NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL

Archbishop Prendergast is posting periodic messages to the faithful of the Archdiocese of Ottawa-Cornwall.  To see the latest message go to www.catholicottawa.ca

Click here for the Archbishop's message on the reopening of the churches.

There is a bilingual Mass at 9 am on July 1st for Canada Day.

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast and Rabbi Dr, Reuven P, Bulka have composed a National Prayer in the wake of COVID-19. Please click here to read.

The Cathedral is located on Sussex Dr. between St. Patrick and Guigues,
across from the National Gallery.

OFFICE
56 Guigues Ave, Ottawa, K1N 5H5
Phone: 613-241-7496
Fax: 613-241-1627
info@notredameottawa.com

OFFICE HOURS- CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Monday-Friday 9-12, 1-4

During July and August we will be closed Fridays @ 12 Noon

Before each Mass in the Parish Hall

Confessors understand both English and French

A campaign was launched on May 26th, 2019 to help us preserve one of Canada's musical gems: the organ here at Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica.

It is the first organ to use electric key action in North America and one of the three outstanding organs in the history of the Casavant firm.

Please pick up a leaflet at the main entrance for more information on what the project entailed. You may also click on the picture.

Notice of Reopening

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Greetings from your parish priests and deacons at Notre Dame Cathedral Parish.

We are pleased to announce we can resume the celebration of the Eucharist at Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica! To comply with provincial health regulations, the Archdiocese of Ottawa requires us to adopt some best practices for safeguarding the health of our parishioners and volunteers. Many of these adaptations will be familiar as we have experienced them already for several weeks.

Mass Schedule:
We will begin by gradually offering Masses on a modified schedule.
Saturday Evening Vigil Mass: 5 pm (Bilingual)
                                           The Church will open at 4:30 pm
 
Sunday Morning Mass: 10 am (francais)
                                  The Church will open 09:30 am
                                  Noon (English) The Church will open at 11:30 am
 
Weekdays: 12:15 pm English Mass on Wednesday and Friday;
                                French Mass on Tuesday and Thursday
                 The Church will open at 11:45 am
 
Confessions: Before Mass in the Parish Hall

Physical Distancing and Safety Precautions:
Masks are recommended.
Hand Sanitizer will be available at the Entrance and Exits.
To maintain physical distancing, pews are assigned for seating. Please only use pews with a “Reserved” Sign. Families may sit together.
There will be no hymnals, bulletins or other paper handouts.
Holy Communion will be distributed by rows to maintain physical distancing.
Only one washroom for emergency use will be open.
The Entrance will be on Sussex Avenue near the ramp: the side doors will be Exit only.
Please observe physical distancing in the parking lot and exit expeditiously after Mass to avoid congregating in groups (I know this will be hard because we miss seeing each other).

Sunday Mass On-Line
The Sunday Masses celebrated by Archbishop Prendergast and Bishop Guy Desrochers in English and French will continue to appear on our website on Sunday morning for the month of June.
 
Thank you for your prayers and cooperation in reopening the church. We are looking forward to seeing you soon! May God bless you and your family.
 
Yours truly in Christ,
 
Father Geoffrey Kerslake Rector
Abbé Léo Villeneuve Associate Rector
Deacon Ricardo Santiago
Diacre Gilles Ouellette

The Vatican has published online a new prayer booklet called: “Strong in the Face of Tribulation” for this specific moment in our history. The free 192 page PDF booklet is available for download here:

https://www.vaticannews.va/content/dam/lev/forti-nella-tribolazione/pdf/eng/strong-in-tribulation.-20042020.pdf

Welcome back to the public celebration of the Eucharist! It was wonderful to see parishioners in church again after our long separation. The second weekend we were open saw more people attend and we reached the maximum capacity twice at the Sunday morning celebrations. We are looking at the possibility of adding another Sunday morning Mass if we can get enough volunteers. It takes the efforts of 8 to 10 volunteers for each Mass to ensure your safety and to clean the church between Masses. 

Thank you very much to all of our volunteers on Sundays and at the weekday Masses for their help! We could not reopen the church and be able to offer Mass without your help. Thank you for making a difference!

Many are wondering when we can reopen our churches and what that will look like as the restrictions ease. The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario (ACBO) is working on a response. A Committee of the ACBO is meeting with the Ontario Provincial Government to look at the various aspects of reopening our churches following the advice of the medical experts. We are awaiting the decision of Premier Ford on reopening, which may take place in stages. What that will look like, we do not know at the present time. The Bishops working with the Provincial Government are figuring out how to best proceed balancing our genuine need to practice our faith together with the overall public good. You may have read various opinions on what will happen when we reopen but the fact is we do not have definite answers right now. When we can reopen, we will most likely see physical distancing restrictions in the church as well as enhanced cleaning protocols and some adaptations to our celebration. These new temporary measures will complicate reopening; we are counting on your assistance and patience as we deal with this new situation as a parish community. We are all eager to return to our Sunday Masses!

Archbishop Prendergast announced the pastoral assignments for the new Archdiocese of Ottawa-Cornwall that take effect August 1st. We will receive a new, half-time assistant Father Francois Kibwenge. He will divide his time between the Cathedral and his ministry as Episcopal Vicar for the the French Sector. Our frequent celebrant, Father Pierre Domerson, is appointed Parochial Administrator of Saint-Joachim Parish in Chute-à- Blondeau, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Parish in l’Orignal, Saint-Bernardin Parish in Saint-Bernardin, Saint-Eugène in St-Eugène, Saint-Grégoire-de-Naziance Parish in Vankleek Hill, and Sainte- Anne Parish in Ste-Anne-de-Prescott. We welcome Fr. Kibwenge and thank Fr. Domerson for his ministry, wishing them both many blessings in their new assignment.

The last line of the Our Father prayer is controversial. To appreciate it myself, I have to keep three things in mind.

The first thing is that God is God and I am not Him: who am I to tell God how He should behave? The second thing is God loves me and wants me to be close to Him. God’s desire is for my ultimate good and He sees all of life in a way that I cannot: God sees the big picture of my life as well as all the little details.  The third thing is, in some way, God’s will for me leaves room for my human freedom. He gives me freedom to choose for him or against him. When I keep these things in mind, this last petition becomes both a prayer to God and an act of trust in him.

The “Our Father” comes to us from the Gospels in two slightly different forms from St. Luke and St. Matthew. We use the version closest to St. Matthew’s rendition. In the Latin version of this prayer, the last line’s literal translation is “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” The petition is for God’s protection from temptation to sin and also to protect us from evil.

These are two things we are familiar with in our daily lives. We encounter temptations, big and small, frequently, don’t we? It sounds strange to our ears perhaps to ask God not to “lead us” into temptation as if God is the cause of the temptation. In the bible, however, in both the Old and New Testament, we see occasions where God allows people to be tempted. Allowing people to be tempted is not the same thing as being the cause of the temptation.

The two most well known examples are the trials of Job in the Old Testament and in the Gospel in the New Testament where Jesus is led into the desert before he begins his public ministry to be tempted by the devil for forty days. In both cases, God allowed these righteous men, Job and Jesus, to be tempted. We also know that both men resisted the temptation to turn away from God. God helped them to resist the temptation they encountered but God did so respecting their human free will. This is something that is hard to comprehend: God respects our freedom but He still comes to our aid because of his love for us.

As human beings, we realistically know that despite our best efforts we will be tempted to sin and if we are honest with ourselves we know that we choose sin over God. But God loves us and when we repent and ask forgiveness He is waiting for us with open, loving arms. The sacrament of reconciliation is God’s solution to this very problem of human sin and our need to experience his mercy in a humanly tangible way.

God does not want us to sin, but He allows us to experience temptation. It is consistent with God’s goodness to ask him not to “lead us into temptation” so that we do not find ourselves in a predicament where we will likely succumb to sin. But if God does allow us to be in a difficult spot, do we trust him enough to recognize He has a good reason and that He also provides us with the grace to resist? If we give into temptation, can we admit our sin and ask forgiveness?

Recently, a change was made to the French translation of the “Our Father” to modify the last petition away from a more direct translation of the Latin text. Scholars, and many others, debate whether this was a good idea or not. I have read many different opinions on this change; maybe you have as well!

My personal take on it is I hope the English version remains the same as the prayer I was taught as a child. I know that God is good but He is also God and it is up to me to try and follow his will (with the help of his grace). Who am I to tell God what to do? If He allows me to be tempted, He also gives me the grace to resist temptation. When I choose wrongly and realize it, I repent and go to Him for forgiveness (hopefully learning something in the process). If God did “lead me into temptation,” He has a good reason for it and his grace will help me or if I sin and repent, He will restore me to his friendship. On my 'end’, do I trust God’s goodness and his will for my life? The last line of the Our Father is both a petition and an act of trust in God’s ultimate goodness.

The next part of the “Our Father” has a powerful petition embedded with a loaded word - “as.” We petition God to treat us the same way we behave towards others: we give God the standard to use to judge how forgiving to be towards us for our own sinful behaviour with that one, little, significant word, “as.” In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus uses the “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” to make this point when teaching his disciples about mercy and forgiveness (Matthew 18.23-35). The unforgiving servant is released from a monumental debt himself but refuses to forgive a minor one owed him by another servant. For his failure to be merciful, he is obliged to repay his own huge debt. When we ask God for mercy for our sins against Him, we need to examine the way we forgive those who have sinned against us. Granting mercy or forgiveness to others is a choice we make that allows us the possibility to receive mercy. Sometimes we may need to pray for the grace to forgive others as God forgives us because it is not an easy thing to do when we have been hurt. Forgiveness does not mean that wrong behaviour was acceptable; rather it frees both the offender and the injured party from carrying the burden of guilt, anger or resentment, lightening the load for both people. It is a ‘big ask,’ but one that aligns us with the Father and the Son. When we ourselves practice compassion, mercy and forgiveness towards another, we are truly children of our heavenly Father.

This petition is rich in meaning. We see once again that we are concerned for each other and ask God to provide for everyone: “give us this day our daily bread.” It is not enough for me to be ok if my sister or brother is suffering or going without the necessities of life. We pray for and also look out for each other. It is worth noting we petition God for what we need today, provisions for the present moment, and not an abundance providing for the future. This petition also shines a light on discerning the difference between our wants and our needs. This petition focuses on what we need at this moment.

There was a song years ago by the “Rolling Stones” that had a refrain “You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you might find, you get what you need” This petition focuses on prayers on asking for what we truly need. Finally, the phrase, “daily bread” is not a literally accurate translation from Latin. It is hard to translate the original phrase which alludes to the eucharist – ‘super special bread’ – which is the Body of Christ. This is the daily bread we need to sustain ourselves not only physically but spiritually each day. In these difficult days, more than ever we may need to periodically remind ourselves to pray with and for each other and to be grateful for the way the Lord sustains us each day. 

The words “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” are sometimes difficult words to pray and mean. When things are going well for us, it is easy to pray that the Lord’s will be accomplished in our lives. When we encounter difficulty or suffering, maybe we shy away from this part of the prayer or mentally qualify these words? What is God’s will for me? This is an important question that we need to reflect upon in our lives and to pray about asking Him for guidance. When we encounter suffering, our natural tendency is to ask to be delivered from it, for it to be ‘taken away’, which is a normal reaction. A more significant response is to pray to have the strength and wisdom to deal with the problem with God’s assistance, waiting on Him to show us the path forward.

In my own life, I stumble over these words in difficult times and it reminds me that I should place my trust in the Father and rely more on his strength than on my own ability to ‘fix’ the problem myself. God’s will or his plan for us is for our ultimate good even when in the moment we do not see its benefits. This part of the “Our Father” reminds us that God’s will for us is based on his mercy and compassion and his ability to see all of our life through with his eyes of love

Christ’s disciples often saw Jesus at prayer. One day, as he “was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (Lk 11.1). We learn the “Our Father” prayer at an early age and we pray it every time we celebrate the Eucharist. Many pray it everyday as part of their daily prayers.

Over the course of the Church’s history, a lot has been written about this perfect prayer. I would like to devote a few words to this gift that Jesus gave us over the next week. It is important to note that from the very beginning of this prayer, it is meant to be the prayer of the community and not just the intention of a single individual: “Our Father who art in heaven…”. This prayer is one we pray with and for each other, lifting our prayers together to our heavenly Father. If God is our common Father, then we are sisters and brothers. This is a profound statement. The next time you pray the “Our Father” think for a moment before you begin of all the people you are including in your first words of this prayer and realize that others are including in their prayer to God our Father. What an amazing gift!

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