Sunday Liturgy
Saturday: 5:00 pm
Sunday: 11:00 am
Mission Statement
We are a welcoming Christian community called to embrace and respect the uniqueness of each individual as we join together in our faith and worship. Our ongoing mission is to engage our youth, promote renewal, out reach, evangelization and ecumenical cooperation.
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Monday, December 9th – 10:00 am Funeral Mass – Doreen Elliott
Monday, December 9th – 6:30 pm Feast of the Immaculate Conception
(Cathedral)
Tuesday, December 10th – 9:00 am Special Intention
Wednesday, December 11th – 9:00 am Tom McKenna
Thursday, December 12th – 9:00 am Irene Campbell & DM of Crowley
& O’Toole Families
Friday, December 13th – 9:00 am No Mass
Saturday, December 14th – 5:00 pm Mary Reeves
Sunday, December 15th – 11:00 am DM of McIntyre & Daley Families
Christmas and New Year Schedule
Christmas
Tuesday, December 24th
4 pm – Mass
7 pm – Mass
Wednesday, December 25th
11 am – Mass
New Year’s
Tuesday, December 31st
5 pm Mass
Wednesday, January 1st
11 am Mass
Weekly Reflections (Homily) from Msgr. Sheehan (Updated December 6, 2024)
SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT
Dear friends;
We are introduced this Sunday to a great advent figure… John the Baptist.
A strange figure… he had only one great role… the precursor… to prepare the way of the Lord.
He was according to Jesus… the greatest of all the prophets… Jesus would say… “there is no man born of woman greater than John.” (Lk 7, 28)
He was eventually to baptize Jesus… and then he retires from the scene… to decrease as he says… and finally meet a terrible death… thrown into jail and eventually executed.
The cousin of the Lord… who leaped in his mother’s womb…
What did he preach? Repentance… immersion… forgiveness of sins… making his own the words of the prophet Isaiah…
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness”
- Prepare the way of the Lord…
- make his paths straight
- every valley shall be filled
- every mountain and hill be made low…
- the crooked ways shall be made straight
- the rough ways made smooth
- and all flesh shall see the salvation of God…”
Valleys, and hills, and paths… They are what we walk on… they are the courses we choose to travel… these are about the courses of life we embark on…
And John’s preaching revolved around the readying ourselves for this and how to walk them.
The first thing he spoke of in his preaching – was about repentance… changing one’s heart… for the forgiveness of sins… doing something – or rather allowing something being done to you – allowing oneself to be changed… allowing your heart to be changed…
A very difficult thing indeed… we may allow many things to be changed… but to allow a change of heart… that is repentance…
It means… I will forego a course of action… I will turn away from what I have sought and what possesses me… and what I want to possess… I will let go…
I will live a life of dependence… of openness to God… instead of my constant self-seeking… and let myself be led by Him… trust of Him, confidence in Him, dependence on Him… with an attentive ear to what He calls me… instead of always doing what I want – what I seek for myself…
A life lived in this way… is the beginning of… a change in one’s way of life…
- those paths… crooked… full of distractions and dear-ends… become straight.
- those valley… those depths reached by the emptiness of always demanding one’s own way… of always seeking one’s own pleasure at everyone else’s expense, those valleys of emptiness can gradually be filled…
- those mountains, those hills so difficult to overcome… so seemingly unsurmountable, so difficult to crest… impossible to cross over… somehow become low… we can see the other side…
Rough ways are made smooth… roughness, roughness of speech, of action… violence, hostilities… disappear with a changed heart… a gentle heart… a loving heart…
When all this happens… all human beings shall see the salvation of God…
“Come, Lord Jesus, make all this happen for us.”
AMEN.