For The Dialog
SEAFORD — Fridays during Lent at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish here include fish, fervor and forgiveness.
Starting at 4 p.m. on Fridays, the community can gather for a Knights of Columbus fish dinner, followed by Stations of the Cross and opportunities for going to confession from parish priests.
“I told parishioners that this is a big community program,” Father Clement Vadakkedath, pastor, said of the Knights of Columbus fish dinner, then stations at 7 p.m. The stations are led each week by various parish ministries and organizations during which confessions are heard. “I see it as a very good program.”
The involvement of middle and high school students, as well as wives of the knights in the dinners helps make the Friday meal and devotion even more of a parish event, Father Vadakkedath said.
This is the 11th year the St. Moula Council Knights of Columbus has put on the fish dinner, according to Ed Boardman, who with Dan Braunstein organizes the dinners, but only the second year that stations and the dinner are on the same night. Previously the Stations of the Cross were on Tuesday nights, he said.
Profits from the dinner go to the Josephine Grace Gay Scholarship, named for the granddaughter of Knight Bob Gay, which is given by the knights to an Our Lady of Lourdes parishioner.
One recent Friday, the pastoral care staff and St. Vincent de Paul Society led “The Stations of the Cross with Mary, Then and Now,” based on “Mary’s Way of the Cross,” a stations devotion from St. Isidore Parish in Yuba City, Fla., and from Creighton University. Each station included a perspective from Mary’s point of view as she followed her son Jesus, carrying of the cross to Calvary, and a modern reflection.
“These stations spoke to me as a mother of three children,” said Beverly Smith, one of the readers for the stations. It was the second year the Mary-based stations were used.
The knights, the youth ministry and RCIA, choir, Spanish community and hospitality committee also took turns leading the Friday night stations this Lenten season.
Since parish priests are not needed to lead the Stations of the Cross, they are available for the sacrament of reconciliation during the devotion, as well as on Saturdays. Father Vadakkedath said up to a dozen confessions are heard during stations.
The dinners have drawn about 150 people on recent nights, Boardman said. Diners can choose from baked breaded flounder or vegetable lasagna and green beans, baked macaroni and cheese, glazed carrots or scalloped potatoes. Homemade vegetable soup, coleslaw and cake also are offered.
All the food, except for the breaded flounder, the rolls and the green beans, are made from scratch, Boardman said. “I start at 7 in the morning making the soup,” he said. “We even make our own lasagna.”
Confirmation class members earn service hours by helping at the dinners, serving soup, plates and drinks to diners at their tables. But some young people help before confirmation studies and continue afterward. “We’ve had kids grow up helping us,” Boardman said.
Kelly Velasquez-Perez, a junior at Seaford High School, began helping at dinners while in seventh grade, when an older sister was in the confirmation class. She has continued since. She was accompanied by her sister, Sarah, a sixth-grade student.
“For me, it’s being able to see everybody out here,” Kelly said. “I may not know their names but I am able to talk to them,” learning more about them.
She tries to attend other parish events, but is especially fond of the fish dinners.
“It’s showing the church that we (young people) are here to serve others,” she said. “That’s what we’re supposed to do.”
