Howdy,

Merry Christmas to all! One of the greatest gifts I have received this year is the joy of our parish family gathering again after Covid. This Fall has been busy and there is much more planned for the future. Most of all, it is wonderful to see the joy on so many faces as we gather again.

Christmas is family time, and family means more than simply relations through blood. Yes, those are special and very important, but so are the friends, neighbors, co-workers, and all those who touch our lives in special ways.

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A seminary professor of mine once said, “Don’t confuse enthusiasm for a virtue with the virtue itself.” How easy it’s been in my life as a priest to talk about the greatest of virtues — love — and totally fail to live up to its concrete demands!

Fortunately, our religion is not mainly about ideas or virtues but about persons. The angel of the Lord says to Joseph, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Mt.1:20).

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I know many of you are asking about the Rectory project, so I want to bring you up to date. Due to the Covid crisis, as I said earlier, we paused our meetings and fund-raising for a while. In September we began to look again at the project and where we stood. We are through the City of Scottsdale and are almost ready to pull permits. We do have one more meeting with the diocese to look at our finances.

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Advent is a season where we focus on both John the Baptist and our Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Sunday readings will help us, but, especially for our Blessed Mother, we have two very special celebrations.

First, is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this coming Thursday. It is a holy day of obligation as we remember God’s preparing the world for the birth of His Son by preparing Mary to be His mother. We will have our regular 9:00am Mass and a Mass at 6:00pm.

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