click here for full bulletin
Letter from Fr. Mac Hill
Happy new year! I love the feast days we celebrate this time of year. Last week we celebrated Christmas. As the stories go, the early Christians decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus around the winter solstice. While the pagans were worshiping sol invictus, the sun god, our older brothers and sisters wanted to stand apart to reveal that Jesus is the light of the world. On the day in which daylight hours are the shortest, and thus the darkest day of the year, Christians look to the Jesus, light from light, true God from true God. Beginning on December 25 we spend a whole eight days celebrating the octave of Christmas, stretching that one shortest day of the year into eight days of festivities. We always culminate the Christmas octave by ringing in the new year on January 1 with Mary, the Theotokos, Mother of God.
I have no doubt that Jesus loves to see us begin each year by honoring His mother and crowning her in our hearts as the Mother of God and our mother. This year the feast of the Epiphany, the revelation that Jesus is Messiah and Lord, falls on January 2. Three events of Jesus’ life are combined in the Epiphany: the visit of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana. The three events build up to a crescendo, revealing the divinity of Jesus ever more.
As most people are making their new year’s resolutions, how about we make some resolutions worthy of our Lord? Let’s resolve to make our lives ever more conformed to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, magnifying God and His grace in all we do. In so doing we will be little “epiphanies” walking around, revealing Jesus as Messiah and Lord by our lives.
In the Sacred Heart,
Fr. Mac