Dear Parishioners,

It’s time to get out the violet (or purple) vestments and find the Advent wreath. A new liturgical year has begun this weekend. This gives us an opportunity to prepare our minds and our hearts for the upcoming celebration of our Lord’s birth. During this coming week, we will have several opportunities at our parish to begin these preparations. On Wednesday night, December 4th, we will have our Advent Penance Service starting at 6:30 PM. A number of priests will be available to hear your confession. If this is not convenient, we still have our Saturday morning confessions from 11 AM to noon or please check the schedule for additional penance services that will be available in the coming weeks. In addition to this, our parish Advent retreat will be next Saturday. May these days of Advent renew us and bring our hearts closer to the Lord.

Is it a Holy Day of obligation, or is it not? That’s a question that I have been asked for years. It depends on what Diocese or part of the country that you are in, and it even depends on where you live in the world. It’s not always an easy question to answer as the Bishop’s Conference in each region of the world determines some of these things. Of course, they also must adhere to Universal Church law and liturgical practices. To clarify this, one of the Bishops of the US wrote to the Vatican for clarification and recently received an answer about dispensing the obligation to attend. Next Monday, December 9th, is indeed a Holy Day (but it falls on a Monday after the weekend and the actual feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th). But since this ruling just came out a few weeks ago, Bishop Lohse decided that it is going to cause confusion. He decided to dispense our diocese from the obligation of the Holy Day this year. But that is definitely not going to be the case across the United States. Hopefully we will see some additional clarification on this in the next few months and I will pass this information on to you when I see it.

Thanks for reading!

Fr. Mark