7th Grade Girls with Coach Phil Murphy. Congratulations and thank you for bringing honor and pride to our program. We, your parish family, are proud of you.
Blood Drive
Last Sunday, our parish had its semi-annual blood drive. I would like to thank Tracey for organizing the Blood Drive with the New York Blood Center. I would also like to thank the student volunteers: Joseph McAndrew, Darragh Monohan, Shane Mulvihill, Jackson O’Hara and Ethan Scott who helped make phone calls, publicize the event, and helped the donors on Sunday. God bless you for all your example of Christian charity. We received 45 units of blood. As the literature states that for every unit of blood, 3-4 people are helped and even saved, so because of your goodness we helped 184 people throughout the Hudson Valley. God will bless your generosity.St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Parades have been around since humanity. In pre-historic caves, on the walls are paintings of people in a parade triumphantly carrying the animals they killed during a hunt back to their camp. As early as 3000 BC, parades were religious processions; then came the military parades: soldiers paraded in front of people to show off the warriors before leaving for battle, and then returning in victory parades to display prisoners and their plunder.
During the Medieval period, parades became moving moral lessons for local towns and villages, honoring their patron saints, or a cause invoking God’ help. Many of these types of parades still exit in certain European countries.
The first significant parade in the United States was in Philadelphia the day our Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788. American parades became civic and political in nature celebrating Americana.
It was the Irish communities, which were the first to have ethnic parades. A new tradition was discovered: one in which parades became a public display of ethnic or religious identity and pride.
The first parade in the new world to honor St. Patrick was held on March 17, 1601 in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, Florida under the direction of the colony's Irish vicar, Richard Arthur. The first parade held in the 13 original colonies was held in Boston in 1737, then New York City in1762, Philadelphia in 1777, all the way down to our own Rockland County parade started in 1963, with the Monsignor Stanislaus McGovern as the first Grand Marshall .
In Ireland, the first parade in honor of St. Patrick wasn’t held until in 1903 in County Waterford. However, St. Patrick’s feast day was already being celebrated since the ninth and tenth centuries. In the early 1600s, St. Patrick’s feast day was placed in the Liturgical calendar of the Church. St. Patrick’s Day is a holyday of obligation in Ireland.
So, enjoy our town’s parade today and remember it is to honor a saint called Patrick, not “Paddy”, “Pat” or any other variation that makes us forget the meaning of us—parading.
Saint Margaret’s will be marching in the First Battalion this year!
