September 12, 2024
NEWTOWN — St. Rose of Lima Church has scheduled a Mass of the Guardian Angels on Wednesday, October 2 at 7 p.m. to remember and celebrate the lives of children who have died.
The “Mass for those who have lost a child” will be held at the church on 46 Church Hill Road on the Feast of the Guardian Angels, and all are welcome to attend.
Mary Craig, Confirmation Coordinator, said many families in the community have suffered the tremendous loss of a child due to a variety of reasons, including illness and miscarriage.
She says it can be heart-wrenching to witness the spiritual struggles of some parents, who feel they are alone in their grief and struggle with the thought it is something God did to them.
Craig and Cate Gosselin, the Director of Religious Education, were inspired when a parish volunteer approached them with the idea. Fr. Peter Cipriani, the pastor, shared their enthusiasm.
“One of the great blessings of our existence is that each of us is assigned a Guardian Angel, who is an expression and extension of God’s providential and ever-protective love,” he said. “With the exception of God and Mother Mary, I cannot imagine any being who loves us with more intensity, more affection than our Guardian Angels.”
He said that when a child has passed, the pain is beyond description. “But where exactly have they passed?” he asked. “No one is the recipient of more love and more protection than a child. A parent’s love is the paternal love of God and maternal love of Mary and the Church made incarnate through them in the lives of their children. When a child passes into the arms of Christ, does it not stand to reason he or she becomes a Guardian Child every bit as powerful in love, in fact more so, than any angel, because in us God has become Man, not in Angels.”
He further said that the children we have lost are beside us always, with a firm purpose that God has given them.
“Having been the recipient of so much incredible parental and familial love — and being fully aware of this love in Heaven and forever and perfectly grateful for it — these children, like our Guardian Angels, remain ever by your side…loving you, protecting you, defending you and guarding you from any manipulations the devil and the secular world may try to inflict to transform that grief into a fruitless and paralyzing despair,” he said.
Mary Craig added: “What we realized after talking with Donna, the volunteer who brought this to our attention, is there are many families that suffer loss from miscarriages as well, and once the loss has passed, many of them are unaware of the magnitude of their grief or that they may share this type of grief with the person sitting next to them.”
She and Gosselin believe the Mass of the Guardian Angels will help parents and family members come to an understanding that “they are not alone in the loss of a child.”
“Bringing them together in a faith-filled community through the celebration of such a Mass not only assures the parents that their child is not forgotten but provides an opportunity to reach out to others who have experienced the same type of loss and know they are not alone in this journey,” she said.
Mass of the Guardian Angels
St. Rose of Lima Church
46 Church Hill Road
Newtown, CT
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 7 p.m.
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