Monday Message, December 4, 2023

KNOW

We have created a page explaining the Personal Consecration. All you have to do is make sure ParishSoft is up to date. We will pull all emails for families on January 15, 2023. You can send this page to all families if you want to announce what is coming. Emails will begin a day or so before the launch and continue throughout the consecration.

All we ask of your catechists is to mention it and use the prayers in the book you received as part of your regular curriculum.

Our friends at St. Joseph in Danbury asked us to share this flyer about an upcoming event regarding Danbury’s annual Peace Light Service.

Those of you that attended the quarterly meeting last week received a copy of the (new) Directory for Catechesis and this letter. The original date of the meeting fell within the winter break for several, so we have moved it to March 13, 2024 at Queen of Saints. Please make note of this new date. We are awaiting confirmation from our speaker, but hope to keep the new date. All those not in attendance will receive the Directory and the letter by mail.

Our resource page will be updated each week for the next five weeks with the results of an important new study. Please keep an eye out for updates.

REFLECT

This week we celebrate hope. We light the prophecy candle on our Advent Wreath and focus on the hope of the coming of the child that will save us all.

St. Paul tells us that there are three lasting things: faith, hope, and love. I find it hard to separate hope and faith. When I see one, I see the other. But hope has a character of its own. Hope is not simply an emotion or virtue, it is a way of life.

I had a professor once who told me that hope is an unsatisfactory view of the present, a satisfactory view of the future, and a commitment to change. Absent the commitment, it’s not hope.

It’s whining.

We whine well. We have perfected complaining. We blame. We rationalize. We pout.

But do we hope? Are we committed to making a change in our hearts, our homes, our lives? Do we desire that which we do not have and are we committed to letting God work through us to achieve it? Are we willing to place our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit?

Are we willing to allow hope to stand beside us like a friend, no matter how desperate we might feel, knowing that with the help of the Spirit, life can be better?

Or are we okay with whining?

Have a good week.

LAUGH