Dear Parishioners,

Happy New Year! I want to take the time to thank the people who have helped make this Advent and Christmas season a wonderful celebration of who we are at Sacred Heart.

I would like to thank our outreach committee who took charge of helping those stricken by the affects of Hurricane Ian at St. Michael Catholic Church in Wauchula. We had an excellent helping hand from those in our parish and we are so grateful to those who aided in these efforts. Our December Giving from the Heart drive saw 75 cars deliver items of need, the largest number of individual donations we’ve had for those events. Our Giving Tree was also a huge success, with parishioners and several ministries and groups coming together to provide Christmas gifts to the children of St. Michael’s. The delivery to St. Michael’s nearly filled the equivalent of two 10’ U-Haul box trucks. My thanks go out to my brothers friars, the choir, our Knights of Columbus council, Loving Hearts, Open Doors, Secular Franciscans, Social Justice Committee, our conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the outreach committee, and most importantly, our parishioners. Thank you all for your collaboration and determination in collectively assisting our neighbors in need.

We were fortunate to continue our parish’s tradition of the celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe a few weeks back. I want to specifically thank Norma & Lazaro Hernandez and Alina & Joaquin Diaz for their continuous support of this event over the years. Out of all the parishes that I have celebrated this feast day, Sacred Heart is my favorite. We also were able to hold evening prayer with the help of our music director, Phil Jakob, and the choir. The choir, along with Phil, and our contemporary ensemble director Sam Corson, did a fabulously across all our Christmas Masses and we thank them for their efforts in aiding to what is always a memorable atmosphere celebrating the Nativity.

I’d also like to thank their families for sharing them with us during the holidays. Additionally, we thank our liturgical ministers, altar servers, the environmental committee, Eucharistic ministers, greeters, readers, and ushers for their hours of service. Thanks also to our faith formation families who produced this year’s Christmas pageant prior to the 4 p.m. Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve. Lauren Young directed the event, and I thank her and the children who participated for keeping this annual tradition active.

When we look behind the scenes, we can truly see all the hard work that our remarkable staff and volunteers do. Each and every one of our staff members and friars have been blessed with talents and we are so fortunate to have them here. When we all work together, our parish does incredible things!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
Fr. Mike

Dear Parishioners,

This Christmas, I find myself thinking back to the Gospel reading we heard on the Third Sunday of Advent (Matthew 11:2-11), pondering at the words used by Jesus asking the people what they were looking for. The questions being “what did you go out to see?” and “why?”…

“What did you go out to the desert to see?
A reed swayed by the wind?
Then what did you go out to see?
Someone dressed in fine clothing?
Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces.
Then why did you go out? To see a prophet?”

Reflecting on this Advent and Christmas season, I see parents, grandparents, college students, children, and teenagers all living out the call of charity, in not only providing monetary gifts but also gifts of compassion and servitude to those who are in dire need. These people are bringing hope, love, and Christ into the darkness and destitution of those who would not otherwise experience the season as a season of hope or good will.

The seasons of Advent and Christmas are about providing hope and giving of oneself. It’s where the words within the Gospel are truly acted out in real life. It is the time of year when people are more generous, kind, self-sacrificing, and loving towards their neighbors and friends. If you were to ask me what I get out of the season, I would tell you that it’s the peace and good will exhibited and brought forth by the good deeds of every person. We see the Kingdom of God a little more clearly though our active participation in being brothers and sisters to the least among us.

Though this time of year is filled with the busyness and anxiety of fulfilling so many holiday obligations, the season of Advent gifted us the ability to step back and reflect on our lives, while Christmas provides the us greatest gift of all: God sending his Son into the word to share his love and mercy towards all humankind. It is my hope and prayer that we all experience that generosity, love, peace within our homes, family and neighbors during this Christmas season.

Let us Pray:
The feast day of your birth resembles you, Lord
Because it brings joy to all humanity.
Old people and infants alike enjoy your day.
Your day is celebrated
from generation to generation.
Kings and emperors may pass away,
And the festivals to commemorate them soon lapse.
But your festival will be remembered until the end of time.
Your day is a means and a pledge of peace.
At your birth heaven and earth were reconciled,
Since you came from heaven to earth on that day
You forgave our sins and wiped away our guilt.
You gave us so many gifts on the day of your birth:
A treasure chest of spiritual medicines for the sick;
Spiritual light for the blind;
The cup of salvation for the thirsty;
The bread of life for the hungry.
In the winter when trees are bare,
You give us the most succulent spiritual fruit.
In the frost when the earth is barren,
You bring new hope to our souls.
In December, when seeds are hidden in the soil,
The staff of life springs forth from the virgin womb.
— St. Ephraim, the Syrian

Peace and All Good, and Merry Christmas,
Friar Henry

Dear Parishioners,

Saints of God, the Lord be with you!

In today’s first reading, Isaiah 7:10-14, the prophet recounts the experience of the Lord telling King Ahaz to ask for a sign. Ahaz refuses to obey, so the Prophet Isaiah responds saying, “the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.”

As Christians, we read that as a prediction surrounding the birth of the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ. This and many other citations are the reason the prophet Isaiah is often called the “fifth evangelist.” Today’s Gospel, Matthew 1:18-24, recounts the annunciation of Mary’s pregnancy to Joseph, who gives Jesus legitimacy and protection. Matthew quotes Isaiah with the introduction “all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet…”

Matthew’s mission in writing his Gospel account for a largely Jewish audience is to show them that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah. In Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah has come in a way that was inconceivable, since Jesus is both son of Mary, and Son of God. In Jesus, God is with us as one of us, albeit without sin.

A few years ago I wrote the following poem:

Arise from your slumber,
Get ready the feast.
With colored banners prepare the halls and the walls.
Pick a tree and decorate its’ branches,
But leave off the topping star or angel.
Let the celebration not be put off!
Our hope has come
Wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Let joyful expectation give rise to action
As recognition of even now with us Presence
Gives birth to thanks and wonder!
Still our Hope is yet to come,
Wearing honor and glory,
Robed and crowned with the vulnerable power of Love.
So let us wait,
And do a bit of fasting before the feasting,
And decorate our festal robes with Patient hope and charity.
In this great already but not yet,
Let us permit the Advent preparations for the great Christmas
celebration!

Rather than seeing Advent as merely the time before the season of Christmas, I think it better to understand Advent as its own liturgical season of patient waiting. I like to think our entire lives are like Advent, as we too wait for the fullness of the birth of Christ within us, who has been gifted to us in Baptism.

Happy Advent!
Fr. Steve

Dear Parishioners,

For many of us, Christmas is a time of comfort, of peace, and of abundance. We’re fortunate if that is the case. But what if Christmas is intended to be an annual reminder of our need for a Savior to break into our darkness? What if Advent, the season leading up to the celebration of the Incarnation, ought not make us sentimental and satisfied, but rather challenge us to live out our convictions through our baptism and to be bold heralds of Christ’s coming?

A few weeks before Advent in 1943, and from a Nazi prison cell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famed German theologian and Lutheran pastor wrote a friend, “A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.” Bonhoeffer could not be more right. The door of freedom for him then and for us today is still opened from the outside by the coming and second coming of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer, a vocal anti-Nazi dissident, was executed a year and a half later, but concluded in a final letter to his friend and Anglican bishop George Bell, “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.”

Maybe we need to push against the door a little harder. After all, don’t we already have faith in Jesus? A faith and trust that, if fully engaged, can move mountains? Our convictions should be such that once Jesus comes to open the doors of our own personal prison cells, He would need to stand back lest He be hit by the door itself! Bonhoeffer exemplified this through advocacy, as well as in his acceptance of God’s Will for his life.

Without doubt, we do indeed rejoice that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14) “to give light to those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). And it is the Incarnate Son of God who wants nothing more than to open the doors to set us free!

As we are invited to bring the Christ Child from our home Christmas Crèche to Mass next weekend to be blessed, let us remember that Jesus’ humble birthplace had no doors, the access and availability of God made flesh is open, and continues to be open to us all without any barriers. May we continue to pray for the remainder of this Advent Season and beyond, that any door keeping us from fullness of the presence of Jesus in our lives be blown off its hinges!

Parishioners are encouraged to bring their nativity scene figurines with them to any Mass on the weekend of the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Dec. 17-18), for a special blessing from the Friars. The blessing will take place after Mass.

Peace and all good,
Fr. Zack