By Carly York | Correspondent

Faithful from Holy Innocents Parish, Neptune, commemorated their parish feast day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, in an extraordinarily reverent and special way during the Octave of Christmas.

On Dec. 28, a day that memorializes the children who were killed when King Herod was looking for the Christ Child, members of the faith community gathered with their pastor, Father Todd Carter, for the celebration of Mass in the Extraordinary Form.

“I love the reverence of the liturgy and the sound of the Latin language,” said longtime parishioner Lydia Silva, who attended the Mass. “The Latin Mass feels other worldly and transcendent.”

The celebration was well attended by members of both Holy Innocents Parish and St. John the Baptist, Allentown, where the Latin Mass has been celebrated regularly for several years by pastor Father Brian Woodrow, who is diocesan liaison for the Mass in the Extraordinary Form.

Father Carter reflected that he was a newly ordained priest when his interest in the Latin Mass was ignited. At the time, he was assigned as parochial vicar in Our Lady of Sorrows-St. Anthony Parish, Hamilton, and had been invited by Father Woodrow to help establish the Latin Mass Community in that parish. He later went on to help Father Woodrow introduce the Latin Mass in St. John the Baptist Parish. Since then, Father Carter said he has had a great deal of experience celebrating the Latin Mass during which he has served as deacon and subdeacon and has also helped with training altar servers.

“I find great joy in celebrating Mass this way,” he said.

“Through these practical experiences of my priesthood, I see how this form of the Mass expresses what we hold most dear in our faith: devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament,” Father Carter said. “I see how worshiping in this manner has helped many deepen their faith in this sacrament and live holy lives.”

John Teague, a high school senior and president of the “Arch Confraternity of St. Steven,” a group of about 50 young men who are specially trained altar servers for the Latin Mass, was happy to take the lead in organizing both the altar servers and the Schola Cantorum, which sang for the Mass.

Teague specifically was the Schola leader and was joined by vocal soloist Mariana Consoli; Dorothy Conway, business manager in St. John the Baptist Parish, and Phil Clingerman, who is in the diocesan permanent diaconate program and father of seminarian William Clingerman.

Clingerman said he fully supports the celebration of the Latin Mass throughout the Diocese because “it is important for the faithful to know what a treasure we have in this liturgy.”

He also observed that the majority of the Schola Cantorum singers and Latin Mass altar servers were young people, and how they seem to “devour the Latin Mass because they are hungering for something transcendent.”

Mass attendant and St. John the Baptist parishioner Clara Coleman found the Mass to be particularly meaningful, saying that she was prompted to reflect on her own journey to the Catholic Church. Explaining how she had been received into the Catholic faith in 2011, she admitted that until that point, she had not being familiar with the Latin Mass.  She decided to attend when it began in St. John the Baptist Parish.

“The Latin Mass really drew me in, and ultimately, it was the reason I decided to join St. John’s Parish,”  she said.