Sunday Liturgy
Saturday: 5:00 pm
Sunday: 11:00 am
Mission Statement
We are a welcoming Christian community called to embrace and respect the uniqueness of each individual as we join together in our faith and worship. Our ongoing mission is to engage our youth, promote renewal, out reach, evangelization and ecumenical cooperation.
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Wednesday, December 31st– 5:00 pm Kathleen Montague (Anniv)
Thursday, January 1st – 11:00 am Doris & Abbey Duguay
Friday, January 2nd – 9:00 am First Friday – Zelda Shannon (Anniv)
Saturday, January 3rd – 5:00 pm Raymond Henry
Sunday, January 4th – 11:00 am Margaret Losier (Anniv)
Monday, January 5th – 9:00 am Bernadette LeBlanc/Jack Lyons
Tuesday, January 6th – 9:00 am Judy Barrett
Wednesday, January 7th – 9:00 am Eileen F. Higgins
Thursday, January 8th – 9:00 am Mary Noel
Friday, January 9th – 9:00 am No Mass
Saturday, January 10th – 5:00 pm Leah & Joseph Bourgeois
Sunday, January 11th – 11:00 am Leona Furlotte
Weekly Reflections (Homily) from Msgr. Sheehan (December 31, 2025)
EPIPHANY: GOD’S SECRET (An Essay)
Jesus came to this world to reveal a great secret, and he began its revelation when he called those three mysterious strangers from the East to visit with him when he was yet a baby. The Epiphany scene preaches his great secret by action rather than words, and the secret is simply this: there are no “foreigners” in God’s eyes. There is no chosen people; all humans have been chosen by God to be members of the same body and the sharers of the same promise. There are no outsiders or insiders; there are only the people that God loves.
Before the coming of Jesus, the equal value of all humans was not all that clear. It seemed as though God loved one people more than another. There was a “chosen people,” that people which was to produce the Messiah, and it seemed as though God paid special attention to their welfare. He chose their kings, listened to their priests, and spoke to them through his prophets.
The secret of God revealed at the Epiphany was that though the Messiah, Jesus Christ, was from the Jewish people, he was for all people. God’s secret is that in terms of his affection there is no Jew or Gentile, no male or female, no white or black or yellow or red or brown. There is only humanity and Jesus, God Incarnate, who comes to make the same promise of eternal life to every member of the species. Thus, Jesus preached to the poor, to male and female, to countryman and foreigner. He had dinner with saints and sinners. He fraternized with the disabled, held the young in his lap, and made sure that he saw the ancient Anna and Simeon before they died. His entourage included fishermen and tax collectors, women of some substance and boys still looking to make a mark in life. Pharisees came to him for advice, and Roman officers came to him for help. He was willing to speak to rulers and the ruled, and his message to all was the same: “God has forgiven the human race. All humans are saved.” He tolerated every human being, and for this he was executed.
He was executed because although humans are willing to go to heaven with God, they seem bound and determined that some other humans will go to hell. We humans have always had difficulty with tolerance. We seem to enjoy making lists of the good and the bad, “us against them” where “them” is anybody not exactly like “us.” We make those others second-class members of the human race and persecute them for being different.
We have killed each other for being a different color or nationality, for being too young or too old. We have abused each other for being female or male. We have cursed each other because we did not believe in the God of love in exactly the same way. We have made foreign nations “kingdoms of evil,” and in dealing with them we have justified any deceit in peace and any means in war.
Prejudice is a human creation, and God’s secret revealed in his Epiphany is that such prejudice is simply insane. There is no chosen people; there is no nation of assured virtue. There is no evil empire in this world except that which is carried in the sill hearts and clouded minds of each one of us.
We call each other names and fear each other because our limited intelligence prevents us from knowing each other and understanding that we share the same hopes and fears and destiny. In our silliness, we think that we will be safer if another person dies. We can’t see that if we don’t hang together we are all going to hang separately. We are all in the same boat, and it is a hospital ship.
The secret of Epiphany is that God loves each one of us despite our sometimes craziness. He became human to save every human. The fact that he was Jewish and brown-skinned and male and a carpenter was accidental to his task, just as it was irrelevant to the scope of his love.
The secret of God is that he come to save all humans because every human has an infinite value. Perhaps the sign that we humans have finally understood that secret will be when we begin to treat each other as equal children God. When we stop sending people to hell, then we will be ready to enter heaven. Because in heaven there will be male and female, Christian and non-Christian, Jew and Gentile, black and white, red and yellow and brown. In heaven we will still have our differences, but for the first time in our eternal lives it will truly make no difference. Then the banquet will begin. And Jesus will serve the meal. And truly we shall get our just deserts.
(from Emmanuel by Donald X. Burt, O.S.A.
Reprinted by permission from The Liturgical Press.)