From the Pastor’s Desk
By Fr. Terry Kerner
I sincerely want to thank all of you for your Christmas greetings, gifts, and goodies. Your kindness helped end a most difficult year on a high note. Speaking for all of us, we can be grateful for the hard work staff and volunteers offered to make the Holidays colorful and prayerful. We probably take for granted the efforts of sacristans, musicians, live-streaming technicians, lectors, eucharistic ministers, gift shop helpers, custodial and rectory office staff. They all deserve recognition for their efforts. I especially want to thank Fr. Henry, Deacon Tom, Kevin Jakubowicz and the substituting priests who spent so many privileged hours in church leading us as a prayerful community. Thank you also to all of you who have been so generous to the Christmas collection all of which remains in the parish. To date the Christmas giving has allowed us to make up for any deficit on our Offertory income. While we reflect on the past year of your generous help, we also look forward with a prayer for everyone’s health and well-being. May all of us enjoy a new year with plenty of joyful days!
In the days ahead the distinctive symbols and signs of Christmas will be coming down and packed away for another season, The Christmas season ends liturgically on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord —this weekend. On Monday, January 10th we begin “Ordinary Time” which continues through March first, the day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. It resumes with the end of the Easter season on June 6th — the day following Pentecost. Ordinary Time does not mean it is bland or boring but rather a period when Sunday liturgies can reflect and contemplate on the extraordinary life of Jesus lived between His birth and death and resurrection. Such reflection leads us to believe as people of faith that our lives, as ordinary as we think they might be, are really moving to the extraordinary. May the new year of 2022 be a time when you realize that ever more deeply!
Have a healthy and ordinary week!
