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Dear parishioners,
Christ has been born and keeps being born in our hearts. The Advent season has ended; now is our time to proclaim Emmanuel, God among us! I hope and pray that this Advent time has been a thoughtful time for all of us, as we prepare, build, level, and flatten the way to Christ’s birth, knowing that Christ is coming to bring us salvation and the forgiveness of sins. Christmas is a time of Joy because we remember the time when Jesus was incarnated in a fragile human being and from our humanity to guide us as our shepherd toward the heavenly Kingdom that He won for us through His passion, death, and resurrection. However, Christmas is also a time of hope, since we are in expectation of His second coming in glory and majesty.
We will be entering a Jubilee Year (The Church celebrates one every 25 years) named by Pope Francis as the Year of Hope. A great name, especially for the time we have been living through. With wars, division, violence, diseases, and so many other negative things, along with a lack of Christian values, we tend to think negatively. But if we allow the Light of Christ to enlighten our path, we surely can change not only our perception of the world today, but we can also be, together with Christ, the force that would change everything for good, since for God nothing is impossible.
With His incarnation, Christ teaches us to look for those who are in need as He did for us. By His ministry, He taught us that it is possible to open our ears to the word of God and to the cry of those who are struggling; to open our mouths to praise Him and to speak for those who are speechless; to open our hands to those who are in need. He set the example for us to care for the sick and even to feed the hungry, as He is feeding us constantly with His Body and Blood in every Eucharist.
In other words, He is nourishing the hope that, as we become one in Him, everything can change for the better—even those horrific sins against His Love and against our humanity. The humanity that He embraced with love beyond all telling.
May this Christmas be filled with Joy, Love, and Hope, especially as we receive and share with others Christ’s coming into our hearts! Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Hopeful New Year!
Fr. Manuel Fragoso Carranza
Pastor.
NATIONAL
Eucharistic Revival
On June 19, 2023, Pope Francis met with the organizers of the Tenth National
Eucharistic Congress, scheduled for July 17-21, 2024 in Indianapolis. His speech
is reprinted for the benefit of our readers:
I am pleased to offer a cordial welcome to all of you, the members of
the Committee preparing for the forthcoming National Eucharistic Congress in the
United States of America. I thank you for the work you have already undertaken
and I encourage you to continue your efforts to contribute to a revival of faith in,
and love for, the Holy Eucharist, the "source and summit of the Christian life"
(Lumen gentium, 11).
All of us are familiar with the account of the multiplication of the loaves recorded in the Gospel of John. The people who witnessed this miracle came back to the Lord on the following day in hopes of seeing him perform another sign. Yet Christ desired to transform their hunger for material bread into a hunger for the bread of eternal life (cf. Jn 6:26-27). For this reason, Jesus spoke of himself as the living bread which came down from heaven, the true bread that gives life to the world (cf. Jn 6:51). I thought a great deal about this while I was celebrating Mass this morning because it is this bread that gives us life. Indeed, the Eucharist is God's response to the deepest hunger of the human heart, the hunger for authentic life, for in the Eucharist Christ himself is truly in our midst, to nourish, console and sustain us on our journey. Sadly nowadays, there are those among the Catholic faithful who believe that the Eucharist is more a symbol than the reality of the Lord's presence and love. It is more than a symbol; it is the real and loving presence of the Lord. It is my hope, then, that the Eucharistic Congress will inspire Catholics throughout the country to discover anew the sense of wonder and awe at the Lord's great gift of himself and to spend time with him in the celebration of the Holy Mass and in personal prayer and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. I believe that we have lost the sense of adoration in our day. We must rediscover the sense of adoration in silence. It is a form of prayer that we have lost. Too few people know what it is. It is up to the Bishops to catechize the faithful about praying through adoration. The Eucharist requires it of us. In this regard, I cannot fail to mention the need for fostering vocations to the priesthood, for as Saint John Paul II said, "There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood" (Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday 2004). We need priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist.
I likewise trust that the Congress will be an occasion for the faithful to commit themselves with ever greater zeal to being missionary disciples of the Lord Jesus in the world. In the Eucharist, we encounter the One who gave everything for us, who sacrificed himself in order to give us life, who loved us to the end. We become credible witnesses to the joy and transforming beauty of the Gospel only when we recognize that the love we celebrate in this sacrament cannot be kept to ourselves but demands to be shared with all. This is the sense of a missionary spirit. You go to the celebration of Mass, receive communion, adore the Lord and then what do you do after? You go out and evangelize. Jesus asks this of us. The Eucharist, then, impels us to a strong and committed love of neighbor. For we cannot truly understand or live the meaning of the Eucharist if our hearts are closed to our brothers and sisters, especially those who are poor, suffering, weary or who may have gone astray in life. Two groups of people come to mind whom we must always seek out: the elderly, who are the wisdom of a people, and the sick, who are the image of the suffering Jesus. Dear friends, the National Eucharistic Congress marks a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States. May all that you are doing be an occasion of grace for each of you and may it bear fruit in guiding men and women throughout your nation to the Lord who, by his presence among us, rekindles hope and renews life. Entrusting you to the maternal intercession of Mary Immaculate, Patroness of your country, I assure you of my prayers for you, your families and your local Churches. To all of you, I impart my blessing, and I ask you, please, to remember to pray for me. Thank you.
© 2023 Dicasterio per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Did you know.....
"Who has known the mind of the Lord?" Through prayer, our minds become better aligned with the mind of Christ and His will for us. If the Spirit is prompting you to know Christ as a priest, deacon or in the consecrated life, or if you have questions for our priests or sisters, email them to the Vocation Ministry at yumavocationministry@gmail.com or reach out to Fr. Luis Pablo at the Parish Office, 928-782-7516.
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