CELEBRATING THE BIRTHDAY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST WITH THE SACRAMENTO PORTUGUESE COMMUNITY..........

Yesterday, the liturgical Solemnity of the Birthday of John the Baptist, which is a special patronal feast for my Portuguese Cape Verdean ancestors, I visited the home of the Vincent Family in South Sacramento for the annual celebration their family hosts. Since the late 1940's when Mr. and Mrs. Louis and Jeanette Vincent migrated from Fall River, Massachusetts to Sacramento, the Birthday of John the Baptist has been celebrated on June 24, with special Masses, processions, festas, and fun. More than one hundred persons representing five generations of the Vincent Family and the local, Sacramento Portuguese Community, were gathered throughout the day for Mass at St. Elizabeth's church, followed by a special breakfast, and then in the mid afternoon into the evening at the family home in Parkway Estates an outdoor Mass, followed by a festa dinner of traditional Portuguese foods, prepared annually by differently designated members of the Vincent clan. As it has been for six and a half decades, the Birthday of St. John the Baptist, whose God given mission and ministry being the Final Prophet and the Ultimate Herald to the Birth of Jesus as the, Christ, the true Messiah of God's People, was again wonderully celebrated..........As We Continue To Behold The Lamb Of God Proclaimed By The Baptizer, Fr. Troy