By now you may have received the 2020 Christmas Letter from our Pastor, Father James Stiles, in the mail. If not, here it is once again...
My dearest parishioners,
I thank God for the opportunity to be able to wish each of you a very Merry Christmas! My great prayer is that this Christmas you will encounter our Lord Jesus in your life more intimately than ever before. Some of you will be with family and friends during the Christmas season. Others of you I know are planning on experiencing perhaps the most isolated Christmas you've head due to the pandemic or other unforeseen circumstances. In any case, I sincerely pray God blesses you with a rediscovery of how close He is to you and how much He loves you.
It has been so difficult not being able to see our family, friends, and fellow parishioners as much as we are accustomed to over these last 9 months. Know that I have sincerely missed seeing each of you at church, around town, in your homes, at fairs and festivals, on motorcycles, etc. Those of you that I have seen, this has been a tremendous blessing to me.
I have to tell all of you that you've been in my thoughts and prayers every day. You have not been forgotten, neither by me nor by the parish at large. I apologize if there were ways through which I or the parish could have kept better in touch with you but failed to do so.
This Christmas let us remember that we know, love, and worship a God who wasn't and who still is not afraid to enter into the messiness of human life and transform it from within. This must remain the joy of our Christmas, indeed that of our whole lives.
I hope to see you in person at one of our Christmas Masses this year. At the very least, let us join each other at the altar whether in person or virtually or in the stillness of our hearts as we together marvel at the presence of our almighty God become so little for us, first as a babe and now as the Holy Eucharist. God bless each of you!