Parish Update – Wednesday, Nov. 24
Happy Turkey Day Eve! This week’s update comes a few days early as we prepare for the extended Thanksgiving weekend. I pray that your celebration tomorrow will be a blessed one, filled with family, friends, and loved ones, and that we all take more than just a quick moment at the prayer over the bird to make time to give thanks to the Lord for all our blessings in life. Even amidst all the trials of the past two years, the God of mercy walks with us. Let us be united in our hymn of thanksgiving.
Please join us tomorrow, Thursday, Nov. 25, as we celebrate
Thanksgiving Day Mass at 9 a.m. in the church. It will also be
livestreamed for those of you at home. You are also invited to bring items from the Thanksgiving meal you will be serving later that day for the annual Blessing of Food at the end of Mass. Bring a basket with some of the items for the dishes you will be preparing and we’ll ask God’s blessing upon them. It’s a good way to make a connection between the bounty we receive at the table of the Lord to the bounty we offer at our table at home. …
Please note there is no evening Mass (or confessions beforehand) tonight, Wednesday, Nov. 24. It resumes next Wednesday.
Now, let’s look ahead to after Thanksgiving to the
First Sunday of Advent that we will celebrate this weekend:
• We invite you to please join us for Mass this weekend, either in person or via our
livestream on Sunday at 9 a.m. on both our Facebook and YouTube pages. You can find the link to the livestream at
www.ctrcc.com/live-stream, and in addition, you’ll find there both a worship aid and a link to the Scripture readings to follow along with Mass. And you can make your weekly offertory contribution online at
www.ctrcc.com/donate. … If you’d like to join us in person for Mass, we welcome you on Saturday at 5 p.m., or Sunday at 7, 9, and 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.
You’ll notice the violet color is prominent in the church as we begin Advent, Our Advent wreath will be blessed and the first candle lit to remind us of the coming of the light of Christ. Let us not allow the darkness of the world to overshadow that light. It has been entrusted to us to be kept burning brightly. Just as we will light our trees and homes in these coming days, do not fail to show forth the light of Christ in all you say and do as we await “the days that are coming” when the Word made flesh will dwell among us.
• One liturgical note for Advent: As has become our custom, we will profess the Apostles’ Creed during these four weeks of this holy season. The Church gives us the option of saying either the Nicene Creed (which we do most of the Sundays of the year) or the Apostles’ Creed. It’s probably the one you learned first as a child so it seems appropriate to focus on it during these four weeks of active waiting for the Lord. Your worship aid has the words printed so you might follow along.
• Next Tuesday, Nov. 30 is
#GivingTuesday, an opportunity for us to support charities and non-profit organizations in the season of giving. It’s in contrast to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when many people hit the malls and stores, and Cyber Monday, when online shopping reaches a peak level. We invite you to remember CtR on #GivingTuesday and make a donation to the parish at
www.ctrcc.com/donate. ... It’s an excellent time to make your pledge to our
Ignite Capital Campaign to help build the new Marian Grotto and Prayer Gardens. … Or, we welcome your support to help us reach our annual goal in the
Diocesan Services Fund (DSF) drive. We’re close, and with your donation we’ll make it – and get back 100 percent of what we go over. (Most years we get only 50 percent back, but
Cardinal DiNardo has again this year allowed parishes to keep all overage donations.) … Lastly, if you want to simply make a direct gift to CtR at the end of the year, we will gladly accept that on #GivingTuesday or anytime in the month of December. That would be a big help to our budget and all proceeds will benefit the parish initiatives and ministries. Thank you for your generous support of the parish on #GivingTuesday and throughout the year.
• Looking ahead a bit, I invite the women of CtR to join us on Friday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. for
Advent by Candlelight, an annual gathering to pray and prepare for the Advent season. This is the 20th anniversary of ABC, as we call it, a special evening for women to become renewed and refreshed before the Christmas rush begins. The program includes uplifting Scripture readings, music and reflections focused on the Advent season, and a light reception will follow. … This year’s speaker,
Luisa Guzman, will reflect on the theme of “The Holy Thread that Binds the Holy Family and Us.” The event will be
livestreamed for those who can’t make it in person, and childcare is available, though we ask you to reserve a spot in advance. See
www.ctrcc.com/advent-by-candlelight for all the details.
• I know this is just the First Sunday of Advent, but let’s take a look ahead to the Christmas schedule. Given how the calendar falls, we get a nice long Advent season. Some years the fourth week is truncated, but this year we will celebrate just about all of it as Christmas falls on a Saturday. … Our Christmas Mass schedule is as follows:
Friday, Dec. 24, Christmas Eve: 4 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m. and 12 midnight, and
Saturday, Dec. 25, Christmas Day: 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. (The 11 a.m. Mass will be bilingual in both English and Spanish.) … We will have overflow seating available in the Parish Hall, with communion brought over, for all masses, though we usually only need it at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. I suspect we will be able to accommodate everyone in the church at the other Mass times, but we’ll be ready just in case. Midnight Mass and the 9 a.m. Mass on Christmas Day will be
livestreamed as well.
• We will remind you of the
schedule a few more times between now and Christmas, but I wanted to get it out there early so that you might begin to make plans to join us. Given how limited we were last year for Christmas, it will be nice to be able to gather fully in person once again, though remember the dispensation from the obligation is still in place for now. If you don’t feel comfortable being around large crowds, you are not obligated to attend. As has been the case for several months now, masks are optional, but you are more than welcomed to wear them, and if you are not vaccinated, they are highly encouraged.
• As you do your Christmas shopping, remember that we will once again have our
toy and gift drive for the children of our sister parish, Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church in Houston’s Fifth Ward. Thanks to the great efforts of
Tim Herbert from CtR we’ve developed a tradition of delivering gifts to the children of this small, but faith-filled inner-city parish. … We’ll collect the gifts in the narthex as you come to Mass and deliver them on Saturday, Dec. 18. Plan now when you are at the store to pick up an extra item or two that might brighten the day of a young boy or girl at OMOM. There is also a link on our website (
www.ctrcc.com/toydrive) to an
Amazon Wish List that you can choose from and have it delivered directly to the office.
• A little closer to home we will again be participating in our
Giving Tree program, an annual Christmas project in partnership with
Cypress Assistance Ministries (CAM). We ask for donations of gift cards of any amount up to $25 (cards from Wal-Mart, Target, HEB, Kroger, etc., seem to be the most popular options). We will get them to our friends at CAM who will in turn make sure they are quickly distributed to families in need who are otherwise unable to provide Christmas meals and gifts. It’s one of our most popular traditions at CtR and we invite you to join us in spreading a bit of Christmas cheer to those in need in our local Cypress community.
• November is a month when we pray especially for our deceased family and friends (recall that we celebrated All Saints and All Souls the first two days of the month), and this year I’m taking that to heart as we have at least eight funerals scheduled in the next few weeks for CtR parishioners. I would ask you to pray especially for the repose of the soul of Michael Bell, whose funeral is today. … Mike was a founding member of CtR all the way back to the days when we met at Millsap Elementary School, and he was part of our Core Team of the Spring Festival for the past 25 years, if not longer. (He was the best man in the wedding of our Spring Festival chairpersons Mike and Camille Havelka, so they worked together forever). He was a past Grand Knight of our Council 8771, worked every Lenten Fish Fry, and for years served our Coffee and Donut ministry. (If you ever enjoyed a cup of joe after the 7 a.m. Mass, you can thank Mike because he made it.) He did just about everything you can imagine at and for CtR, and for that we are grateful. We send out condolences to his wife Peggy, his family, the Havelkas, and all who knew and loved him. May he rest and all our faithful departed rest in peace. … It’s been an especially hard week for our Knights with the death of not only Mike, but also Jeff Daly, Paul Bacque (he was on our Building Committee to design the new church), and Gerry Romano, a beloved daily Mass-goer, all of whom were members of our council. Let us commend all of our deceased friends to God’s mercy.
Fr. Vincent, our deacons, and the pastoral staff of CtR join me in wishing you a blessed and happy Thanksgiving. Our parish offices will be closed beginning at 12 noon today, Wednesday, Nov. 24 and throughout the holiday weekend. We will reopen on Monday, Nov. 29 at 9 a.m.
“In all things, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thes 5:18
Peace, Fr. Sean