Christmas Message for 2014.
My dear parishioners and visitors,
“Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord” (Psalm 96).
“O Come, Let us adore Him, Christ the Lord”.
Christmas is here!
I am happy to welcome all of you, my dear parishioners and visitors, to our 2014 Christmas celebration. May this Christmas be a source of God’s grace, blessing, healing and a new life for us all.
Christmas, 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, my dear parishioners and visitors, 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 and back to your own parishes, “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 the faith education & bible programs and through the 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 Birth as He himself said: “I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
January 1st, the beginning of the New Year, is the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God, also is World Day of Peace. There is better way to celebrate and to welcome the New Year is by coming together to pray. So I would like to invite all of you coming to our New Year’s masses on Dec. 31st at 5.00p.m. following by New Year’s family Pot Luck Dinner in the parish center and on January 1st the mass is at 10.00a.m. We are An Every-Day-Catholic and Catholic for life.
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