Two weeks later, Corpus Christi is marked with a gathering in a nearby park; there, the monstrance is lifted to the four winds to bless the four corners of the world. At midsummer we acknowledge John the Baptist's birth. And when the wheat is ripe in the fields in august, we celebrate lammas - the loaf mass - making a loaf of bread for the mass from the first wheat of the season in South Jersey. On the following Sunday, near the Transfiguration, we celebrate the world's transformation. We bless the fruits of the earth and give a peach to everyone so that we taste the earth's sweetness and its transformation from the bleak, severe days of early spring. In mid-August, on the Sunday nearest the 15th, we all wear marigolds ("Marygolds") to honor Mary, the blessed fruit in this season of transformation and sweet fruitfulness.
Labor Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September. People bring their tools to the shrine altar, and there they are blessed. We are reminded of our own participation in the transfiguration of the earth by our hands, our sweat and our tools. On the Sunday nearest September 14th, we celebrate Holy cross, a beautiful day in our lives. People bring crosses made from anything- palm branches, sticks from the streets of Camden or driftwood. They raise up their crosses determinedly against the oncoming winter darkness. That bring cross will take them through death and into life. It is one of Sacred Heart's most powerful celebrations, speaking loudly to all that we are and all that we need.In October, on "Celebrate Life" Sunday, children are the focus of our celebration. Very often we have a baptism, done by immersion in the midst of an assembly of children. The day heightens and acknowledges the powerful right to life of all people, young and old. On the last Sunday of October, as the leaves turn and go through their last splendor before they fall, we gather the elderly and the sick for anointing. Sensing that the sap may be low in the trees and knees, we anoint their holy limbs with the soothing oil of the church. Last year one old man came with a sprig of dogwood in his lapel, a little leaf and one acorn on it. He said to me, "The leaf may die, but the seed goes on." He was right in tune with the spirit of our festival. It is a wonderful day of rich meaning when we celebrate those at the edge of glory.
On the first Sunday of November we celebrate All Saints, creating a shrine of beauty. We erect a circular bulletin board, about eight feet in diameter, on our shrine altar, cover it in purple, and attach to it the photographs of our dead. it is the shrine of the dead for the month of November. Every Sunday I go forward and incense it, watching the incense rise around the pictures of my mother and father and sister and friends that I knew. Gathered around the Pantocreator, the great picture of Christ in the center, one senses the magnificent gathering of the faithful in this homemade shrine of deep poignancy.
The church is filled with cornstalks and other signs of the earth's aging during the entire month of November. The season has come inside the church: pumpkins of all sizes and fruits of the earth are everywhere - a great holy barn of God's bounty. There, with incense, among old drooping cornstalks and the pictures of the dead, we celebrate God's holy harvest until the great feast of Christ the King.