Happy New Year!
With this First Sunday of Advent, the Universal Church once again begins afresh with the beginning of the new Year of Grace 2011. In this new year, we once again look forward to celebrating the many feasts and festivities that celebrate the saving power of Jesus Christ in Sacrament and action. Today is also the beginning of the year of preparation to welcome the new Roman Missal which will go into effect, exactly one year from today. It will give us all an opportunity to once again renewal our understanding of the Mass, its history, its development, and why we are always in need of reform. In the long 2000 years of the life of the Church, the Mass has gone through hundreds of revisions and evolution. That is why we are remind that even the old Latin Mass was only in place from the sixteenth century to 1969, a mere 300 or 400 years of the Church's history.
We will be announcing a full schedule planned for the diocese and the parish in the coming weeks. As the Director of Worship for the diocese I will be spending much time traveling around the diocese helping small parishes and different groups in this preparation process. The first major event concerning the implementation of the new Roman Missal will be the Clergy Convocation in January, where the priests and deacons will be introduced to the changes. Since the changes will affect priests the most, they need to be prepared. They will carry the greatest weight of the revisions, since its all the prayers of the Mass that we use that will change the most. In our parishes, we will evenings to explain the changes, and this spring and summer, I will be doing catechesis during Mass in connection with the upcoming missal.
The parish was able to send to Manna House of gift of $2000 for the Thanksgiving Day holiday season to help them purchase food. Thank you to all who support our charity collection. We will be sending more funds for the Christmas season.
