December - 2021

Sermon: The Death Chosen for You (Passion Sunday, March 26th, 2023)

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, March 26th

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, March 19th

Drawn to Repentance and Conversion -- Sermon for III Sunday in Lent

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, March 12th

Original sin, boredom, and the empire of empty desire (Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, 2023)

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, February 26th

Loving Our Enemies (Sermon for Sunday, February 19, 2023)

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, Februrary 19th

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, February 12th

Archive

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, January 2nd

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Happy Epiphany! Today we celebrate one of the greatest feasts of the Church year – the manifestation of Christ to the nations in the three events of the coming of the wise men, Christ’s Baptism, and the wedding feast at Cana. In many countries, the Epiphany (traditionally and properly observed on January 6th) is celebrated with more solemnity than Christmas, and for most of the Church’s history it ranked as a higher feast day with an unint

Christmas Sermon: The Swaddling Clothes of the Divine Infant

“For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” One of the most popular images of Christmas is assuredly this one: the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. Even though I had heard these words many times and seen many images of the child Jesus wrapped up in His swaddling clothes, I never really understood what Mary had done in wrap

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent: "The Woman Who Made It All Possible"

Christmas is the time of year when people can’t help but act Catholic. Everyone sets up their nativity scenes – images of the saints no longer being graven images so long as they form part of a cute manger scene – and you even hear songs about Mary. Preparing for Christmas, we have to think about the woman who made it all possible. Even those who are normally virulently opposed to any sort of Marian devotion, find Her appeal irresistible in the month of December. It wasn’t al

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, December 19, 2021

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Thank you to everyone who helped with all the wonderful festivities for Our Lady of Guadalupe last weekend! I also appreciate everyone’s understanding with the modifications that had to be made to our normal celebrations due to Her day falling on Sunday this year. Next year we will be “back to normal” 100%! In the meantime, we should be grateful that God has made it possible for us to gather this year. I am also very thankful to everyone w

Pastor's Weekly Message: Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, We have a happy coincidence today of Gaudete Sunday – when we are called to “Rejoice!” in the middle of Advent – with Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Blessed Mother is a model of rejoicing at the manifestation of God’s plan for humanity and for our lives individually as we prepare for Christ’s coming both at Bethlehem and at the end of time. Today at two of our Masses (one in English and one in Spanish) we are introducing you to our Implementat

Immaculate Conception Sermon: The New Beginning

You know what it’s like to want to start over – to know that things haven’t gone how they were supposed to go, that it should have been different. We hear today about such a bad start -- Adam and Eve in the garden – how they ruined the goodness of God’s original plan for all of us. If we asked ourselves, “What was humanity’s second chance? When did God give us a fresh start?” we might think of Noah and the flood. Things were going very, very badly. “The Lord saw that the wick

Sermon: You Are Called to Be a Prophet

“God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more.” To love the Lord with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself. This, as we saw four weeks ago, is the highest ideal of Christian charity. But what if the highest form of love is something even greater than we can achieve by our own efforts? And what if the love that God is calling us

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, December 5th

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Last Tuesday, the Implementation Management Team for our Next Generation Parish project met for the second time with our consultant, Jim Goodel. We are making progress on the implementation phase of our parish priority plan. The members of the Implementation Management Team are now starting to form their own teams that will work on the practical strategies for implementation the strategic priorities that we discerned in the envisioning pha