Since many will be joining us via livestream for our sacred Christmas liturgies, I wanted to be sure that our beautiful nativity scene could be seen “up close & center” & so asked the Art & Environment people to put it right in front of the altar this year. In recent years the Church has asked us to keep the altar and what is placed on it as the main focus of the sanctuary since it is on that sacred table that we place the Body and Blood of Christ, and nothing is more important in our liturgical space than that. But at Christmas, what we celebrate is what the Church calls the “Incarnation” or the very real presence of God “in the flesh” as the divine God chooses to take on our human nature. In the liturgy, that same God becomes incarnate in the bread and wine we offer on the altar and which we receive into our bodies. Though many people fail to remember the “rubric” that is in italics on the page where the Creed is found in our hymnals, Deacon Pat & I make a conscious effort to bow when we say the words “For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” Why are we (all) directed to do this? To show our profound respect for what we celebrate today...that the Son of God came down from heaven & became one of us. The significance of this can never be overstated. And so the priest & deacon also bow or genuflect after the priest repeats the words of Jesus, “This is my Body...this is the cup of my Blood.” May the manger scene you see displayed before our altar (a picture is on our website), be a reminder of the truth we are in awe of this day.
Not only can you see the pictures of former Christmases at St. Leo’s on display in the vestibule, but our website (leothegreat.org) also has a 10-minute YouTube video showing several pictures as well. We have also posted a Christmas concert held at our parish many years ago along with a list of the songs they are singing so you don’t want to miss that either. Thanks to parishioner John Sabol for putting these together for us to enjoy.
I want to thank you for your participation in our Adopt a Child program this year (headed by John’s wife, Jeanne Sabol). We collected a total of $3,475 (a total of $4,075 with the matching funds grant from the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association)! Last year we collected $2100, so you were especially generous this year. In addition, gift cards in the amount of $1920 were collected and approximately 300 gifts were distributed to children. You also continued to be faithful to your contributions to the parish this year, even when you couldn’t be here in the church. So I thank you in advance for your Christmas donations as we are several thousand dollars behind our collections budget due to the absence of Easter liturgies this year. Many more have signed up for online giving through WeShare (again available on our website) which helps a great deal as well. I pray you will receive much for giving much.
It took us about 5 hours to make 650 cheese raviolis and an uncountable number of homemade noodles for chicken soup. We had a couple of extra helpers this year (who of course took an oath of secrecy for the recipe) and that probably saved me from being seen bent over as I celebrate Christmas Masses today. I hope to enjoy the fruits of this labor today. I will probably have to increase my intermittent fasting hours well into the new year but I’m OK with having a gut more like Santa’s for the remainder of this holiday.