The Christmas Season- Father Kevin Louis's Bulletin Column - December 31, 2006
Thank you to all those who made the liturgical celebration of our Savior’s birth so prayerful and beautiful at Saint Peter’s – members of our Sacred Worship Committee, decorators (inside and outside), electricians, custodians, musicians, vocalists, instrumentalists, lectors, altar servers, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, ushers, sacristan Mary Stanczyk, Fathers Worzalla and Sakowski, and each one of you through your participation! A special thanks this year to Larry and Karen Proulx for shopping for our new artificial Christmas trees and the Holy Name Society for paying for them. May the many graces the Lord Jesus bestowed upon us at Christmas bear much fruit in our parish in the year to come!
Thank you for your kindness and generosity to me personally during this Christmas season. I am most grateful for the numerous cards, notes, and gifts (many presents being edible and quite delicious!) that have been delivered to the rectory. I appreciate, too, your words of encouragement written in so many cards and the assurances of your prayers. Know that you and your loved ones are daily in my prayer.
Over the past two weeks I have enjoyed so much my visits to our parishioners who are confined to their homes due to frail health. It is a great privilege as a priest to be able to offer to them the consolation of the sacraments – Penance, Anointing of the Sick, and the Holy Eucharist. Also, my “priestly” time spent with them – brief though it is – assures them that Christ Himself and our parish community spiritually accompany them at every moment of every day. Indeed, although they no longer are able to physically be with us at Mass at Saint Peter, our homebound brothers and sisters remain an integral and active part of our parish through the offering of their prayers and sufferings. In the new year I will be making the rounds of our parishioners in the various assisted living centers in our community.
In 1981 our late great Holy Father, John Paul II, made the following observations on the Holy Family of Nazareth in his Apostolic Exhortation On The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World: “Through God’s mysterious design, it was in that family that the Son of God spent long years of a hidden life. It is therefore the prototype and example for all Christian families. It was unique in the world. Its life was passed in anonymity and silence in a little town in Palestine. It underwent trials of poverty, persecution and exile. It glorified God in an incomparably exalted and pure way. And it will not fail to help Christian families – indeed, all the families in the world – to be faithful to their day-to-day duties, to bear the cares and tribulations of life, to be open and generous to the needs of others, and to fulfill with joy the plan of God in their regard” (86). To promote family life and build up devotion to the Holy Family, this weekend’s Feast of the Holy Family was established for the Church in 1921. May we frequently invoke the intercession of the Holy Family that our families may, too, be holy. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for our families!
Besides, of course, being the beginning of a new calendar year, January 1 is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. “Called in the Gospels ‘the mother of Jesus,’ Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her Son, as ‘the mother of my Lord’ (Luke 1:43; John 2:1; et. al.). In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s Eternal Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Hence, the Church confesses that Mary is truly ‘Mother of God’ (Θεοτόκος)” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 495). Masses for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, are New Year’s Eve, Sunday, December 31, at 4:00 pm, and Monday, January 1, at 8:00 and 10:00 am. May the Virgin of Guadalupe – Mother of God and our mother – intercede before her Divine Son for us in 2007!
Saint Peter, pray for us! Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!