Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, As we begin a new calendar year, I would like to share some words of thanks. First, thank you to all who made our celebration of the Nativity of the Lord so beautiful. I am grateful for our beautiful Christmas pageant and all who organized and prepared for it. Our Advent Giving Tree was a wonderful opportunity to care for our neighbors in need, and it was made possible by the hard work and organization of Doug and Cathy Van Tornhout and Ray and Ramona de Castro – thank you! To our church decorating…read more

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, It was my second consecutive Christmas away from home, far from family and friends, and I was not looking forward to it at all. In fact, the anticipation of being off from school for a few weeks (I should note here that I was in seminary for these two Christmases, and so my separation was not of the same sort as the separation experienced by those who find themselves in foxholes or places of real danger in service to their country) was causing me some significant stress. I survived the first year away, but…read more

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, As we begin this fourth and final (full!) week of Advent, we might or might not feel ourselves ready to welcome the Lord at Christmas. If you are ready, then I pray that this will be a week of joyful anticipation, that you will look forward more and more each day to the celebration of our Lord’s birth next Sunday, and that in this week, you will receive deeper insight into the meaning of the Incarnation and birth of our Savior, not only in history, but in your own life. If you are not…read more

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Gaudete Sunday is upon us! We have come into the third week of Advent, and today the Scriptures we read and the prayers given to us in the liturgy invite us to rejoice (hence the Latin name for this Sunday, “Gaudete” which means “Rejoice!”). Rejoice, because the Lord’s arrival is coming very soon; rejoice because the gift of salvation is very near. We are given the verbal cue through Scripture and prayer, and the visual cue in the use of the rose-colored vestment. The more penitential purple is put away for the moment so…read more