Dear Friends,
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! We celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, sometime known in times gone by as “Little Christmas.” Traditionally, the Epiphany was celebrated yearly on January 6. Beginning on December 25 and leading up to the traditional date of the Epiphany are 12 days—the basis for the 12 Days of Christmas.
I have to say thank you to quite a few people. Thank you to everyone who helped with our Christmas Masses, making them reverent, beautiful, and worthy of Jesus Christ, our newborn King. To everyone who helped clean and decorate the churches and to everyone who helped at Mass as lector, server, greeter, usher, Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, thank you!
I also have to say thank you to everyone who sent me Christmas cards and gave me Christmas gifts. You are all so generous, and I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Many of you also clearly listen to what I say at Mass: I received many, many gift cards to Skyline Chili! Thank you!
We now begin a new year, 2022. We usually make resolutions for a new year, and often, we follow through with those resolutions for a few days or a few weeks and then lose the energy or will to persevere. Perhaps a resolution you have for this year is to pray more. One strategy to pray more is to set a schedule and set an alarm to remind you to pray. We are going to try something new to create a certain level of accountability. Available weekly will be cards (the size of business cards) that I encourage you to take home. On one side of the card, you will be able to record how many minutes per day of the week you have prayed, and you can then add up all of the minutes of the week. On the other side, you can write prayer intentions. When you come for Sunday Mass, simply drop that card in the collection basket and pick up a new card for the new week.
No need to write your name on the card (unless you want to do that), and no need to worry about judgment: we are not going to track who specifically prayed how much. What we will do is record how much the entire parish has prayed for the week and post that in the bulletin near where we post our collection totals. In part, this will help us to see that our offertory is more than treasure, it include time and prayer as well. Additionally, we will keep track of your prayer intentions, and both parish staffs and prayer groups will pray specifically for the intentions you share. All of this will hopefully foster a greater culture of unceasing prayer, and when we first see how much (or how little) we pray, perhaps we will resolve each week to pray a little bit more.
With the Epiphany, I encourage everyone to use the Epiphany house blessing and blessed chalk to bless their house again for the new year. The formula for the blessing will be included either in this bulletin or nearby, along with the chalk needed for the blessing. Also, if you haven’t already done so, allow the Holy Spirit to reveal your patron saint for 2022 by going to saintsnamegenerator.com. Maybe you won’t know and/or won’t want the saint that appears: maybe God is saying that is the saint you need for 2022; trust in God’s providence and your saint’s intercession!
We are saints under construction, following the example of the Magi, following the star to Christ, paying Him homage, and bringing Him our gifts. Have a great week and great 2022! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
In Christ,
Fr. Matt