It’s 8:30 a.m. and the day is still young at St. Mary’s. Head of School Dr. John F. Dolan greets a visitor outside the church and escorts him to the area behind the school. It’s not just any guest as you can tell by his garb: brown habit, sandals, red zucchetto atop his head.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley is no stranger to the Tremont Street campus, having made the trip from Brighton and, more recently, Braintree many times in his 19 years as Archbishop of Boston. It’s always a special day when the cardinal comes to town, but even more so on this almost-fall Friday.
Prior to the annual opening of school Mass, which Cardinal O’Malley will celebrate, Dolan shows him the Mosakowski Gardens, an oasis in the urban center that is downtown Lynn, named for Board of Trustees Chair Bill and his wife, Jane. There is the grotto to the Blessed Mother, which stands on the site of the altar in the chapel annex building that was taken down to make way for the construction of the new STEM building; aluminum Stations of the Cross; and a fountain in the middle of a plot of green grass – the Cardinal Seán Fountain, by all accounts the only physical structure named for the cardinal in the Archdiocese of Boston.
Father Brian Flynn, the pastor of what is now known as St. Mary of the Sacred Heart Parish, heads into the sacristy carrying the red vestments he will wear to match the guest of honor. Dolan greets trustees and other guests as more than 700 St. Mary’s students file in, with athletes wearing their game jerseys.
If the cardinal coming to celebrate Mass is the headline, the number of St. Mary’s students has to be subhead. Four years ago, St. Mary’s had 504 students in grades 6-12. As of Friday, that number had multiplied to 706, a 40-percent increase that could be considered the enrollment version of the loaves and fishes.
“If you had told me in 2018 we would be where we are today, I would never have believed you,” Dolan says. He wouldn’t have been alone.
Also at the Mass are students from Sacred Heart, now part of the St. Mary’s School umbrella, where enrollment is up 36 percent from 2018 (225 vs. 166), as well as St. Pius, another feeder school.
St. Mary’s Director of Campus Ministry Mike McDuffee, who doubles as talented musician and choir leader, asks students to “quiet our hearts, quiet our minds,” and they take him quite literally, for there is less noise at this 80-minute liturgy than an average Sunday Mass. When I was a kid, the nuns made it clear there would be hell to pay – so to speak — if we made noise in church. Times have certainly changed, but whatever they are doing at St. Mary’s, it is working and students and staff alike should be congratulated.
Father Brian and Father Robert Kickham, the cardinal’s chief secretary and aide de camp, join him in the procession down the center aisle, after which the cardinal blesses the altar with incense. St. Mary’s senior Zackary Perry reads from the letter of St. Paul to the Colossians, which brings to mind a wish-I-had-thought-of-it line former Boston Herald columnist Gerry Callahan once wrote, wondering if the Corinthians ever wrote back. Father Brian reads the gospel passage from Matthew, in which Jesus basically lays out a manual on how to live: provide food, drink, shelter, care, compassion and companionship to those around us.
“Jesus has given us all the correct answers,” Cardinal O’Malley says in a 20-minute homily that seems much shorter. “Our final exam is the last judgement, when we are all going to be examined on one thing: love … Catholic education is about building a civilization of love.”
The cardinal is preaching to an attentive audience. The students remain quiet as do the adults, including trustees Betty Twomey and Mark Mathers, Archdiocese of Boston Superintendent of Schools Thomas Carroll, Associate Head of School David Angeramo and Executive Director of External Affairs Jamie Gigliotti, the logistical mastermind behind St. Mary’s events big and small.
After Communion, Angeramo tells Cardinal O’Malley a St. Mary’s contingent will again be joining him at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. and, since that is in January, they give him a St. Mary’s winter hat. Mosakowski – who has played a leading role in the St. Mary’s resurgence through his leadership and philanthropy – thanks him for his longstanding support of St. Mary’s and Catholic education in general, and presents him with a framed photo of the fountain named in his honor.
Before the end of Mass and the formal blessing of the Cardinal Seán Fountain, grotto and Stations of the Cross, the cardinal continues a tradition that 1963 St. Mary’s Boys High School graduate Terry McGinnis recalls dates back to Cardinal Richard Cushing, when he announces a day off. There will be no school on Nov. 23, Thanksgiving Eve. There is a St. Mary’s football game vs. Austin Prep at Fenway Park that afternoon, so the students respond with an amen-to-that burst of applause.
As McDuffee and his talented choir start the closing song, Matt Maher’s “Hold Us Together,” the students begin clapping in unison, giving a soul-warming, Southern Baptist, evangelical feel to this Catholic liturgy on the North Shore. The songs ends with this line, repeated for emphasis:
“It’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be alright.”
Friday morning at St. Mary’s was much more than alright.
