Happy cold Saint Valentine’s Day! My hope and prayer for this Valentine’s Day is to get the third degree. Normally, “getting the third degree” is an idiom meaning “to be interrogated, scrutinized, or questioned intensely or thoroughly by someone.” I don’t want that. But I do want our temperature to at least crack 3 degrees today. And people wonder why I don’t like February.
I am not a fan of February to tell you the truth. I find it cold, dark, rather boring, and I’m impatient for Spring to begin. However, this February, I admit, is kind of exciting. This Sunday the KC Chiefs play in the Super Bowl again. But even more importantly, this month is pretty much the Super Bowl of great faith opportunities, especially retreats, as well.
This week, January 31 - February 6, we celebrate National Catholic Schools Week. It reminds us of the value and importance of Catholic education. We are blessed to have our own parish Kindergarten through 8th-grade school, our own early education center, and also to have several Catholic high schools in our area. I hope you see the great things that are going on in them!
Did you know that this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, is declared to be in the universal Church the Sunday of the Word of God? This was declared by Pope Francis in late 2019 so it still a new thing.
January 22nd is the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children and also the 48th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. It is a tragedy of the greatest magnitude that millions of children have lost their lives, and millions of women and families have been wounded by abortion. The gift of life is holy and amazing! We must protect life. Could we imagine for adults that we would place rights of privacy and choice above the right to life? That one could kill another adult as long as a greater right of choice and privacy was claimed? It is ridiculous.
The Archbishop’s Call to Share (ACTS) kicks off this weekend. This is an annual appeal to fund many important ministries of the Archdiocese that we could not do alone as a single parish. It is kind of the equivalent of our annual parish stewardship which funds our parish ministries, which by the way, if you haven’t completed your parish stewardship renewal, it is never too late! I haven’t yet seen our 2021 ACTS goal, but I did see last year’s results which were impressive.
Thanks be to God we have entered a new year of 2021. The past year was pretty tough. Still, we surely have much for which to be thankful to God always. Let us pray this new year is a better year, that we can live in peace and security, that we can be safe and healthy, that the vaccines and other efforts will stop the pandemic and we will soon be able to resume normal gatherings and life, that we may freely practice our faith and do many acts of love, and that God may be greater loved and adored.
Merry Christmas and Happy Feast Day of the Holy Family! When we think of the Holy Family, we remember all three members, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I’d like to focus some attention on St. Joseph since he is the one of this trio we are most likely to forget about. Hopefully you have heard that Pope Francis has declared this year from December 8, 2020 till December 8, 2021 to be the Year of St. Joseph. The timing is significant as it is the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pius IX declaring St. Joseph as Patron of the Catholic Church. Plus, St.
Happy fourth Week of Advent and an early Merry Christmas! Since we won’t have an extra bulletin for Christmas, I will use this to convey a Christmas greeting of joy, peace, and glory to God. That was the original greeting delivered by angels on the original Christmas:
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” so sayeth William Shakespeare in his play, “Romeo and Juliet." The liturgical color for the third Sunday of Advent is technically “rose,” but what exactly is the color “rose,” what does it mean, and why can’t we just call it “pink”? I decided to study this super-important-for-our-faith issue a couple years ago and share my findings here. The liturgical colors are very old and traditions go way back, but they were officially codified in 1570 to be like they are now.