Friends of Blessed Sacrament

On behalf of our parish school, I would like to wish each of you a very happy and holy Christmas season!

Each one of us has one or two Christmas carols which speak to our hearts in a special way. By far, O
Holy Night is my favorite Christmas carol. This year, in particular, the song seems to speak to my heart
and mind in a unique way. A catch phrase in the first verse reads, “A thrill of hope, the weary world
rejoices.” One cannot pick up a newspaper or glance at a news website without reading about the
hardships of our global society. In every corner of our world, we find poverty, war, disease, famine, and
children suffering at the hands of their governments. Just like the first Christmas, it appears that our
world is once again in a “weary state.”

At Christmas, however, we remember and rejoice at Christ’s coming to a weary world. Our faith teaches
us that we must have trust in Divine Providence. We must not succumb to the weariness of our
society’s misfortunes. We must be a “thrill of hope” to the poor, to those living in war, those affected by
disease and famine, and to all children who are our most precious resource. While we anticipate this
Second Coming, how can we be a thrill of hope to our neighbors? This Christmas, I pray that each
member of our parish and school community has the strength to face the challenges in our daily lives
with a heart of love and peace.

Please know that I am most grateful for your presence within our community. I wish you a very Holy
Christmas and Happy New Year. May the Blessed Mother under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe
watch over you and your loved ones this sacred season. In closing, I leave you with an Irish Christmas
Blessing…

Lady Love, whose maternal affection for us is revealed in Mary the Mother of Jesus, bring us with the
shepherds to Bethlehem so that we can see in the image of the Madonna and Child the passionate
gentleness of your affection for us and in that image gain strength and hope for all our lives. We ask this
in the name of the Babe born at Bethlehem and his mother. Amen.

Christmas blessings,
Michael Fierro

A Christmas letter to all the faithful

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“Behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For today in
the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

These words of the angel to the shepherds on the night of the Nativity are, as the angel
said, “for all people,” including us. They bring us joy and hope. God entered our history.
He became Emmanuel, God-with-us. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”
(John 1:14). He took our sins upon Himself as if they were His own. Out of love, God
united Himself to us in order to communicate His life to us, to save us from sin and
death. He opened for us the road to His heavenly Kingdom. The Son of God assumed
our human nature so that we might share in His divine life.

The great gift of Christmas is Jesus. He is God’s gift to us: the gift of Himself. God gave
Himself in His only-begotten Son. He took on our humanity to give His divinity to us.
This is the most amazing truth of our faith. It was never imagined that God would
become man. It was beyond anyone’s dreams that the almighty and eternal God would
enter history as a newborn baby. The Incarnation was beyond any human expectation.
When we contemplate the mystery of Christmas, we become like the shepherds and
magi: All we can do is approach the mystery in adoration, with wonder and awe. We
sing: “O come let us adore Him.” 

The “Adoration of the Shepherds” is pictured in this painting by Italian artist Guido Reni.
The feast of the Nativity of Christ, a holy day of obligation, is celebrated Dec. 25.
(CNS/Bridgeman Images)

I hope you will spend time during these days to contemplate the mystery of Christmas,
to meditate on the Nativity of Jesus. I like to do so at the side of Mary and Joseph, the
privileged witnesses to the birth of the Son of God into the world. I imagine Mary
wrapping the infant Jesus in the swaddling clothes and laying Him in the manger (which
I imagine Joseph the carpenter prepared for the newborn baby). I think of the love of
Mary and Joseph for their infant son, God’s Son. The child in the manger looked like
other newborn infants, yet His identity as the Son of God, true God and true man,
certainly filled Mary and Joseph with the greatest awe.

Pope Francis recently proclaimed a “Year of Saint Joseph.” I recommend meditating a

bit on Joseph this Christmas. In faith, Joseph understood that the baby in the manger
was the Son of God, yet he (Joseph) was called to be His earthly father, to be His
guardian. What an amazing vocation! Pope Francis’ recent apostolic letter begins with
these words: “With a father’s heart: that is how Joseph loved Jesus, whom all four
Gospels refer to as ‘the son of Joseph’.”

Blessed Pope Pius IX, 150 years ago, declared St. Joseph the “Patron of the Catholic
Church.” As St. Joseph guarded and protected Jesus and Mary, so we call upon him to
guard and protect us and the universal Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

St. Joseph was a tender and loving father who shows us the tender love of God our
Father. We ask him to intercede for us and for the Church, especially during this terrible
pandemic. We ask him to protect us from the coronavirus and from the even more
dangerous virus, the virus of sin, and to help us to live in God’s grace.

At Christmas, in prayerful adoration before the Christmas creche, let us contemplate

with Mary and Joseph the infant in the manger, the Word made flesh, Jesus our Savior.
May we thus experience the true joy of Christmas and transmit this joy with kind
gestures, forgiveness and generosity to all those who are in need, who are suffering or
hurting, or who are struggling, especially during this pandemic.

At Christmas Eve Mass in our Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, I will be

entrusting all of you, the faithful of our diocese, to St. Joseph. Before a beautiful statue
of St. Joseph donated to the diocese by the Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters in
Huntington, I will commend our diocese to St. Joseph, imploring his protection and his
intercession that we may follow his example of faith and love. I will include the following
prayer written by Pope Francis for this Year of Saint Joseph:

Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

To you God entrusted his only Son; in you Mary placed her trust;

with you Christ became man.

Blessed Joseph, to us too, show yourself a father and guide us to the path of life.

Obtain for us grace, mercy and courage, and defend us from every evil. Amen.

May God grant all of you a Blessed and Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2015

 
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ,

Christ is born: sing glory! Christ has descended from heaven: go out to meet
Him!  Christ is on earth: lift yourselves up! Sing to the Lord, all the earth; for He
who belongs to heaven is now on earth!

With these words, the fourth century theologian, St. Gregory Nazianzen (+389)
proclaimed the Christmas message that is as true today as it was from that first moment
in Bethlehem when the Blessed Mother Mary brought her son Jesus into the world. 
Since that night we, like Gregory and all others who know Jesus, have exulted in the gift
of the Son of God made man.  His birth heralds the defeat of sin and death.  His
presence among us, like us in all things but sin, shines the bright promise of God’s
merciful love on our faces and into our hearts.  Who does not rejoice to know that God
so loved the world that He sent His Son?  Which one of us would turn away from this
blessed scene of the Virgin with Joseph in the Bethlehem stable offering the Child to us
so that all humankind can be saved?  How can we do anything but sing Glory to
God with the angels and bend low in adoration with the shepherds.  This night we all
become free!  This night we all are one.  This night we see the salvation of our God.

My dear friends, this has not been an easy year for any of us, for our families, for our
parishes, for our nation, for the world.  The forces of darkness are strong and
determined.  Terrorism seems to be widening its sweep and too many of our leaders
seem unsure of what must be done to protect society and care for the suffering.  Too
many families are struggling to make ends meet.  Too many youth in our midst are led
astray by the false gods of drugs, alcohol and momentary pleasures.  Freedom is under
attack at home and abroad.  Many look in all the wrong places for answers that hurt
rather than help.

We have the right answer.  We all need Christmas.  We all need Jesus.  We all need
Mary.  God has given HIS answer to the world, an answer that overcomes all its
tragedies and all its temptations.  God’s response to our cries is clear and unequivocal: 
His Son!  Yes: Jesus Christ, His Son!  He is God’s answer to our cries.  He is God’s gift
for our lives.  He breaks down the barriers, for the name of peace is Jesus Christ.  He is
Our Peace!  And He and He alone can calm our fears, renew our strength, lift up our
hearts and give joy to our lives!

Yes, my friends, this Christmas go out to meet Him; lift up your hearts; Sing for joy. For
all humankind has seen the salvation of our God!  A blessed and Joyous Christmas to
you all!

William Murphy

Bishop of Rockville Centre

CHRISTMAS LETTER
Dec 24, 2019  In Father Troy's Weekly Letter

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today is born a Savior, Christ the Lord!
Our hearts are filled with joy this day and all creation exalts in praise for Salvation has
come to the world in Jesus Christ!  This is our faith and this is what gives meaning to
our lives.  That God in his love for us has given us His only Son, who has taken our
human condition upon himself so that we in turn might live in all eternity with Him!  Now
to many, this sentence seems like utter nonsense.  What is there to be joyful about? 
Why should we exalt?  What do we need a savior for in the first place?  To be saved
from what?  What difference does it make if Jesus was born or not or if He is God or
not?

That’s fair and those are honest and sincere questions.

Who can deny that the world is in many ways a big hot mess?  Russian collusion,
Impeachment, red state/blue state divide, trade wars, crime and violence, border walls,
gender dysphoria, cyber bullying, economic disparity, Islamic Terrorism, market
volatility, racial tensions, #MeToo, freeway traffic and road construction, prescription
drug prices, clergy sexual abuse, global warming, opioid crisis and on and on and on. 
But then it always has been.  The world of 2000 years ago did not have ISIS or I-phones
but there were terrorists and new means of communication were being introduced to
unite the masses.  There were political upheavals and economic challenges.  Yet,
amidst human struggles and suffering, confusion and frustration there was still a hope
for something better. This was the world where in a tiny Judean town in the backwater
of the Roman Empire, a baby was born.  Truth be told, outside a few ragged and smelly
shepherds almost no one noticed or was aware.  But in that moment, the world
changed.  

That baby grew to be a boy and then a man.  Except for a brief period of his life, he was
basically unknown and his life hidden.  A carpenter turned itinerant rabbi, he changed
the world.  While the power of his words drew crowds and miracles were attributed to
him, in the end he was rejected by the religious establishment, betrayed by his closest
followers and arrested, convicted and executed as a political insurrectionist by the ruling
civil authorities.  Dying an ignominious death as a political criminal, he changed the
world.  He wrote no stirring manifestos or intriguing autobiography.  He commanded no
army and led no revolt but he has changed the world.

The power of Jesus is the power of love, the power of mercy and the power of hope. 
Jesus changed the world because of who He is – the Light of the World, Son of God,
The Word made flesh, The Way, the Truth and the Life.  Jesus changed the world in
what he did.  In the birth of Jesus, creation received divinity and humanity received
perfection.  In the death and resurrection of Jesus, the world received redemption. The
world still shows its brokenness and new scars are added each day, but because of
Jesus, the baby in a manger who became the man on the cross, evil has been defeated
and death has been conquered for all those who believe in Him.  A world of division and
hatred is offered a path of healing and reconciliation.  Hearts that are broken are
restored.  Lives weighed down under the burden of despair are renewed and filled with
hope.  The darkness of sin and death has forever been shattered by a light that cannot
be extinguished.  By his birth, life, death and resurrection, the world has been saved
from crimes of our own making.   Jesus has changed the world!

Today is born a Savior, Christ the Lord!

In Pace Christi,
Fr. Troy