At least to me it seems like it was just summer a month ago and yet here we are just over a month away from the Christmas & New Year’s holidays. Soon the Advent wreath will be up in Church & the Christmas decorations soon will follow as we celebrate these great events in the life of our faith. I wanted to share with you this weekend our upcoming schedule for Christmas and New Year’s so that we could all start to plan & prepare.

  The actual schedule is on the bulletin insert so that you can stick it on your fridge, or your bulletin board, or wherever you want to keep it, but I did want to point out a few details about it in my column. The first is that, with both Christmas Day & New Year’s Day falling on Saturday’s, we will NOT have a Vigil Mass on either evening for the following Sunday, December 26th OR January 2nd. We will, of course, have our normal Masses on both of those Sundays, but there will NOT be Mass or Confessions on either of those Saturday evenings as so many of us will be celebrating both of those holidays with family and friends.

  Also, with New Year’s Day falling on a Saturday, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, that’s celebrated that day is NOT a holy day of obligation in 2022. We will have an 11:00 am Mass on New Year’s Day, but there will NOT be a Vigil Mass on New Year’s Eve, just for this year. Let’s use these upcoming days of Advent well to prepare our hearts & our minds to truly welcome the God who comes to dwell with us.
Have a blessed week!