We are prepar-ing for lazy summer

days, but November will be here before you know it! Preparation for our 2019 Christmas Festival, which will be Nov. 16-17, has be-gun. We will have a meeting on Tue, June 25 at 6:30 PM in the par ish hall, enter via the side Ferry Street entrance. We welcome new committee members, so please join us if you can! Please call the office at 623.2604 or email Christmas.festival@st-raphael-parish.org if you have questions. Thank you!

eGiving ... Did you know you can use your credit card or electronic check to support the mis-sion of Saint Raphael Parish? This is especially

helpful when you are on vacation. Go to our website (www.st-raphael-parish.org) and click on the Giving button. In a few minutes, you can be sure that your gift will work every day of the year to help your parish.

Sat., June 15 4:00 PM … Laurent Cote by Jeannine Cote

Sun., June 16 The Most Holy Trinity 7:30 AM … Mary Marszal; Ernest, Carl & Jeanne Bienvenue by Richard Bienvenue 9:30 AM … Stephanie Dauphinas by John & Shauna Ryan 5:00 PM … Our Parish Family Mon., June 17 12 PM … Geri Fife by Maureen Othot

Tue., June 18

12 PM … Steven Fife by Maureen Othot

Wed., June 19 Saint Romuald

12 PM … Alfred K. Hobbs, Jr., by Cynthia Hobbs

Thur., June 20

8:30 AM … Alfred K. Hobbs, Jr., by Cynthia Hobbs

Fri., June 21 Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

6:00 PM … Tom Brummell by Malachy McCarthy

Sat., June 22 Saints Paulina of Nola & John Fisher

4:00 PM … Charles Richard by Simone Richard

Sun., June 23 The Most Holy Trinity

7:30 AM … Joseph & Antoinette Grandmaison by Lionel &

Lillian Coulon

9:30 AM … Therese Paris by Nelson & Lillie Duquette

5:00 PM … Our Parish Family

The Most Holy Trinity

Mon, June 17 7 PM … Food Pantry Tue., June 18 12:45 PM … Parish Nurse

June 16, 2019

Weekend of June 9, 2019 Reg-ular Offertory $3,855.00 Loose Offertory 413.00 Online Offertory Last Wk 490.00 Total Offertory $4,758.00

Stewardship $1,384.00 Stewardship Loose 189.10 Total Stewardship $1,573,10

Holy Day Make Up $ 45.00 Total Holy Day $1,143,50

Food Pantry $ 250.00 ********************** Last Year: Wknd of June 10, 2018 Total Offertory $5,668.65

Thank you for your sacrificial gift!

Sanctuary candle The sanctuary candle burns this week for all Saint Raphael fathers and those who play the role of a father in someone’s life.

READINGS FOR THE WEEK of June 16, 2019 Monday: 2 Cor 6:1-10; Ps 97:1, 2b, 3ab, 3cd-4; Mt 5:38-42;; Tuesday: 2 Cor 8:1-9; Ps 146:2, 5-6ab, 6c-7, 8-9a; Mt 5:43-48; Wednesday: 2 Cor 9:6-11; Ps 112:1bc-2, 3-4, 9; Mt 6:1-6, 16-18; Thursday: 2 Cor 1:1-11; Ps 111:1b-2, 3-4, 7-8; Mt 6:7-15;; Friday: 2 Cor 11:18, 21-30; Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Mt 6:19-23; Saturday: 2 Cor 12:1-10; Ps 34:8-9, 10-11, 12-13; Mt 6:24-34; Sunday: Gn 14:18-20; Ps 110:1, 2, 3, 4; 1 Cor 11:23-26; Lk 9:11b-17

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On Monday, June 10, the SRP Food Pantry served 17 families and gave out 27 bags of grocer-

ies. The pantry was closed on Memorial Day.

Sound Investment You can still donate to-

wards our new and up-

graded sound system.

Through generous parish-

ioner donations, we are just $3,500

away from our goal to fund the pro-

ject. Our SRP Finance Council and our

Parish Pastoral Council have endorsed

this project at recent meetings. Please

consider making a donation so that we

can proceed with the installation. No

amount is too small, and every little bit

ads up. Please specify your intention of

the funds on the check memo line or

envelope. Thank you!

Year C Hymnal #924

Goal: $23,000

Raised: $ 1,925

Balance: $21,075

Please consider moving lives for-

ward with a gift to Catholic Chari-

ties this year. You’ll provide com-

fort, education, mentoring, and

most importantly, hope for those

who are facing difficult times. En-

velopes are at the end of the

pews and at the back of the

church.

FIAT DAYS: July 8—11, 2019 for women; QUO VA-DIS DAYS: Aug 5—9, 2019 for men. Northeast Catho-lic College, Warner, NH If you are a young woman or man age 14-18, you are invited to attend the annual Fiat Days (women) or Quo Vadis Days (men) camp to spend time with others your age looking at the Lord’s call in your life. Fiat Days is led by vocations of the diocese, while Quo Vadis Days is led by priests and seminarians of the diocese and both include a full schedule of hiking, swimming, canoeing, sports and games, daily Mass, pray-er, and opportunities to grow in friendship with the Lord and with each other. For more information and to register, please visit: liveinblackandwhite.com or contact the voca-tions director, Fr. Matthew Mason, at 603-663-0196 or mmason@rcbm.org.

Did you forget your

baby bottle? You can

still return your

bottle—either to the

rectory during the

week or next weekend— to

support The Saint Raphael

Respect Life Committee’s 9th

Annual Baby Bottle fundraiser

to benefit Real Options for

Pregnancy Help Services—a

Care Net Center, is ongoing. To

all who participated—thank

you! Thank you!

Class of 2019 Grad-uates Congratulations to the following altar servers: Zachary Mil-ler, who graduated June 15 from Memori-

al High School and will be studying graphic design at Manchester Com-munity College; Seamus Othot, who graduated on June 5th and will be attending The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in the fall; Katarina Provost, who graduated June 14 from Londonderry High School and will be attending Virginia Tech to study engineering.

Those who visit the rectory at Saint Raph-ael routinely often come to the back door, and when they enter that way, the first thing they see is the old roll-top desk that Fr. Raymond Burns, O.S.B., pas-tor for more than 25 years, used and on top, a statue of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, given by the late Mary Bagnell, music director here and later for the Diocese of Manchester. Nothing very unusual in those two features; they are what one might expect to find in a rectory. Because May was the month of Our Lady, the statue is wrapped in blue cloth at its base and two blue hy-drangeas are on either side. Again, nothing too rarefied in that; it’s what Catholic devo-tion frequently does. But – and here’s where it gets a little strange – on either side of the statue’s base are two cheery little hippos. Please note, I use the colloquial “hippo,” not the proper hippopota-mus because I’m not immediately certain of the plural. Hippopota-muses? Hippopotami? The word takes its origin from the Greek for “river horse.” In any event, it’s a word that makes me smile – but, then again, the rea-son they are there makes me smile. The two blue hippos are partly guarding Mary, but they’re also in place to honor Father Wil-liam J. Sullivan, O.S.B., a beloved con-frere at Saint Anselm Abbey, who died June 5, 2019, at age 74, after an eventful life as a popular educator and an astute ad-ministrator both at Saint Anselm College and our preparatory school, Woodside Pri-ory School, in Por tola Valley, CA. First, what about the hippos? Well, some years ago, Father William was presented with a statue of a blue hippopotamus by a friend, and he rather fell in love with it. I think he started collecting hippos! Father always thought he was a little too heavy, and hippos are, well, not the most svelte creatures in the animal kingdom. They look friendly, and behave placidly, but can be ferocious when forced to de-fend their turf, their offspring or their rights. Just the kind of image a prior might want to project – and Father William served as prior of Saint Anselm and Woodside at alternate times for the better part of 23

years. According to New York’s Metropolitan

Museum of Art, which ac-quired the statue in 1917, the piece is made in ancient Egypt of “faience,” a ceramic material made of ground quarts. Beneath the glaze, the statuette is painted with lotuses, the plants found in the marshes of the Nile, where the hippo lived. The lotus sym-bolizes regeneration and rebirth, which translated into Christian faith would mean baptism and resurrection – again, some-thing that would connect to Fa-ther William’s ministry as a

Benedictine priest. For ancient Egypt, the hippo-potamus was a force of nature.

Fishermen and merchants traveling on the Nile had to keep in his good graces, and

anyone making the jour-ney into the afterlife had to keep the celestial hippo god happy too. The original William was found near “the tomb chapel of the steward Senbi II at Meir, an Upper Egyp-tian site about 30 miles south of modern Asyut,” the Met informs website readers. Histori-ans and archeologists date the statuette to sometime between 1961 B.C. and 1878

B.C. William’s name comes from a 1931 edi-tion of Punch, the Brit-ish humor magazine, that reported a family would consult the statu-ette as an oracle, and always called him Wil-liam. As a number of pa-rishioners know, Father William suffered a major stroke in 2014 which left him alert and conscious, but unable to communicate in any-thing but a few mono-syllables. A wonderful raconteur and an engag-ing American history prof, he endured five years of daily frustration and suffering. He bore it with faith in Christ and monastic equa-

nimity. Some of my confreres and our faculty were remarkable in their regular visits to him. Mine, alas, were more infrequent, but whenever I went I could talk for both us – something Father William endured with grace and good humor. On my last visit, after a sharp decline he had, then a rally, I offered to read for him the prayers for Ves-pers, or evening prayer. “Just put up your hand, Father, if you get tired and I can stop.” I began by intoning the opening, “O, Lord come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste …” – and suddenly his hand shot up! There was something of the rascal and the rogue in William, despite the dignity he projected most of the time. On two occasions, once about a year ago, then once this past Christmas, I purchased at a shop blue hippos, both for Father Wil-liam. The one that dates from a year ago, I didn’t give to him because it seemed too silly in the face of another health reversal he suffered. Then, this past Christmas, com-pletely forgetting that I’d purchased the first hippo, I found another one, this one designed to be a bank. “What a great little gift for Father Wil-liam!” I thought – and picked it up as well. But I kept forgetting to bring it to him at Mount Carmel Nursing Home in Man-chester – and then, inevitably, we received the news of his final decline. The little hip-po again seemed too silly to deliver in the face of Father William’s impending exit from this world. So it appears, Our Blessed Lady has two new friends, at least each May. Maybe we could name them Wilfrid and Wally? They will keep watch to protect her – and to

remind us of Father Wil-liam and the robust Ir ish humor, the unfailing good sense and the deep, abid-ing faith he manifested. Should anyone ask, “What are those hippos doing there?” I’ll be happy to tell them. © Rev. Jerome Joseph Day, O.S.B.

From the Pastor: Fr. Jerome Joseph Day, O.S.B.

A 4,000 year-old ceramic hippo gives a nod and a wink to a beloved confrere

Fr. William J. Sullivan, O.S.B.

1944-2019

‘William,’ the ancient Egyptian hippopotamus in

the New York Metropolitan Museum

Statue of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, at Saint

Raphael Rectory, with two hippopotami friends.