Happy Sunday!

On this Holy Family Sunday the liturgy directs our attention to the life of the Holy Family and that school of Nazareth where family life is learned. We can feel the peace and joy of Christmas abiding in them. We pray that all families may be attentive to the Word of the Lord and allow it to bear fruit in their homes!

I hope everyone had a joyful Christmas celebration. I am grateful to all of our volunteers for making the Christmas celebrations such great experiences!

A priest friend recently told me a remarkable story. One of his cousins reported having a vivid dream in which an angel told him the family needed to exhume their grandmother's body from a ceme- tery in New York and return it to her birthplace in Romania. She had been dead nearly 10 years. As you might expect, the family thought it was, well, crazy. But astonishingly they exhumed her body. It was incorrupt, showing no signs of decomposition. That experience sparked healing, faith, and reconciliation throughout the family.

When I was 11, I was riding my bike on a Friday night in Scottsdale, Arizona. I saw giant spotlights swirling in the sky. Something amazing had to be happening. I pedaled after them with excitement. Sweaty and tired, I arrived, only to find a used car lot. Bright lights, flapping banners, inflatable balloon men swaying wildly in the wind. I stood there, heart sinking. All that spectacle, and all my effort ... for this?

Happy Sunday!

This Sunday we begin the second week of Advent. Our readings hit a variety of themes. In the first reading from Isaiah we hear about the shoot that will sprout from the stump of Jesse. The second reading then speaks of unity and hope. In the Gospel John the Baptist urges those who hear him to repentance. It is the Psalm(72), that ancient prayer of the people of Israel, that captures the heart and seeks to encapsulate these themes.