A New Church Year and Christmas Masses

Happy New Year! It is once again time for Advent, this is the new year for the Church. We get to start off another liturgical year within the Church with this Advent season. Advent is another preparatory season, one that we are preparing for the coming of our Lord and Savior. He came as a humble child, one that was reliant on Mary and Joseph to take care of Him. He is also relying on us, us to help Him to carry out His mission in this world and that mission is to show the love that God has for us. We hear the words of John the Baptist who is reminding us to prepare the way for the Lord. Jesus our Savior is coming again! It is a season of anticipation and preparation. We spend a lot of time preparing the house for the coming of Christmas, we prepare food for the many different Christmas and family parties, we spend a lot of time shopping for or friends and family. How much time do we spend preparing ourselves for the coming of our Lord and Savior into our lives? It is very easy to prepare ourselves for the material things of Christmas, but do not forget the spiritual things of Christmas.

This year again, we have so many different things happening, even our preparations for the upcoming Christmas season are different, we may be ordering a few more things to be delivered, hopefully we are still supporting our local businesses. We also may be planning on doing a scaled down version of our normal Christmas routine. Speaking of this, I want to ask a favor, and that is if you usually attend the early Mass on Christmas Eve, to consider going to a later one. Last year, between the Mass Fr. Larry celebrated in the gym and the Mass I celebrated in the church, we had around 1,000 people. This year our capacity will be less than half of that. We are adding a couple more Masses to help this out. We are adding a second 6:30pm Christmas Eve Mass, along with the regular 10:00 pm Mass, and we are celebrating two Masses on Christmas morning, 8:00 and 9:30 with room to spread out in the gym as well. We are hoping that it will help to allow more people to attend in person. While I really like to see everybody here, especially in these big holidays, also remember that the obligation for Mass attendance is still suspended.

As we begin this season of preparation of the coming of our Lord and Savior as a child, remember to open our hearts to where Christ is continually calling us, into his peace and mercy. Do not let the stress of this year and the stress of the normal secular holiday season get you down, Christ our Savior is coming into the world, let us prepare for the coming of our Savior.

God bless,
Fr. Ken