"Repent & believe in the Gospel.” This Wednesday we’ll be invited to God’s continuous call to conversion and change as we enter into the season of Lent. Our Masses on Ash Wednesday will be celebrated at 8:30 am & 7:00 pm. Join us as we are signed with the sign of the cross, an outward sign of our call and hopefully our desire for an inward conversion more and more towards Christ.

This is somewhat of a shorter column as this past Tuesday (the day bulletin articles are due) I returned from a very restful and relaxing week away. I didn’t really do anything fancy while I was away...no work was done, including writing bulletin columns ahead of time. I just spent some time relaxing, reading (you may remember the homily I gave about my challenge to read 50 books this year...I made some decent progress towards that goal), and just being.

Have you ever found yourself getting distracted when you pray? For me, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes, and I would assume that it’s the same answer for you. Prayer is an essential and necessary part of our lives as Catholics and with that prayer often comes distractions.

There’s a good chance that as we hear/heard (depending upon when you’re reading this), our 2nd Reading this weekend at Mass we felt like we were at a Wedding. Though it is certainly not the ONLY 2nd reading that I’ve ever heard proclaimed at a Wedding, it is, by far, the most common. St. Paul presents to us, in this reading, a wonderful description of love, a quality that is so needed in our world today.

In 2019, on the memorial of St. Jerome, September 30th, Pope Francis called the Church to celebrate the Sunday of the Word of God on the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the Preamble of the Introduction to the Lectionary for Mass we are reminded, “the word of God proclaimed in the celebration of God’s mysteries does not only address present conditions but looks back to past events and forward to what is yet to come.

In our second reading today, St. Paul writes to the people of Corinth, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” (1 Cor. 12:7). The Spirit is given, not to some, not to a few, not to a majority, but to each and every individual for the benefit, not just of the individual themselves, but for the benefit of all. The manifestation of the Spirit is not the same in each individual and our call, our challenge, is to put that manifestation to use.

“You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” Those words, which make up the last line of our gospel this weekend as we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord and enter into Ordinary Time, are words that are spoken, not just to Jesus, but to each and every one of us. Maybe there wasn’t a booming voice from the heavens on the day that we were baptized, but in that moment, God spoke those same words into our hearts, “You are my beloved son/daughter, with you I am well pleased.”

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! Yesterday, though due to its falling on a Saturday it was not a Holy Day of Obligation this year, we celebrated the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. How is Mary the Mother of God, we might ask? After all, if God has existed since the very beginning and will always exist, how can we say that Mary is His mother?

Merry Christmas everyone! As we continue our celebration of the Christmas season and celebrate today the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’d like to share with you this prayer for Families composed by St. Mother Teresa…

“Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from the store, maybe Christmas means just a little bit more.” Those are the words from the story of the Grinch and they’re also words that kept jumping into my mind as in the months and weeks leading up to Christmas. We heard all kinds of warnings about getting everything that we needed for Christmas early because of all the supply chain issues. If we wait until the last minute...

As we continue through this Advent season and draw closer to our celebration of Christmas, we’re probably all at different points in our Christmas shopping. Maybe we’ve got it all done, maybe we’ve still got a few things left to get, or maybe we haven’t even started yet. Maybe we’ve ordered something and are still waiting for it to arrive, maybe we weren’t able to find the gift that we wanted to get for someone, maybe all we’ve got left to do is wrap and bag the gifts that we bought for our loved ones.

 This week, we celebrate on Wednesday, the great Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We celebrate the Immaculate Conception on December 8th each year and then we celebrate Mary’s birthday on September 8th of the following year, 9 months to the day since we celebrated her conception. It’s the same with Jesus, we celebrate the Annunciation on March 25th and then 9 months later, on December 25th, we celebrate his birth at Christmas. Just an interesting way that the liturgical calendar is sketched out.

 This week, as we enter into the season of Advent, we begin a new Church year, a new opportunity, a new invitation for the grace of God to be unfolded in our lives. What we celebrate in Advent is not so much our coming to God, but that we have a God who comes to us. What we see revealed in Jesus is that we have a God who takes the initiative, who doesn’t wait for us to make the first move towards Him, but rather who takes the first step towards us.

This Thursday, we pause to remember all the blessings in our lives. Gratitude is a foundational attitude of the Christian life, remembering and giving thanks for all that God has done for us. There’s not one person who can say that God hasn’t done anything for them, that God hasn’t poured out some blessing in their life.

At least to me it seems like it was just summer a month ago and yet here we are just over a month away from the Christmas & New Year’s holidays. Soon the Advent wreath will be up in Church & the Christmas decorations soon will follow as we celebrate these great events in the life of our faith. I wanted to share with you this weekend our upcoming schedule for Christmas and New Year’s so that we could all start to plan & prepare.

I remember when I was just starting out playing the flute, taking music lessons. Every week I would go to my aunt and uncle’s music studio (they still own it to this day) and in the room where my teacher and I would practice he had a poster. The poster had a picture of Uncle Sam pointing out and it bore the saying, “I want you to practice!” I think back to that poster as I think about our latest Parish Council meeting discussion, because that’s basically what our discussion was focused around.

Two years ago this Sunday, I made what I believe to be my most important staff member hire at both parishes. Many have met her and many have been welcomed and greeted by her when visiting the parish office. Her name is Angel and I guess that you could say that her “official staff title” is Special Assistant to the Pastor.

One of the Catholic vocab words that we are probably very familiar with is the term Holy Days of Obligation. These are days that we are obligated to attend Mass on. The first & primary Holy Day of Obligation is Sunday, but there are also 9 other Holy Days of Obligation throughout the liturgical calendar. 

This weekend we welcome our Fr. Kishore for our annual appeal.   Next weekend, on Sunday, October 24th, we will be celebrating the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick at the 9:00 am Mass. Those who are chronically ill, the elderly, those struggling with serious physical/mental illness, or those preparing for serious surgery are invited to sit at the end of the pews on either side of the aisle (or in the front row) and following the homily at Mass the Priests will come to lay hands and to anoint you with the Oil of the Sick.