Greetings in Christ and a Merry Christmas Season to all! May God fill us with joy this beautiful Christmas Season.
This week is a big one for us Catholics. On January 1st we start off the secular new year right, by honoring Our Mother Mary! This Holy Day of Obligation is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the best ways to kick off our new year. What better thing to do than commit our year to the intercession of Our Mother?
So, let’s make sure to give Her our due by getting to Mass at any of the times we offer to help meet this blessed obligation:
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God
Holy Family
Vigil – Monday, Dec. 31 at 5:30 PM
Tuesday, Jan. 1 at 8 AM and 10 AM
St. Mark’s
Vigil – Monday, Dec. 31 at 4:30 PM
Tuesday, Jan. 1 at 10:30 AM
Beyond that, we are celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family: a patronal feast in Grand Blanc. For our St. Mark readers, this feast is obviously not about the parish in Grand Blanc, but about the wonder and mystery of our God taking flesh and living in a family. This Holy Family not only provides us with the model to follow, but also the grace to follow that example.
In our families, prayer should come before all else, academic, athletic…all of it. All our accomplishments will fade over time, but our relationships with Christ and each other are eternal. As a priest, I’ve been with many, many people as they died and I can promise you, I have yet to hear someone lament that they spent too much time praying or too much time with their family. So, I’m asking every family in both parishes to commit to praying together, even if just for a couple minutes in this new year. My family did this using the word “Pray.” Here’s how we did it:
P
Praise: Each person said “I want to thank the Lord for” and then shared something they were/are grateful for that day. We might also pick a Psalm to read.
R
Repent: My Dad would ask us to ask God’s forgiveness for any sin we had committed. After a quiet pause, we would say the Confiteor together. Also, if we needed to ask anyone’s forgiveness, we did that here out loud as well.
A
Ask: At this point, anyone could ask for God’s help for anything they were dealing with or worried about. “I pray for ______, we pray to the Lord” and we would all then say “Lord, hear our prayer.”
Y
Yield: Here, we would read the Church readings for the day. One person would read the first reading, someone would lead the Psalm and Dad or Mom would read the Gospel.
May the prayers and example of the Holy Family help us to be who God created us to be!
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