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Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
This week with the inauguration of the President of the United States, I imagine we will feel a nation divided. The popular vote was still so narrow that it is likely that we are a country divided right down the middle, not a good place to be.
Regardless of which side of the aisle we may be, there is one thing that we can consciously do to seek unity: hope. We can all hope for the best, for what is right, for what is God’s will and the humility of those assuming the responsibility of governing to listen to the Holy Spirit and seek the good of all people whose care is placed in their hands.
Pope Francis says that Christian hope is a gift from God that is based on the resurrection of Jesus. The possibility of things we even dare not for. It is openness to the possibility that the impossible is possible: all things are possible with God. It is also an active virtue that helps make good things happen.
You and I, by our human nature, are guided by natural virtues, also called Cardinal Virtues: justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence. They are natural, of our nature, and by them we recognize right from wrong, we become angry at injustice, we have the ability to complete the task at hand, and we have the common sense to apply all of these to life experiences to make good choices.
But with original sin, our human nature was damaged. We lost the indwelling Spirit of God and no longer had the certainty of goodness. Our weakness, our brokenness didn’t guarantee good outcomes and we needed an infusion of the Spirit of God to restore the balance.
The result? We just celebrated it: baptism. That Spirit returns, Sanctifying grace that transforms us into our original creation. The Church teaches that this is God’s gift, not a result of our earning it, something that doesn’t come from ourselves. It is supernatural, beyond our ability. In baptism we receive the supernatural, or theological, virtues which order us according to the mind of Christ. Our natural virtues are informed by that which is not experienced or deduced from human experience. These virtues are faith, hope, and love (charity). We walk by faith, and not by sight; we live in the hope of God’s good plan for us even when it may not be obvious to us; we love, even to the unnatural point of loving our enemies. We enter into the mind of Jesus himself with these gifts that sustain us through life’s challenges, knowing that there is always more to know, and we don’t know what we don’t know.
Hope is an active virtue that helps make good things possible. It is a sign which shines through acts of justice, solidarity, and charity. It is based on God’s promise of the future.
Pope Francis has dedicated the theme of the Jubilee Year 2025 “Pilgrims of Hope.”
Reflecting on Christian hope, Pope Francis writes in his new book, is especially important “in times like the ones we are living in, with a Third World War being fought ‘piecemeal,’ unfolding before our eyes. It can lead us to assume attitudes of gloomy discouragement and ill-concealed cynicism.”
Christian hope is not optimism, he wrote. Rather, it is “waiting for something that has already been given to us: salvation in God’s eternal and infinite love.”
Be on the lookout for hope; keep moving forward in faith, the pope writes, and love one another. The rest is passing controversy.
I found Pope Francis’ words to be powerful and I want you to share this message with anyone who is allowing themselves to be controlled by worry or discouragement, or uncertainty at this time. One thing we know for certain is that God is love, and he has chosen you for a purpose. And he knows what he is doing!
Starting each new day with an open heart to recognize this purpose is a way of discovering a new path in your life, a path that God has written into your being from before the foundation of the world.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Join us for our monthly (third Monday) Taizé Prayer Service on Monday night, January 20, 8 - 8:45pm. Come for a peaceful moment of simple song and silence and pray for unity.
Saint Bernadette School will celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week with an Open House being held on Sunday January 26. See what Saint Bernadette School has to offer your family. The Principal's letter can be found on page 5 in this week's bulletin..
All volunteers involved in parish ministry and their spouses are invited to our annual celebration. The Night of Stars will be held on February 8, 2025. Please contact the parish office to RSVP by 31 January.
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Prayer Service: Wednesday evening, January 22. Join Bishop Burbidge and other bishops of Christian churches in Virginia for the annual observance of the international Week of Prayer. Invite all your friends from other churches to join us at 7:30pm, followed by a light reception.
Volunteers are needed to help prepare meals and visit with those in our community that are homeless, January 26 through 28 at Saint Mark’s Lutheran Church in Springfield. Food and monetary donations will be accepted on Sunday, January 26th between 1-4 in the Bradican Rm. A signup has been created listing specific requests. Flyers are in the vestibule of the church and a link is included on the announcements page on our website.
The parish will be hosting a baby supplies drive for Catholic Charities and Mary’s Comfort next weekend through January 26th. There are flyers in the vestibule with more information. Thank you in advance for your generosity.
The St. Lucy Project Food Drive will be held on the first weekend of February. Blue bags and lists of requested items will be distributed the last weekend of January.
Please join us for a WorkCamp Interest Meeting January 26, at 6:15pm in the Bradican Rm. All interested teens and adult volunteers, Contractors and Crew Leaders are invited to attend this informational meeting.
Worship Aid for the Baptism of the Lord
Celebrating the Christmas Season
Jan 12 -The BAPTISM of the LORD
The Christmas season ends today with our regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Saint Bernadette School will celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week with an Open House being held on Sunday January 26. More details to come. See what Saint Bernadette School has to offer your family.
All volunteers involved in parish ministry and their spouses are invited to our annual celebration. The Night of Stars will be held on February 8, 2025. Please contact the parish office to RSVP by 31 January.
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Prayer Service: Wednesday evening, January 22. Join Bishop Burbidge and other bishops of Christian churches in Virginia for the annual observance of the international Week of Prayer. Invite all your friends from other churches to join us at 7:30pm, followed by a light reception.
Volunteers are needed to help prepare meals and visit with those in our community that are homeless, January 26 through 28 at Saint Mark’s Lutheran Church in Springfield. Food and monetary donations will be accepted on Sunday, January 26th between 1-4 in the Bradican Rm. A signup has been created listing specific requests. Flyers are in the vestibule of the church and a link is included on the announcements page on our website.
The parish will be hosting a baby supplies drive for Catholic Charities and Mary’s Comfort next weekend through January 26th. There are flyers in the vestibule with more information. Thank you in advance for your generosity.
The St. Lucy Project Food Drive will be held on the first weekend of February. Blue bags and lists of requested items will be distributed the last weekend of January.
The Knights of Columbus invite all parish youth between the ages of 9 and 14 years old to show off their basketball free-throw skills this coming Saturday, January 18 from 8 AM through 12 PM in the school gymnasium. No registration required.
All 8th-12th grade girls are invited to join us for a girl's craft night this Monday, January 13th from 7-8:30pm in the Youth Room. Please see the bulletin for more details.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
The God of power and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people.
He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.
All: Amen.
These are the words the celebrant says when anointing a newly baptized child with Chrism. Sacred Chrism is the oil consecrated by each bishop at the Chrism Mass during Holy Week, and in the same way the bread and wine are the forms under which the real Body and Blood of Jesus is present and received, so the Church teaches that under the form of Chrism it is the Holy Spirit who is present and received. At your baptism, you were anointed priest, prophet and king, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
As priest, Jesus sanctifies, reestablishing the lost link between divinity and humanity; as prophet, he speaks - and is - the Word of divine truth; as king he leads us, the ultimate servant leader.
So many scriptural references fill our minds: This three part identity of Jesus is why he says, literally, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (literally, the life, the truth and the way). John the Baptist explained how his baptism was a baptism of repentance with water, but Jesus will come and baptize with water and the Holy Spirit.
Of course, it is Jesus himself whom we encounter in every sacrament, and I find it a powerful reflection to consider how it is his own Spirit that he pours into our hearts first in Baptism and Confirmation so that we can become him in Eucharist. He is our identity. “I must decrease, he must increase.”
Remember - in the early years of the Church to become Christian well might be a death sentence. You wouldn’t baptize an infant; you would wait until the candidate could run faster than Roman soldiers or outsmart them. The three sacraments of initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist) were received all at once as you may have experienced at the Easter Vigil Mass. Once
Christianity was legal, infants were baptized.
In the western Church, only a bishop can confirm (in the Eastern Rite Catholic churches and the Orthodox Churches priests confirm), so that the separation we know between the first Chrism of Baptism and the full chrismation of Confirmation is our practice simply because bishops couldn’t be everywhere all at once for baptisms.
We are incorporated (embodied) into the person of the Son. We all are baptized to serve as priests through our sacrificial efforts to bring people to God. We serve as prophets through our witness to the truth in word and deed. And we all serve as kings in our efforts to lead others—again through word and deed—to use their talents to advance the Kingdom of God (Catechism, 1241). It is so much more than just membership, though that, in itself, is perfectly beautiful.
It is the same Holy Spirit who enters the heart of every person baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all are validly members of God’s family. We are brothers and sisters with all the baptized. God cannot give himself partially: each newly baptized person is an entirely new creation as Jesus is. He is “begotten, not made” of the same substance (consubstantial) as the Father, as we profess in the Nicene Creed at Mass. He cannot be otherwise. But we who are baptized, though made by God, also become begotten of him as members of the Body of Christ. This is entirely new. It is also called the Mystical Body but I think the word mystical, for some, might not mean real. Don’t buy it: you are the real deal.
We don’t hear enough today about the common priesthood of the faithful, a popular topic in the documents of Vatican II. Or maybe you are not convinced because we put so much emphasis on the ministerial priesthood of ordained clergy. One of the things that Vatican II sought to do was restore the dignity and vitality of lay members of the Church and the important role that you are to fill in the life of the Church. The priest, though necessary, is no more important than anyone. It is not a matter of importance, really. That is what is meant by clericalism. He has, in God’s mercy and by his willingness, been given a unique role as the servant leader of the faithful who has the responsibility to empty himself for you, as Jesus did. His identity is rooted, just the same as yours, in Baptism.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for the Epiphany of the Lord
Celebrating the Christmas Season
Jan 5 - EPIPHANY of the LORD
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 12 -The BAPTISM of the LORD
The Christmas season ends today with our regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Join fellow parishioners at this prayerful, peaceful event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Friday, January 24. Saint Bernadette will provide a bus if there are enough reservations. Please sign up at https://tinyurl.com/42tnedb4 by January 5. There won’t be any cost to ride the bus, but we would like to ask you to bring items for the Baby Supply Drive (flyer coming soon). Questions? Call the office.
Saint Bernadette School will celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week with an Open House being held on Sunday January 26. More details to come. See what Saint Bernadette School has to offer your family.
All volunteers involved in parish ministry and their spouses are invited to our annual celebration. The Night of Stars will be held on February 8, 2025. Please contact the parish office to RSVP by 31 January. Details on page 12.
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Prayer Service: Wednesday evening, January 22. Join Bishop Burbidge and other bishops of Christian churches in Virginia for the annual observance of the international Week of Prayer. Invite all your friends from other churches to join us at 7:30pm, followed by a light reception.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
Every year I have the best intentions of writing out Christmas cards. It hasn’t happened in a few years, the last time I accomplished it I spent most of the holiday up until Epiphany and sent cards with the three wise men on the front. It has just become too much of a task, so this year I sent email cards. I particularly like this image of the Holy Family, they look so beautiful. I searched for its source but could not find anything on it. So here is my Christmas card to all of you.
This year, what if we were to live as if we actually believed:
—that everything we do can bring benefit or harm to all of God’s creation, whether publicly known or in secret?
—that Jesus’ law is a law of love, not judgement? Just love, and leave the judgement to a just and merciful God.
—that there is no place for fear? I hear increasingly from people in my generation who are realizing that life in the Church when we were children was based more in fear of God than in love. Unconditional love was not a concept, really. And I am surprised at the number of adults who are finding the courage today to say that they want more. They want a real relationship with God. Let’s work on this in the new year.
—that we can’t ever fully exhaust knowing God until we are with him in eternity, and eternity is really worth working toward, looking forward to? It is the most important thing. Because we can’t understand all the mysteries of faith doesn’t mean we are somehow deficient, only that we are human. We have the ability to learn, to know more. In the coming year let’s commit to studying and growing together as a community in the knowledge of God and his Son, Jesus.
—that we have already received our superpowers? It is the Mass: we actively participate in the offering of Jesus, as Jesus to the Father, for the salvation of the world. You can save the world, with God, in Jesus. If people really believed this, I mean, really believed this, there would not be enough Catholic churches in the world and not enough Masses in the hours of the day. Just think about it. We have already received everything we need to be powerful, and effective, and holy. You are holy.
This holiday I am cleaning out my office from the boxes of stuff we moved there when we turned my old office into a second Preschool classroom. The offices were only going to be temporary as we were going to renovate the space with the new Parish Hall. When the budget got cut, so did the office renovation, so I am going through stuff that has been packed away in my small office for seven years. I came across a whole box of cards that I had printed in various colors - the cards say YOU ARE HOLY.
When I came to Saint Bernadette I was struck by the sense that you didn’t believe this. For whatever reason, you either were told otherwise or not treated as holy people. But holiness isn’t something you can lose. It is because God made you that you are holy. Our actions can overshadow the truth and we can choose darkness, but that has no power over the fact that you are still holy. I’m going to put a basket of these cards in the vestibule. Take some, and give them to everyone you know! Happy new year.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for the Feast of the Holy Family
Celebrating the Christmas Season
Dec 29 - FEAST of the HOLY FAMILY
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 1 - MARY, MOTHER of GOD
(IS a Holy Day of Obligation this year)
Regular Holy Day schedule:
Tuesday Vigil 7:30pm
Wednesday 7 & 9am, Noon, 7:30pm (bilingual)
Jan 5 - EPIPHANY of the LORD
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 12 -The BAPTISM of the LORD
The Christmas season ends today with our regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Parish Office are closed for the Christmas holiday through January 1. We will reopen Thursday, 2 January.
Join fellow parishioners at this prayerful, peaceful event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Friday, January 24. Saint Bernadette will provide a bus if there are enough reservations. Please sign up at https://tinyurl.com/42tnedb4 by January 5. There won’t be any cost to ride the bus, but we would like to ask you to bring items for the Baby Supply Drive (flyer coming soon). Questions? Call the office.
Saint Bernadette School will celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week with an Open House being held on Sunday January 26. More details to come. See what Saint Bernadette School has to offer your family.
All volunteers involved in parish ministry and their spouses are invited to our annual celebration. The Night of Stars will be held on February 8, 2025. Please contact the parish office to RSVP. Details on page 12.
Please note that there is NO Taizé Ecumenical Prayer Service this month due to School Christmas Pageant in the Church. We will resume next month on January 20 at 8:15pm.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
Creator and creature, divine and human... look and see that already in Jesus creation is being restored, to be completed on the Cross and empty tomb, but well underway. Why? because God is Love, and Jesus is love incarnate, completely humble, helpless, and absolutely, irresistibly loveable. We study more about the how as time unfolds. Time is the invention of human science, which seeks to explain the unexplainable.
The world needs to see anew this unfolding story of salvation, not as some kind of problem to be solved, but as an act of love from God, who is Love Itself.
Let’s reflect on what we have seen. Theologians often refer to Jesus as the second Adam and Mary as the second Eve. Like a reboot of the system. Part of this includes the understanding of the early century Fathers of the Church that we are all intimately interconnected: God created us as one unity not as humans, but as humanity. In language that is now misunderstood as non-inclusive, it is easier to use men, and Man (capital M meaning mankind). God made us one and everything we do, good or evil, somehow touches every person in humanity, past, present, future. Think of the saints and how we still benefit from their virtue and holiness. We pray for our ancestors and have the power to alter the course of their final disposition. Also consider the generational damage that our social, corporate, and environmental sins have on all. The sin of one touches all, as did the original sin of the first Adam.
If we fast forward to the exulted, the ancient blessing of the Easter candle at the Easter vigil, we hear chanted:
“O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
The only thing that can undo the original sinfulness of Man is the absolute sinlessness of God become Man. Similarly, the yes of Mary, the second Eve, reboots the no of Eve. In the manger lies a new being completely, truly God, truly Man.
In our desire to relate to what is happening, we often like to imagine ourselves in that circumstance. In our meditation at this moment, however, we can’t imagine ourselves infants, and certainly not as God. We can only imagine what it must have been like to behold this miracle Child as Mary who certainly couldn’t explain any of this, or as Joseph, who was holding onto the lifeline of faith with what he was told by an angel.
So what we have seen in Bethlehem started literally with creation. Did God know all of this was going to unfold like this?
This is where many people fall into the misunderstanding about predestination. If God had all this planned out -- original sin, incarnation, redemption -- what does it matter? Do my choices matter?
There are a few pillars of thought that need to come together at once. Of course, God’s will was totally free to share himself and create. God made Man with a totally free will to choose him, and therefore imperfect. Otherwise, love would be meaningless. Many would say that despite the fact that God foreknew what happens, he didn’t tamper with the free will of Adam and Eve, or of Mary the Mother of God, or the free will of his own Son in offering himself on our behalf, for us and for our salvation.
You must remember that for God, there is no time. This is a hard one to wrap your mind around. God sees all of it all at once. Can you try to imagine what it looks like if creation and redemption and salvation are all in one infinitely small moment? It unfolds for us because we have invented time to chart seasons and cause and effect. We record things as history. One thing necessarily must follow the other. But not with God.
And it is perfectly okay not to be able to explain it. An old friend long ago liked to say it isn’t true because the Church says it’s true. The Church says it is true because it is. Some things permeate and endure through it all, through all time: what is good, or true, or beautiful. The point is not not to get stuck on how it happens, but why? And the only answer can be Love.
And so this infinite, perfect Love which keeps us all in being is now seen in the beautiful face of a human child.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for the Feast of the Holy Family
Celebrating the Christmas Season
Dec 29 - FEAST of the HOLY FAMILY
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 1 - MARY, MOTHER of GOD
(IS a Holy Day of Obligation this year)
Regular Holy Day schedule:
Tuesday Vigil 7:30pm
Wednesday 7 & 9am, Noon, 7:30pm (bilingual)
Jan 5 - EPIPHANY of the LORD
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 12 -The BAPTISM of the LORD
The Christmas season ends today with our regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Parish Office are closed for the Christmas holiday through January 1. We will reopen Thursday, 2 January.
Join fellow parishioners at this prayerful, peaceful event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Friday, January 24. Saint Bernadette will provide a bus if there are enough reservations. Please sign up at https://tinyurl.com/42tnedb4 by January 5. There won’t be any cost to ride the bus, but we would like to ask you to bring items for the Baby Supply Drive (flyer coming soon). Questions? Call the office.
Saint Bernadette School will celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week with an Open House being held on Sunday January 26. More details to come. See what Saint Bernadette School has to offer your family.
All volunteers involved in parish ministry and their spouses are invited to our annual celebration. The Night of Stars will be held on February 8, 2025. Please contact the parish office to RSVP. Details on page 12.
Please note that there is NO Taizé Ecumenical Prayer Service this month due to School Christmas Pageant in the Church. We will resume next month on January 20 at 8:15pm.
Worship Aid for the Christmas Vigil
Worship Aid for Midnight Mass and Christmas Day
Merry Christmas to all! Wishing blessings for the new year.
Dec 24 - CHRISTMAS EVE VIGIL MASSES
4:30pm,
8:30pm (preceded by Choir Carol Prelude at 8pm)
Midnight Mass • 12am (preceded by Choir Prelude of Carols at 11:30pm)
Dec 25 - CHRISTMAS DAY MASSES
Midnight Mass
7, 9, 11am & 1pm (en español)
Note: There is NO 5pm Mass
Dec 29 - FEAST of the HOLY FAMILY
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 1 - MARY, MOTHER of GOD
(IS a Holy Day of Obligation this year)
Regular Holy Day schedule:
Tuesday Vigil 7:30pm
Wednesday 7 & 9am, Noon, 7:30pm (bilingual)
Jan 5 - EPIPHANY of the LORD
Regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Jan 12 -The BAPTISM of the LORD
The Christmas season ends today with our regular Saturday Vigil / Sunday schedule
Parish Office are closed for the Christmas holiday through January 1. We will reopen Thursday, 2 January.
Join fellow parishioners at this prayerful, peaceful event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Friday, January 24. Saint Bernadette will provide a bus if there are enough reservations. Please sign up at https://tinyurl.com/42tnedb4 by Jan. 5. There won’t be any cost to ride the bus, but we would like to ask you to bring items for the Baby Supply Drive (flyer coming soon). Questions? Call the office.
Saint Bernadette School will celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week with an Open House being held on Sunday January 26. More details to come. See what Saint Bernadette School has to offer your family.
All volunteers involved in parish ministry and their spouses are invited to our annual celebration. The Night of Stars will be held on February 8, 2025. Please contact the parish office to RSVP by 31 January. Details on page 12.
Please note that there is NO Taizé Ecumenical Prayer Service this month due to School Christmas Pageant in the Church. We will resume next month on January 20 at 8:15pm.