Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

Happy New Year to all.

While I write these notes still apart from our community of faith in Northridge, I want you all to know that Northridge and our parish community has never been far from my thoughts during my sabbatical time. I have held you all in prayer, and I know that many of you have been holding me in prayer also. It was more difficult than I anticipated to disengage from parish life and to enter into the sabbath time, but it has been a time of deep grace and ongoing learning.

As I prepare now to return once more to my responsibilities in the parish, I can’t help but reflect on how so many things have changed since last we prayed together at the altar of our church. And I suspect that so many other things have not changed at all. Time passes, the world shifts, our lives progress, and we live into the movement of it all, touched by the grace of a loving God, all the while. People we have loved have left this life and taken their place in the eternal embrace of God’s love, and babies have been born and baptized into our community of faith.

As you read this first bulletin column of the New Year, I will be ascending and descending the holy mountain of St. Patrick, which stands sentinel on Ireland’s western seaboard, within sight of the home where I grew up with my siblings, and where I have just spent the Christmas with my family. For all of us here, it has been an occasion of grace, You can well imagine how rarely the priest in the family gets to be with his own at this special time of the year. My mother has been particularly appreciative of the opportunity for us all to be together for Christmas - a rare gift indeed. Know that as I climb the pilgrim path and celebrate Eucharist in the little chapel on the summit, you will all be in my prayer intentions.

Today is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and is the eighth day of Christmas. According to the song, it is the day when Eight “maids-a-milking” were sent as a gift. Many may not be aware, but the origins of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song lie in a time when Catholics in Ireland and England were persecuted for their faith, and the song became a coded catechism, used to pass the faith along to children. The ‘eight maids-a-milking’ represent the Eight Beatitudes, and I think this is a fitting reminder as we begin our new year of 2017. Letting go of 2016 with all that it held for us in favor of a new year, when we are invited to remember what a life lived in the light of the Beatitudes might look like and be for us, is certainly prompting me to hope, joy and goodness.

And so, until I see you all next weekend, I make the prayer of today’s first reading my prayer for all of us at this beginning of a New Year:

The LORD bless you and keep you!
The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!
The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!