On September 9, 2020, Georgetown Prep celebrated a virtual Mass of the Holy Spirit. The Mass of the Holy Spirit is a liturgical tradition celebrated worldwide at Jesuit schools to open the school year.
Rev. James R. Van Dyke, S.J., Georgetown Prep's President, was the celebrant.
Fr. Van Dyke's Introductory Remarks:
We celebrate today our Mass of the Holy Spirit, asking God's blessing and presence in all our life at Prep this year. It is an ancient tradition, going back to the founding of the first Jesuit school in Messina, Sicily, by St. Peter Canisius in 1548 – that's Messina, Sicily, by the way – a place in Italy, not some guy who's waiting to see if I'll mention his name. And throughout this week, our brother Jesuit schools all across the Northern Hemisphere, are celebrating the Mass of the Holy Spirit. So we are joined in prayer with them.
By happy coincidence, today is also the Feast of St. Peter Claver, a 17th century Jesuit who made it his apostolate to care for the slaves of Cartegena, Columbia, which at that time was the major hub of the slave trade in the Americas. He went each day down to the port to greet the slave ships as they pulled into port, boarded each one, and ministered to the enslaved people, caring for them medically and spiritually in the holds of the ships in which they were confined. He also followed up and went to the plantations and the mines where the enslaved people worked and continued his ministry with them. In a time when slavery was simply accepted and the treatment of enslaved people was simply brutal, he was a fierce advocate for and witness to the dignity of each enslaved person. He ministered in this way every day for 33 years, from his first arrival in the New World until his death in 1654. He is the patron saint of racial justice.
By a second happy coincidence, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has declared today a national day of prayer and fasting in reparation for the sin of racism. At noon today, Archbishop Gregory celebrated Mass at St. Peter Claver Church at St. Inigoes in Southern Maryland, one of the plantations from which the 272 were sold in 1838 to sustain Georgetown College, of which Prep was a major portion, in a time of financial crisis. So we remember this hard truth of our history, and we join our prayers today with Archbishop Gregory's and with the whole Church, that racism and brutality can be abolished in our world, in our nation, here at Prep, and indeed in each of our hearts, and that the dignity of each person might not only be respected but ever more reverenced.
Knowing that we each and all fail to reverence and love one another in any number of ways, we begin our prayer humbly, simply asking for God's mercy and help.
Read Fr. Van Dyke's Mass of the Holy Spirit Homily.
Read Headmaster John Glennon Jr.'s closing remarks.