Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year!

We have a special visitor coming to our home this Christmas! I am so excited!

We are part of an apostolate with 9 other families, called Pilgrim Queen of the Family, in which we each welcome a shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe into our home for 3 days a month. While she is in our home we pray a daily family rosary. When we received the schedule for December, it was an extra special treat to anticipate having her with us on Christmas Day.

This Christmas I will pray for each of my family members and friends. As our Blessed Mother knows each of our desires, challenges and struggles, we will entrust these to her loving arms, so she can present them to her Son. I will pray the Lord will increase our faith, increase our hope and open our hearts to say “YES” to the inspirations we receive from the Holy Spirit through our Blessed Mother’s intercession.

This Advent, our family journeyed through the Old Testament from creation to the birth of Christ by creating a Jesse tree. It is a wonderful gift to be able to pass this on to our children, while truly learning these ourselves. Tracing Jesus’ family tree has given us a new found appreciation of how faithful God is to us; He kept His promise to send us a Saviour. We break our promises, time and time again, but God is always faithful.

We look forward to attending Christmas Eve mass in a special location this year, and my husband and eldest son are assisting with the liturgy. In the passed, at this celebration I struggle with deep sadness as the pews fill up with families who seem to forget Christ during the remainder of the year. This year, by the grace of God I have a new found hope for those families who will attend; I have a certainty that those who attend will leave the celebration with a sense of renewal, I pray they will open their hearts to respond to the call of Christ and with deep gratitude that they will start their Christmas celebration by seeking out Christ in the Eucharist.

God Bless!