St. Mary Magdalen Church

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A Sensitive Note on Parish Finances

With the current suspension of all public Masses, you may be asking how to submit your weekly/monthly collection envelopes. We suggest you fill them out as you would normally and mail them into the Parish Office, (St. Mary Magdalen at 145 Buckingham Street, Oakville, CT 06779)

We recommend Signing up for On-Line Giving

Online Giving is a safe, secure and dependable means of income for the parish.

Thank you for your continued support.

April 6, 2020 Latest News - Holy Week Liturgies Live Stream and Holy Week at Home

HOLY WEEK LITURGIES

In this time of great need, it is all the more important that we celebrate Holy Week and Easter creatively within the strict limitations of social separation. Holy Week and Easter will be celebrated in the church of St. Mary Magdalen by Father George Mukuka, Deacon Mike Malfitano, our cantor and organist within the parameters set by the Congregation of Divine Worship in Rome regarding these celebrations without a congregation. Live Stream, and Video recordings of these celebrations will be posted on our parish website and Facebook. You will be notified of these postings by our myParish App.

As, Live Stream and Video may be available to you another option of watching the liturgies for Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday as they are broadcast or streamed from the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Hartford or from Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome as a way of being united with the larger Church wrought by the pandemic as we are. Then, watch the recorded celebrations on our parish website for a more local feel. Keep in mind the different time zones for anything live from Rome. Palm Sunday and Easter are scheduled for broadcast and streaming in the Archdiocese. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigils are scheduled for streaming.

Palm Sunday & Holy Week Live Stream Mass Schedule:

April 5, 2020, Palm Sunday Live Stream Mass time 10:00 a.m.

Holy Thursday, April 9, 2020 Live Stream Mass time 7:00p.m.

Good Friday, April 10, 2020 Live Stream Mass time 3:00p.m.

Easter Vigil Mass, April 11, 2020 Live Stream Mass time 8:00p.m.

Easter Sunday Mass, April 12, 2020 Live Stream Mass time 10:00a.m.

Our Live Stream link info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/521242422110900/
Saint Mary Magdalen Church youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLd8IoRLHwkYjn3Jv1Om4eg

The televised Mass is broadcast on WCCT-TV (WB20) and WCTX-TV (myTV9). It can also be found streaming live at Office of Radio & Television streaming page and on the Archdiocese of Hartford Facebook page.

HOLY WEEK AT HOME

For your assistance, Holy Week at Home: Adaptations of the Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday Rituals for Family Prayer is available in the publication prepared by the editorial team at Liturgical Press. The prayers in this publication are not intended to replace the liturgies of Holy Week. Rather, they are a sincere effort to cultivate some of the rituals and spirit of Holy Week in our homes when public celebration might not be possible. The aid for celebrating Holy Week at home can be found https://uploads.weconnect.com/mce/440f13f2ffe7800ae87431f50edb70aa51e49fde/Holy_Week_at_Home.pdf

Palm Sunday, April 5 - Palm Distribution

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My Parish App

To receive St. Mary Magdalen Parish updates and other important communications please, download to your cell phones.

Stay in Touch Download Our Parish visit: https://myparishapp.com to download or text app to phone number 88202.

Sending Your Condolences to Fr. Tom's Family

Dear Parishioniers, and Friends,

We pray that you are giving yourselves time to grieve the passing of our Pastor, Fr. Tom Hickey. We’ve been getting some questions regarding donations in Fr. Tom name and offering condolences. We offer this to you, to help comfort your needs to express your sympathies, until we can come together once more.

Here’s how:

If you want to share your sympathies to the Hickey Family, please send all forms of correspondences in care of:

St. Mary Magdalen Parish
145 Buckingham Street
Oakville, CT 06779

OR By email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you would like to make a memorial contribution in Father Tom’s name, you may do so making checks payable to St. Mary Magdalen Church.

The donor’s name and gift will be acknowledged to his family and also you will receive a note from the parish office.

Thank you for your continue prayers and support during this time of sorrow.

Peace and Blessings,
Roberta Hardt
Parish Admin.

Welcome to St. Mary Magdalen Church

church

FAITH WORSHIP SERVICE

St. Mary Magdalen Parish is a Catholic Community,
United in Faith and Joined in Worship
Connecting People to Christ and Living to Serve Others.

A study of the life of Saint Mary Magdalene is a source of profound encouragement. We can only marvel to see such a poor broken sinner rising from darkness in an explosion of love for Christ and then running with the greatest confidence along the way of perfection. She emerges from the desperate ruins of her life and becomes heaven’s champion of love. So pleasing was she to the heart of Christ that she is chosen to announce His Resurrection to the apostles themselves… If Jesus chose her for this singular privilege it was to give us all hope. The first apostle of the Resurrection is not a soul who had been pure and perfect from childhood but rather a poor broken sinner from whom were expelled seven demons… She is hope for sinners and thanks to her we know that though our sins be as scarlet, in Christ we can become whiter than snow. If we follow the path of love traced out by the Apostle to the Apostles then at the moment of death we will be able to go in peace to the One who is the friend of sinners.

Even joyful meditation upon the resurrection… could never entirely erase the bitter memory of the price paid for her sins… On His risen glorious body she had noticed that there were still some trace of His wounds, as though to remind her not to forget them. Although she was profoundly happy and at peace in the depths of her heart, her life became a bittersweet contemplation of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. She saw this as the natural extension of her vocation to love Christ in a radical way during His mortal life. She was powerless to repay the Lord for His goodness to her; all she could do was to continue to love Him radically through prayer. For the remaining decades of her holy existence and amidst the activities and adventures life threw at her, she would try to spend as much time as possible contemplating the memory of Jesus with all the fervent love of her undivided heart. This would permit her to bear the burden of earthly life, in anticipation of the life of heaven. Eventually this love for Christ led her away from the crowds and to the lonely grotto of Sainte Baume where she could peacefully end her days in a life of perpetual pondering of the Paschal Mystery. She passed from an earthly ecstasy to the heavenly ecstasy… Such a soul needed no more purification, for she had been dead to the world for decades.

For Magdalene, life was Christ and death was gain (Phil. 1:21)

Whom have I in heaven but thee?

And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever…

But for me it is good to be near God. (Ps 73:25-28 RSV)

The life of Saint Mary Magdalene, which once seemed to be the greatest of failures to all of Israel, was in the eyes of all heaven a success of the highest order. In heaven her life is remembered and honored as that of an earthly angel of love.

-Fr. Sean Davidson, Saint Mary Magdalene, Prophetess of Eucharistic Love,

Ignatius Press, pp. 197, 203-204.