Next Sunday:  Feast of the Epiphany                        Fr. Schmitz

New Year’s  Schedule for St. Ann and Sacred Heart

Fr. Tharp will celebrate both Masses on New Year’s Eve, which is the same as the Saturday evening schedule; namely Sacred Heart: at 4:00 p.m. and St. Ann: at 5:15 p.m.

New Year’s  Eve Masses:      

Sacred Heart: 4:00 p.m.

St. Ann: 5:15 p.m.

New Year’s Day: Fr. Tharp will celebrate the three (Sunday Schedule) New Year’s Day Masses at Sacred Heart.  Fr. Schmitz will celebrate the two New Year’s Day Morning Masses at St. Ann. 

Moral implications of COVID-19 Vaccines

Of late, some have accused the Catholic Church of moral duplicity in its teaching regarding abortion and the use of fetal cells harvested from aborted babies in the development and testing of vaccines like the COVID-19 vaccine.  The USCCB website cited below reports the following:  One of the three pharmaceutical companies apparently did use a compromised cell line in design, development or production, but it would seem that the two others did not.  Later confirmatory tests applied to all three may have used the compromised HEK293 cell line.

The entire document is available on the USCCB.org website at: https://www.usccb.org/moral-considerations-covid-vaccines. 

The following statement from page 5 of the referenced document seems to sum up the advice of the USCCB regarding the moral issue associated with the vaccines.  It reads,  “In view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines, the reasons to accept the new COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are sufficiently serious to justify their use, despite their remote connection to morally compromised cell lines.”

Communion on the Tongue

Please remember as I stated in recent articles, until the threat of COVID is over; if you wish to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, you must come to me (Fr. Tharp) ONLY and you must be sure you are at the end of my line.  Please do not present yourselves to Fr. Schmitz or any of the Lay Eucharistic Ministers for communion on the tongue!  If on Sundays, you see that I am going to be at St. Ann, then you must come to St. Ann that Sunday if you want to receive ONLY on the tongue.  I am not willing to ask Fr. Schmitz or any of the Lay Eucharistic Ministers to take a risk with which they are uncomfortable.  Be assured, I will follow all the protocols necessary to administer on the tongue safely.  

Live Streaming a precept Mass from St. Ann and Sacred Heart each week 

Please remember to access the Sacred Heart / St. Ann Pastoral Region youtube site by clicking on the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVLLqbEY5hKWinwz069MVcg

Reflection on Scripture: The Feast of the Holy Family

Why did Jesus choose to be born into the world?  Why didn’t he appear from a bolt of cataclysmic lightning?  Why did he not descend on a fiery cloud from on high?  Why did he not choose to scare the living daylights out of people, by revealing his power and omnipotence?  I think Jesus would respond to the question by saying, “That’s not my style!  I don’t want to frighten people into fidelity.  I want my people to be captivated by the contagion of my love.  I don’t want to intimidate them.  I want them to be infected with God’s love in their encounter with me.”  Certainly our omnipotent God has the capacity to captivate our attention with his power.  But God so loved the world that he wanted to send His Son to reveal his love.

Jesus is fully divine and fully human.  We call this the hypostatic union.  To be fully human, he was born into the world and was nurtured in a human family.  We are comforted by the knowledge that our savior Jesus Christ was nurtured by both a human mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a human foster father, St. Joseph; and can understand our love for our families because he is part of one.  His Holy Family is the reason we can celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family as the Church, and revel in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, the very foundation of family.

Next Week:  Feast of the Epiphany

Is 60:1-6

Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6

Mt 2:1-12 

Theme:   Jesus is savior of all humanity; without regard to origin or ethnicity.