Dear Friends and Members of the St. Thomas More Society,

You will soon receive this month’s calendar, and when you do you will notice one particularly significant change from all the previous calendars you have received.  Towards the end of April you will see a new notation on each date: Daily Anglican Use Mass.  After, God willing, I am ordained to the priesthood on April 21^st, I will begin to celebrate Mass daily for the members of the St. Thomas More Society, and anyone else who wishes to avail himself of this invaluable blessing.  However, I can’t yet tell you for certain where the Daily Anglican Use Mass will be celebrated, though we have determined it will be at 7AM.  Right now Msgr. Feldcamp, Bishop Dougherty, and I are in discussions to determine the location, and as soon as we know, you will know.  Even so, we still have a couple of weeks to iron this detail out, and I will communicate this important news with another letter, if necessary.    

At the beginning of the month, this Holy Week, I shall be helping with several Masses at the Cathedral. This afternoon, at 4PM, I will serve as the Deacon of the Oils at the Diocese of Scranton’s annual Chrism Mass at which the Oil for the Holy Chrism, the Oil of the Sick, and the Oil of Catechumens are blessed by our bishop.  I welcome and encourage you to attend this Mass, as it will also include the Renewal of Commitment to Priestly Service by the priests of the Diocese.  Come witness our clergy renew the promises they made when they were ordained.  Also, I will serve at the Cathedral’s 5PM Holy Thursday Mass, as well as the Easter Vigil Mass there at 8PM Saturday night.  Finally, Msgr. Feldcamp has asked me to preach at St. Clare Church at the Liturgy of the Passion and Death of the Lord at noon on Good Friday.  Wherever we are we should make it a priority to participate in these Sacred Liturgies, so I implore you to join us, if you are able, and to worship in your locale, if you are not able to join us.

All of the above liturgies will, of course, be according to the Roman Rite.  On Easter Sunday, though, we will celebrate the Mass according to the Anglican Usage.  On April 8^th come to St. Clare at 1PM to experience a Solemn High Mass.  Fr. Scott will say (sing) the Mass for us, and I will preach.  I sincerely hope you will be able to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection with us.

My ordination to the priesthood, as you know by now, is on the 21^st of this month at 10AM at St. Clare Church.  A reception will follow the event, to which all are invited.  But we shall also have a reception of sorts the evening before the Mass.  There is a rehearsal scheduled for me on Friday, April 20^th, but the event you’d likely find more interesting is the pot-luck supper that evening at 6PM, to be held in the undercroft Scranton, Pennsylvania.  A few dozen people are coming from out of town, including a number of the other Anglican Use pastors.  We need to feed this fine group of travelers, so a sign-up sheet has already begun to circulate at church.  If you would like to come (and bring a dish to help serve our guests), you may call me at 570.343.0634 to let me know you will be attending and what you might like to share with the hungry crowd.  This pot-luck will take the place of the one we usually have on the third Sunday of the month, so that you know that omission on the calendar is not a mistake.

I have been asked to share a bit of news about my travels of late.  Last month Kristina and I went to Phoenix to speak about the Pastoral Provision.  We may see a new Anglican Use group form there soon, so please keep them in your prayers.  The family and I were also in Walton, New York recently, speaking for members of three Roman Rite parishes.  The people there, led by Fr. Michael Flannery, were very receptive and very generous.  Also, I have received permission from our bishop to speak in San Diego in May.  We’ll go on pilgrimage to Rome in September. You can still sign up, so call Jerry McGreevy at 570.347.6420 if you’re interested.  Please pray for the success of these missions to inform yet more people about the generosity of the Church.

To that end I recently penned an article for Catholic Men’s Quarterly.  It is published in their Winter/Spring 2007 issue, and if you’d like to read it, you may soon find it on our website.  Finally, I ask that you continue to remember the fledging AU group in the DC area, as well as a community in Rhode Island under the leadership of Fr. Steve Lally, the most recent petition made for the implementation of the Pastoral Provision.  Pray that the bishop there will respond favorably to their plea.

Wishing you a blessed Holy Week and a joyous Easter, and thankful every day for my association with so faithful and courageous a group of Christians, I am,

Yours in Christ,

Eric L. Bergman, Director