Saturday, March 1, 2008

19. Sacred Heart of Jesus

(mass times & church info last updated 03/31/2016)
Address: 457 W. 51st St. (between 9th & 10th Aves.)
Phone: 212.265.5020
Weekend Mass Times: 
Sat: 5pm (English), 7pm (Spanish)
Sun: 9:30am (Family Mass, English), 11am (Spanish), 12:30pm (English)
Weekday Mass Times: 
Mon-Fri: 8:30am (English)
Sat: 9am (English)
Confession: Sat: 4pm-5pm
Adoration: First Thursdays 7pm
Links:
Official Website
About the Organ
Catholic Online: Sacred Heart of Jesus School
The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

I went to Saturday mass today as I am forced to work tomorrow - on a Sunday! It's a terrible thing to miss one's weekend, one's peace time, one's respite.


I went to this church tonight thinking at first I was attending St. Benedict the Moor church - however I quickly realized it was Sacred Heart of Jesus Church. Quick research suggests St. Benedict the Moor church was once a larger parish that has since been taken over by the Church if the Sacred Heart of Jesus - I don't really know. Perhaps if you are reading this and have some knowledge on the matter you can post a comment. It seems St. Benedict the Moor church is still around, right around the corner on 53rd street - very small and now, I believe, offering only a 12:30pm Spanish mass. I may find myself there next week.

If you've been reading any of these posts then you know things are not well with me. What does it mean, a young man approaching thirty, church-going though he is, job and apartment in New York, all the beginnings of a good long life, but lost, seemingly free but stuck in many ways, desperate in others, drunk as often as he can be, fighting his notion of poverty but not very fiercely, and spending so many nights and days and moments of all this existence puzzled and perplexed and weeping?




I realize something over coffee alone, overhearing a somewhat dynamic conversation between a young woman and her pregnant friend about religion and family and sex and baby names.









Something just clicked, you know?








The pregnant friend never got up to use the restroom as I so willed her, pouring glass afer glass of water to persuade, so I never gained the chance I thought of to ask the other one out.





And so I walked out, alone into the cold, for a little while longer. And next week, church again...



*I feel obligated to include this next picture which appears on many internet searches of "Sacred Heart of Jesus". This is a picture which hangs in my family's home (and I'm sure in many Catholic homes across the world) and which when I see brings me back to my parent's hallway, the dim lights of a Saturday evening at home, comfort and safety.



(09/23/2010)
additional photos...
*Note: attended the 12:10pm Mass today in a small side chapel to the main church. this is a very nice church and i found myself more at peace today and joy than the first time i arrived here...

  
  
 




  
  
  
 

 

3 comments:

  1. The parish now has a website: http://shjnyc.com.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks so much for letting me know. I have updated the title link of this page as well as the "Church Website" search page. Am meaning to stop by again soon and take some new, better pictures to add here as additional images.

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  3. Here's an article from Catholic New York with some history on the parish - and it explains the relationship with St. Benedict the Moor.

    http://www.cny.org/archive/ft/ft010302.htm

    "The parish also oversees St. Ambrose Chapel on West 54th Street, which closed as a parish in 1938 and is now Centro Maria, a residence for women run by a group of Mexican-American nuns. Sunday Masses are held there, as well as at St. Benedict the Moor Church on West 53rd Street, which came under the administration of Sacred Heart in 1994 after the departure of the Spanish religious congregation that had been staffing it."

    ReplyDelete