Prayers, thanks offered for first responders at Columbia’s Sacred Heart Parish Blue Mass
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There’s never an easy time to serve as a first responder, but it seems particularly difficult these days.
“So let us keep them and their families in our prayers,” Monsignor Gregory L. Higley, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Columbia, exhorted the people gathered in Sacred Heart Church the evening of Jan. 25.
It was the parish’s first Blue Mass, with the prayerful intention of honoring, thanking and praying for the men and women who serve as guardians of public safety: law enforcement officers, firefighters, first responders, abundance personnel and EMTs.
“You are doing God’s work,” Msgr. Higley told the first responders in attendance, “because you are serving God’s people.”
He pointed out how in the Old and New Testament, God endowed angels to speak on His behalf, to protect and defend those in danger, and to heal and console people in distress.
“Angels were God’s de facto ambassadors, who also assumed the roles of warrior and guardian when situations and circumstances required,” Msgr. Higley noted.
And like angels, “our first responders, our public servants, continue God’s work through their daily efforts to protect and defend people in danger, and to heal and console those in distress,” he said.
He noted that this work often consists of simply seeking to be good, devout and dedicated people each day while relying on God’s help.
With words first stated by St. Francis de Sales, Msgr. Higley proposed: “If it should please God to elevate us to angelic perfections, then perhaps one day we shall become good angels.”
And while working toward those angelic ends by practicing the virtues prescribed by Christ, each first responder should know that he or she is appreciated and being prayed for.
“St. Meister Eckhart,” Msgr. Higley noted, “was best known for a very simple quote: ‘If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank You,’ it will be enough.’
“And so today, as we gather here, to all our first responders, whether in plain clothes or uniform, our prayer for you, our prayer WITH you, is simply, ‘thank you,’” he said.
“Thank you for being our guardian angels,” he stated. “Thank you for being good Samaritans. May God bless you and keep you always.”
During the General Intercessions, the pastor summoned the faithful to pray for all police and fire personnel who died in the line of duty, especially in recent weeks.
“We pray for their families who grieve their loss, for their colleagues and fellow workers, that they might be comforted in their knowledge that in the Resurrection, they will one day be reunited with them,” he said.
This Blue Mass is part of an 86-year tradition.
Father Thomas Dey, founder of the Catholic Police and Fireman’s Society, offered the first Blue Mass in St. Patrick Church in Washington, D.C., on Sept, 29, 1934.
Sacred Heart’s parishioners are eager to pick up that tradition and carry forward, Msgr. Higley said.
