Hello everyone! Merry Christmas again! We continue our Christmas season until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord on Sunday, January 9th.  This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. An epiphany refers to a manifestation or a revelation, so the Epiphany of the Lord refers to the manifestation of Jesus as the Christ. The Church commemorates three particular events that reveal Jesus as the Messiah: 1) the 3 wise men/3 kings/Magi coming to visit the baby Jesus, as we will hear in the Gospel of Matthew this weekend, and whose visit reveals to the nations that he is the Christ, 2) the baptism of Jesus where the Holy Spirit descends upon him and the Father’s voice in heaven declares to everyone that he is the Son, and 3) the miracle at the wedding feast at Cana according to the Gospel of John, where Jesus turns water into wine, thus manifesting to the public his divinity.  

 

It is a tradition on the feast of the Epiphany for families to bless their homes. We will have small pieces of blessed chalk available in the churches for you to take after Mass this weekend along with instruction sheets and prayers to bless the home and to mark the lintels of your doors. You can also use the chalk you received last year. I am including the sheet here, if you need to print them out for all family members to participate with the responses. We will also put out more small holy water bottles to take home in case you did not get them last year.  

Tomorrow, Saturday, we will celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It is also a First Saturday, so we will have our customary First Saturday Mass with Adoration and Confessions afterwards at both parishes. Fr. Jeffrey will be saying the Mass at ICC and I will be saying the Mass at OLL. The Masses are at 9am and we will end with Benediction at 10:30am. The Solemnity is not a Holy Day of Obligation due to its proximity to Sunday this year.  

 

The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God celebrates the fact that we call Mary, the Theotokos, or the God-bearer. The Church gave Mary this title at the Council of Ephesus in 431AD. We call Mary the Mother of God because she gave birth to Jesus, and Jesus is God. We do not claim that Mary is the mother of the Trinity, or greater than God, or existed before God. The title refers to her motherhood of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus. It points us to a greater understanding of who Jesus is, that He is one person, a divine person, but with two natures, human and divine. The great honor that we bestow upon Mary emphasizes the great love of God, that Jesus is God and he fully took on our human nature to be one with us. When we sing the praise of Mary as Mother of God, we bring greater honor and glory to God. What a great way to start off the new year! 

 

As we start off the new year, many people make resolutions. A really great resolution to make this year is to pray the rosary every day. With that said, I am inviting everyone to do a 54 day rosary novena beginning on January 1st. To keep us motivated, our intention for the novena will be twofold: for an end to the coronavirus, and for an end to abortion through a culture of life. I’m sure many of us are hearing of more and more people we know getting the virus. We need the powerful intercession of the Blessed Mother to put an end to this scourge. In addition, January 22nd is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As Catholics, we believe that the life in the womb is a human person and is in need of protection. While we might desire for an end to abortion through our laws, a greater desire is for an end to abortion through a culture of life. This culture of life would also lead to a greater respect for human life at all stages.   

 

There are many resources on the internet to help us to pray the rosary, with different meditations on the mysteries, Scripture verses, etc. Use whatever works for you. However, I found this one which I find to be helpful on the 54 day rosary novena (except for the Novena record on the second to last page. I say pray whatever mysteries are appropriate to that day).

You will pray the rosary novena on your own, but I encourage you to do it with family, in groups, etc. There is no formality to it. Just do it! We have to be intentional because the devil will always try to distract us or tempt us to do something else. You can pray the rosary while driving, while doing chores, or even break it up throughout the day. The Blessed Mother herself asked us at Fatima to pray the rosary every day.  

 

This upcoming week, January 3-7th, I will be making a private retreat at the St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. They are Benedictine monks and some of you may know that our recently deceased ICC parishioner, Bernie Zoeller’s brother is a monk there. I will say Mass at OLL on Monday morning and then will leave afterwards. There will be no daily Masses at OLL Tuesday through Thursday (the church will remain unlocked during the day for private prayer). Deacon Klear will expose the Blessed Sacrament for Adoration on Tuesday evening from 6-7pm per the regular schedule. 

 

Please have a safe and blessed New Year!  

The Knights of Columbus are providing coffee and donuts this Sunday at ICC after the morning Mass. Please come for fellowship in the St. Anthony Center.   

 

 

You may notice the inconsistency of the heat in the church recently. Just before Christmas, the heat went out. A heating and cooling company came to look at our furnaces in the front part of the church and said they are near the end of their life-cycle since they were installed in 1999. They were able to do a temporary fix to give us heat throughout the winter, but it is more of a limp rather than at full strength. We may have to consider replacing them in the spring. Please pray that we will get through the winter!  

 

 

If you contribute to the church for tax purposes, please make your year-end contributions soon. You might have a few days leeway, so please drop your checks in the collection basket this weekend or the mail slots, and date them for 2021. Please consider gifting the parishes so that we can continue the good work of bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to our communities. You may also give online at lourdesada.org/give or icckenton.org/give . Thank you! 

 

 

Attached are the bulletins and Fr. Ferguson’s cat column.  

 

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!       

Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, pray for us!    

God bless!        

Fr. Ed