My dear parishioners and visitors,
We are now in a very special times of the year: the beautiful times of Christmas and of the New Year. I do hope and prayer that all of you have had a good Christmas celebration. May the beauty of Christmas brings you and your loved ones closer to one another and into a greater and deeper personal relationship with Jesus, Our Lord and Savior.
Christmas day, December 25th, is one of the most joyful celebrations of our Church and for many others around the world. The Birth of Jesus into our human history is a great mystery. St. Irenaeus summed it up so well when he said: “God became man so that man might become God”.
So the Birth of Christ, the mystery of the Eternal Word made flesh, the Emmanuel: God is with us, is not only an one-day-celebration, but a life-times-mystery for all of us, and through us, for the whole world, to discover its true meaning, to embrace and to celebrate it with love and gratitude and then graciously open our hearts and minds to welcome this Most Precious Gift, God’s only Begotten Son, generously given to us.
I sincerely invite you and through you, the people of this community, to follow the shepherds’ good example: “let us go Bethlehem and see this thing that taken place which the Lord has make known to us”(Luke 2:15), by coming to St. Ann’s parish-family, “your new Bethlehem”, to discover the true meaning of the Christmas’s mystery being taking place, celebrating and experiencing through our daily and weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist, through our faith education & bible programs and through our various ministries and organizations of the parish.
Come and celebrate together our faith in God, our love for Him and our hope in Him so that we all experience the joy and blessings given to us in and through the mystery of Our Lord, Jesus Christ’s incarnation as He himself said: “I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Christmas and the New Year are always a special times for the families. So this weekend we are celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family: The family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. It is a times for all of us to think not only our own human family but also the family of the Church and to commit ourselves firmly doing something good every day to make our own human family and our family of faith, St. Ann’s parish, to be a true home of faith, hope and love for God and for another.
My Mother, my sisters and my brothers together with their own families in Viet Nam and I sincerely wish all of you a blessed Christmas and a blessed New Year and thank you for your goodness given to me for the last 5 months and during this Christmas season and the New Year’s celebration.
God bless.
Fr. Peter Hoan Nguyen, your pastor