Posted on 12/19/2007 5:33:02 PM PST by Serviam1
Boston's "Christmas Parish" Announces Schedule of Christmas Services and Concert
BOSTON – December 18 - Known as the Christmas Parish because its German immigrant founders introduced many Christmas customs to New England and the country during the mid-1800s, Holy Trinity Church in Boston's South End announces its schedule of Christmas services for 2007.
The 2007 Christmas Mass schedule at Holy Trinity, located at 140 Shawmut Avenue, is:
Christmas Eve
11:30 PM: Concert of traditional German and English Christmas carols.
Midnight: Traditional Latin High Mass; begins with candlelight procession in which the celebrant lays the Infant Jesus in the crèche.
Christmas Day 10:00 AM: Mass in English and German. (Carol concert precedes Mass at 9:45 AM.)
The following concert is also scheduled.
Sunday, 6 January 2008, 3:00 PM: Three Kings Concert. The concert will feature Preces Cantate, a mixed chorus which specializes in Renaissance polyphonic music and which was based at Holy Trinity for more than a decade. The program will tell the Christmas story in song, from the Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus to the adoration of the three kings at the manger. A reception will follow this free concert.
More information about the Masses and concert may be found at Holy Trinity's web site, www.holytrinitygerman.org
Parishioners of the "Christmas parish" are facing, for the fourth time, their potential "last" Christmas. Since Holy Trinity was originally scheduled for closure in May 2004 as part of the Reconfiguration Plan of the Archdiocese of Boston, two announced closure dates, 30 June 2005 and 15 December 2005, have come and gone. Although, in anticipation of the closure, the Traditional Latin Mass was moved on 22 April 2007 from Holy Trinity to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Parish in Newton Upper Falls, no date for the closure of Holy Trinity has been set. According to the most recent plan, announced in November 2006, Holy Trinity is to merge with the nearby Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
Although the weekly Traditional Latin Mass continues to be held in Newton, Holy Trinity has offered two such Masses on feast days since new papal legislation took effect in September. According to the document Summorum Pontificum, the Traditional Latin Mass may now be offered in any parish in which parishioners request it, not just in one parish where the bishop has given special permission for it. Parishioners are grateful that the new norms have given them the opportunity to attend Midnight Mass just as their forbears did in 1877, when the current church building opened.
Founded in 1844 to meet the pastoral needs of German worshippers, Holy Trinity Church is the Archdiocese's oldest ethnic parish. For 163 years it has cherished and preserved German Catholic traditions both for new immigrants and for their descendants. It is the only German Catholic parish in New England's eleven Catholic dioceses. From 1990 to 2007 it offered a parish home to what was then the Archdiocese's only authorized traditional Latin Mass. The parish has also demonstrated its commitment to ongoing Christian charity by willingly sharing its facilities with two social service agencies: the Cardinal Medeiros Center day shelter for the homeless and the Bridge Over Troubled Waters residence for at-risk youth.
Wonderful news!
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