Christmas is about gift giving—gifts given, gifts received, gifts returned or even “re-gifted”.  I am invited to a ‘day-after-Christmas-party’ at which we will come to share with others the gifts we really don’t want.  Did we receive too many gifts?  Of course what we really celebrate on Christmas is the gift God gives to us in his Son, Immanuel. God comes in time and into a rural Palestinian family.  Jesus is the human face of God that we could not see until he took on flesh and blood.

How grateful we are to God for such a great and wonderful gift!  We would like to show our appreciation by giving God a gift.  The prophet Micah (6:6-8) said what we would say: “With what gift shall I come before the Lord?”  Through Micah God told us that all that is asked of us is that we “do justice, love tenderly and walk humbly with God.”

It is odd that on Jesus’ birthday we give gifts not to him but to others.  And is that not what we are supposed to do?  Are we not to take stock of the many gifts and talents we have been given by God and share these with each other?  Could we not make the time or take the time to be with others who need us?  It is the gifts of the heart that will help us to keep our eyes open and our ears attuned to the God who keeps on giving us Jesus, our Immanuel.

Claire and I offer you our prayers during this holy season and ask God’s continued blessings on you and your loved ones in this New Year.  I thank you for the blessing you are to me and to the parishioners of Sacred Heart Parish.

Offertory for December 18^th & 19^th       $4647.00

Envelope Offerings                           $3788.00

Loose Cash                                         $ 859.00

St. John/St. Hugh                                         $137.00

There is a Youth Group meeting on Monday, January 10 at 7:00PM in the Youth Room at St. Brigid’s for all High School students, Newcomers Welcome!

January 1, 2005

Because the Feast of Mary the Mother of God is on a Saturday, it is not a holy day of obligation.  Mass is at 9:00.

This week we ask you to pray for those who are ill, including, Brianna Cimino, Rosemary Harvey, Regina Jones, Andrea Hynes, Joyce Amos, Regina Wingard, Erin McMehon, Maria Aguis, George Beck, Dr. Kenneth Spengler, Josephine Murphy, Peter Bugda, Norma Berstein, Camille Michals, Rob Morway, Patricia Hassett, Paul McCann, William Francis, Lillian Davenport, James Fontaini, Henri Fradette, William Blair, Agatha Pals, Kath Rodriegas, Estelle Szalajeski, Nancy Driscoll, Dante DiManna, Margie Levine, Doug Phillips, Andrew Day, Peggy Sue Grow, Mary Serpa, Deborah Miller, Dorothy Lee, William MacKinnon, Mary Jefferson, Elizabeth Conte, Shane McCarthy, Mildred Wood, Violet Caldaroni, Frank Cote, James Bresnahan, Ann Mulray, Rita Mahan, Connie Perrotta, Jackie Sullivan, Jean Babbin, Gerard Sarno, Dorothy Grant, Gretin Cervantes, Marisol O’Brien, Paul Pantano, Fran Ressetar, Cecelia Hines, Margaret Wright, Renee Chapman, Peter Bellini, Christine Gainer, Chris Ann Colletti, Helen McLaughlin, Paul Doherty, Don Costello, Jorge Loayza, Joseph Brault, Lauren Forgette, Chuck Kiernan, Bill Attaya, Margaret Coughlin, John McCarthy, Don Sabatand, Laura Mac Aulay, Stella Guarino, Bill Graham, Bob Remeika, Edward Semanko, Mary Hosford, Jose Rubiero, Jane Eastham and Dorothy Barton. 

Reflecting on the Gospel

Seldom do we hear of the good side of family life, whole families spending holidays helping out in a soup kitchen, families foregoing a Christmas exchange and donating the money instead to those with little, thousands of foster and adoptive families making good homes for parentless children, even something so simple as children being taught how to share their toys.  Much about our family life today reminds us of sorrow and struggles, difficulties and hardships.  At first glance this feast might be discouraging for some: how can the holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph be a model when they were all so obviously graced by God; indeed, the Child is the Son of God!  Nevertheless, this gospel story shows that this Holy Family underwent distress and peril, too.  Holiness, then, doesn’t mean the absence of difficulties and tension (if so, who would be holy?) but the willingness to grow in our ability to hear God’s directions for our lives.  In this the Holy Family is the ideal model.

The Christmas season is about celebrating “God is with us.”  But this Child also enters completely into the human condition with its distress and danger and this becomes the very means to reveal to us the fidelity, care, and protection of God.  Opening ourselves to God’s faithful presence and having confidence in God’s care and protection is what leads to holiness.  The good news is that our economic, social, political, ethnic, or racial status does not determine God’s loving, faithful presence; simply being human, being part of God’s family, does.

At the same time that we are encouraged by the Holy Family being a model of God’s faithful care and protection, we also can learn that following God’s will isn’t something automatic or mindless.  We won’t have dreams in which an angel speaks to us clearly God’s will.  Most of us have to discern God’s will in the myriad of motives and circumstances that surround our everyday lives.  If we practice the virtues extolled in the first two readings we will have the ground out of which to discern good choices for doing God’s will.   Living virtuously is already a discernment of God’s will.  This is how we are holy; being open to God’s faithful presence and living virtuously.

Bulletins	Sacred Heart Parish Bulletin - December 26, 2004	Home