Parish Update – Wednesday, Nov. 23
It feels a bit odd to say Happy Wednesday, my friends, but on this Thanksgiving Eve, it will have to suffice. I pray that you will enjoy good food and good cheer – and maybe a nap or two – over the next few days as we give thanks to God for our many blessings. … We’ll keep our notes short this week as I know so many of you are on the move. May God watch over and bless all who are traveling over the holidays and bring you safely home.
First, a reminder that while we celebrated Mass this morning, there will be no evening Mass tonight at 7 p.m. (or confessions beforehand). Our regular Wednesday evening schedule for both confession and Mass will resume next week. … Note as well that our parish offices are closed now through the weekend and will reopen on Monday, Nov. 28.
Tomorrow we invite you to join us for Thanksgiving Day Mass at 9 a.m. in the main church. Eucharist is, of course, a word that means “thanksgiving,” so what better way to start the day before you settle in with your family meal than to join your church family around the table of the Lord’s blessing. … You are invited to bring items from the meal you will be serving later in the day for the annual Blessing of Food. Bring a basket with some of the items for the dishes you will be preparing and at the end of the mass we’ll ask God’s blessing upon them. It’s a good way of making the connection between the bounty we receive at the table of the Lord to the bounty we offer at our table at home.
Looking ahead to Sunday and beyond, here’s what is happening:
• We invite you to please join us for Mass this weekend. If you’d like to join us in person, we welcome you on Saturday at 5 p.m., or Sunday at 7, 9, and 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. You can also join us 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.
• We begin the four-week season of Advent this
Sunday and as we do so we are called to wait joyfully for the Lord as we are beginning to look toward – though some might say make a mad dash toward – Christmas. Let’s resolve to make a liturgical new year resolution (it begins Sunday) to wait patiently for the Lord. … While everyone else is speeding up, try slowing down for, as we hear in the second reading at Mass today from Paul’s letter to the Romans,
“You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand.” Yes, indeed. The days are coming! … 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.
• Speaking of liturgies, let me give you a heads-up that Cardinal DiNardo has given his blessing for parishes in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to resume distribution of the Precious Blood from the Chalice at Mass beginning on Sunday, Jan. 8, the Solemnity of Epiphany. … As you know, we discontinued the practice back in March 2020 at the outbreak of the pandemic, but it will soon return for those who wish to receive Holy Communion under both species (the consecrated bread, i.e., the Body of Christ, and the consecrated wine, i.e. the Blood of Christ). Of course, you are not obligated to receive both species, but for those who wish to do so, we will again make it available in early January. … We have much work to do before then to prepare ourselves and our Eucharistic Ministers of Holy Communion, but I wanted to let you know that it is on the horizon. I’ll have much more to share with you about it in the coming weeks.
• 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, 28-day Advent season. Some years the fourth week is truncated, but this year we will celebrate all of it as Christmas falls on a Sunday. … Our Christmas Mass schedule is as follows:
Saturday, Dec. 24, Christmas Eve: 4 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., and
Sunday, Dec. 25, Christmas Day: 7 a.m., 9 a.m., and 11 a.m. (The 11 a.m. Mass will be in Spanish.) … We will have overflow seating available in the Parish Hall with an in-house livestream feed and communion brought over for the 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Masses on Christmas Eve. 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. The 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. Masses on Christmas Eve and the 9 a.m. Mass on Christmas Day will all be livestreamed publicly. 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.
• 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. Over the years, thanks primarily to the great efforts of
Tim Herbert and others 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 at Mass over the next few weekends and deliver them on Saturday, Dec. 17. 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/adventoutreach) 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.
• Give thanks to Lord always, for He is good! … Fr. Vincent, our deacons, and pastoral staff join me in wishing you a blessed and happy Thanksgiving.
Peace, Fr. Sean