“Making Hope More Real This Advent” – Join us for a Retreat Day, Saturday, December 6 – 10:00am – 2pm at Sacred Heart Community Center. Sister Joan Sobala, S.S.J. will be our guest speaker. Chili and sandwich luncheon provided.
A Joyful Celebration: Welcoming Our Shepherd, Bishop Matano
Saturday, December 27th, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mary Church, Dansville, N.Y.
Dear Parishioners,
I am honored to announce that the Most Reverend Bishop Salvatore Matano, Our Bishop will be visiting our parish to celebrate the Holy Eucharist on Saturday, December 27th, 4.00 PM at St, Mary’s Church, Dansville. This will be the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph—OUR PARISH PATRON SAINTS This is a wonderful opportunity for our community to come together and pray with our shepherd. All are invited to join us for this special Mass. The Bishop, as the shepherd of our Diocese, plays a vital role in our faith community, and his visit is a sign of our unity with the wider Church. This Mass is a special occasion for us to experience his ministry firsthand and receive his pontifical blessing. I encourage all parishioners, their families, and friends to attend this significant event. Let us show our warm hospitality and join together in prayer and worship.
From the Desk of Father John
Dear Parishioners,
Advent: Advent: A Season of Anticipation and Hope
Advent is a season of preparation: we shop for gifts, plan parties, and decorate our homes for the coming of Christmas. Sometimes it is easy to forget the real mission of Advent: preparing our hearts for the coming of Jesus Christ. We are bombarded by commercial messages in which the reason for Christmas—Emmanuel, “God-with-us” “the Word-Become-Flesh-And-Dwelt-Among-Us—is absent or overlooked. The stores are fully decorated, and some houses are glowing with Christmas lights. With all these activities that this season brings, our relationship with God is often compromised. The cruelest aspect that “advent” stress and anxiety can bring is the spiritual depletion you feel on Christmas Day, when you long for a sense of peace, joy and love, but instead feel a kind of hollow emptiness inside. What shall l do? Or even better, what spiritual preparations shall we make in Holy Family Catholic Community preparation for the birth Jesus Christ!
Don’t allow yourself to be empty this Christmas. Come fill yourself up with the true Spirit of the Advent season. Come together all our parishioners and pray that God will set us on fire with his passionate love, so that we will be filled with the Spirit and able to spread the good news of God’s salvation to all we meet. And above all may we be good stewards in making our HFCC our HOME and also places of prayers, study of Christ and church teaching, generosity and evangelization. A Day of Recollection is a time set aside to go deeper into your relationship with God. We will begin our Advent season with a Day of Recollection, fortunately led by Sr. Joan Soballa on Saturday, December 6th, 10.00 AM-2.00PM at the Community Center, Perkinsville. A day recollection is a time to withdraw a couple of hours from the noise and cares of this earthly life in order to spend some quality time in conversation with God guided by meditation, spiritual reading, and an examination of conscience. All who are truly serious about deepening their love and friendship with Jesus Christ will benefit from this time of recollection and prayer. I extend my invitation to ALL Holy Family Catholic Community Parishioner as the most profound way for we the “Pilgrims of Hope” to begin our Advent Season
Advent can be the best time for faith and spiritual renewal, especially in answering this question! Does it make a difference in your life that you have faith? Faith opens our eyes to God’s real reality. Because we see with new eyes, we have reason to hope. And hope enables charity by allowing us to put aside fear and to look beyond ourselves to the suffering and needs of other people. Will you take that risk, reach-out and make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate and the needy through of ministries that propagate the Work’s of Mercy? Let us fully support our Food Pantry and Saint Vicent De Paul Society. Your generosity will make Christ present and bring joy to many families.
As Catholic Christians the beginning of Advent reminds us that we can always begin again to grow and develop in our personal and spiritual life. Too often we carry the guilt of the past, the hurts of the past or the lack of reconciliation of the past and these realities can prevent us from starting anew. Advent urges each of us, whatever our age, to prepare to let Christ be born again in our daily lives and in our daily contacts with others. We can begin anew if we are willing to drop some of the past guilt, hurt, anger and resentment and commend it to God in the sacrament of reconciliation, if necessary, or personally through prayer and a spirit of forgiveness of self and or others. Our Holy Family Catholic Community Advent Communal Penance with opportunity for Individual Absolution with be held on Tuesday, 5.00PM, December 16th, at St. Mary’s Church, Dansville!
This year of the Jubilee, I am pleading with you as “Pilgrims of Hope” to join the good work/news of the Sent Evangelization Knock, Knock” of inviting our sisters and brothers who have been away from faith and the Eucharist to “COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS” because Catholics Christians can always come home and sometimes only need an invitation from someone, a reaching graceful hand that care and is compassionate. Seeking for mercy is not a sign of weakness or surrender, but the strong radiation of God’s love that heals our weaknesses, raises us from our falls and urges us to the good. The mercy of God is not an abstract idea, but a concrete reality especially in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There may be no better way of preparing for the Coming of the Prince of Peace than making peace with one another, yourself, and God. Fr. John