St. Peter Celestine Church is known for its fine building and its superb original interior décor
intact from 1892 – one of three churches in Canada known to retain Classic Italianate decoration.
Adoration, Confession and Rosary
1st Sunday of the Month, Adoration & Confession 8:15am – 8:45am.
The Rosary (all other Sundays) 8:30am – 8:50am. Mass 9am.
See UPCOMING Events
Please NOTE: No mass on Wed Oct 11th
St Faustina – Oct 5th
Helen Kowalska was born in Glogowiec, Poland. From a young age, she was known for her love of prayer, diligence, obedience, and concern for the poor. She was called to the religious life during a vision of the suffering Christ. August 1, 1925 – She entered the Congregation of the sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and took the name Sr. Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament; lived as member of the Congregation for 13 years residing in Cracow, Plock and Vilnius, where she worked as a cook, gardener, and porter.
Her life in the convent was filled with extraordinary gifts, such as revelations, visions, hidden stigmata, participation in the Passion of the Lord, bilocation, reading of human souls, prophecy, and the rare gift of mystical insights. The Lord chose St. Faustina as the Apostle and Secretary of Mercy, so she would share the urgent message of the Divine Mercy with our troubled modern world.
In the 1930s – St. Faustina wrote a diary of some 600 pages recording the revelations she was receiving about God’s mercy. She maintained this diary at the specific request of her spiritual director and confessor, Fr. Michael Sopocko, and later at the command of the Lord Jesus Himself. In it she faithfully wrote down all of the Lord’s wishes and described the encounters between her soul and HIM.
October 5, 1938 – At the age of 33, she died in Cracow after long suffering borne with great patience. April 30, 2000 – Blessed John Paul II canonized Sr. Faustina as the first saint of the great Jubilee Year, on Mercy Sunday.
Our Lady of the Rosary – Oct 7th
Saint Pius V established this feast in 1573. The purpose was to thank God for the victory of Christians over the Turks at Lepanto — a victory attributed to the praying of the rosary. Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716.
The development of the rosary has a long history. First a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus’ life was attached to each Hail Mary.
According to Dominican tradition, in 1206, St. Dominic was in Prouille, France, attempting to convert the Albigensians back to the Catholic faith. The young priest had little success until one day he received a vision of the Blessed Virgin, who gave him the Rosary as a tool against heretics. While Mary’s giving the rosary to St. Dominic is generally acknowledged as a legend, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of St. Dominic, including the 15th-century priest and teacher, Alan de la Roche, known as “the apostle of the rosary.” He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century.
In the 16th century, the rosary was developed to its present form—with the 15 mysteries: joyful, sorrowful and glorious. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added five Mysteries of Light to this devotion.
Prayer for Thanksgiving – Oct 9th
Father all-powerful, your gifts of love are countless and Your goodness infinite.
On this Thanksgiving Day we come before You with gratitude for Your kindness:
open our hearts to concern for our fellow men and women,
so that we may share Your gifts in loving service.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
October – dedicated to the Holy Rosary
and the Blessed Virgin Mary
The month of October each year is dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary. The liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated annually on October 7. It was instituted to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary in gratitude for the protection that she gives the Church in answer to the praying of the Rosary by the faithful.
Legend tells us that the Rosary as a form of prayer was given to St. Dominic (1170-1221) by Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, who entrusted it to him as an aid in the conflicts with the Albigensians. The Dominican pope, St. Pius V, did much to further the spread of the Rosary and it thereafter became one of the most popular devotions in Christendom. Pope St. Pius V (1569) officially approved the Rosary in its present form with the Papal Bull, Consueverunt Romani Pontifices. It had been completed by the addition of the second half of the “Hail Mary” and the “Glory be to the Father” at the conclusion of each mystery.
In the Middle Ages, the rosary came into being in various monasteries as a substitute for the Divine Office – many lay monks and devout lay persons did not know how to read! Instead of the 150 psalms, they would pray 150 “Our Fathers” counting them on a ring of beads known as the crown or “corona.” With the growth of popularity of Marian devotion in the twelfth century, the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary” developed now substituting 150 “Hail Marys” in place of the “Our Fathers.”
The 150 “Hail Marys” were subsequently subdivided into fifteen decades by the young Dominican friar, Henry Kalkar (1328-1408), with each decade referring to an event in the life of Jesus and Mary. The Dominican, Alanus de Rupe (Blessed Alain de la Roche) (1428-1478) further divided the episodes in the history of salvation into the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. He also attributed the origin of the Rosary, then known as the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin” to St. Dominic and thus spurred the Dominican Order to make the Apostolate of the Rosary their special concern. The Dominicans have, since then, promulgated the Rosary with notable results.
The Rosary is Christocentric setting forth the entire life of Jesus Christ, the passion, death, resurrection and glory. The Rosary honours and contemplates Mary too for the same reason that the Liturgical Year does likewise: “Because of the mission she received from God, her life is most closely linked with the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and there is no one who has followed in the footsteps of the Incarnate Word more closely and with more merit than she” 142 (Mediator Dei). Meditation on this cycle of Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries makes the Rosary not only “a breviary or summary of the Gospel and of Christian life,” but also a compendium of the Liturgical Year. Therewith the Rosary stands revealed as a dynamic teacher and nurturer of Christian faith, morality, and spiritual perfection, fostering in various ways faith, hope, charity, and the other virtues, and mediating special graces, all to the end that we may become more and more like unto Christ.
In this month of October, let us consider this beautiful prayer of the Rosary as a means that we too can use in order to draw closer to Jesus and Mary by meditating on the great mysteries of our salvation.