As pastor, I would like to take this moment to offer my sincere best wishes and prayers to all our parishioners here at Saint Catherine of Siena for a very blessed and holy New Year--may 2018 be a year filled with all the Good News which God offers to each and everyone one of us in His love. We end 2017 with the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph--and a narrative from Luke which calls us to “read between the lines of the gospels which recently told us of the birth of Jesus and today we are now given an unexpected Christmas gift

I wish to express my sincere thanks and deep appreciation to EVERYONE who made the celebrations of Christmastime (which continues until 8 January) a very beautiful and spiritual success.

With Advent and 2017 coming to a close, we finish off the year with the greatest wish of all: Merry Christmas! And this is the greatest wish of all not simply because it is an offering of “glad tidings” to our brothers and sisters but because the wish comprises the blessing of the Incarnation of Christ and the gift of Eternal Salvation (“Christmas”: the Nativity of Christ and “Merry” giving pleasure, delightful…a salvation that is unending, uncompromising, and unchallenged by any sadness, sinfulness or lack of Godly joy. It is, in fact, the gift of God’s very own Divine Life and given to you and to me to share in for all eternity.

Gaudete or the third Sunday of Advent comes from the first word of the Introit at Mass (Gaudete, i.e. Rejoice) is this weekend in the season of Advent. Advent originated as a fast of forty days in preparation for Christmas, commencing on the day after the feast of St. Martin (12 November), often called "St. Martin's Lent"-- a name by which it was known as early as the fifth century. In the ninth century, the duration of Advent was reduced to four weeks, the first allusion to the shortened season being in a letter of St. Nicholas I (858-867) to the Bulgarians CLICK TO READ MORE......

And now you know the rest of the story! As I steal a quote the late, famous Paul Harvey’s traditional end of the “Rest of the Story” segment on his radio news broadcast, we can hear a hint of the “rest of the story” in the beginning line of today’s Gospel from Mark: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as Father Eugene A. LaVerdiere, S.S.S., a leading American Scripture Scholar, points out.

(The Meaning): “O Come, O Come,Emmanuel!” This well-known ancient prayer reminds us, similar to how the “coming of winter stills and quiets the natural world,” that we must seek to prepare a place for Christ and His Peace to come again and to be born anew in our hearts—and so in our world. The Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons and Weekdays—the Almanac for Pastoral Liturgy notes that the Coming of Advent asks us to prepares our souls and spiritual lives for the memorial