"ADVENT LIGHT".....MY PARISH ADVENT SERIES BEGINS FOR THE NEXT 4 MONDAYS TONIGHT..........

I am excited about the start of the Parish Advent Series tonight, as I get everytime it is time to conduct another one.  For nearly three months I have been planning and preparing for the next 4 Monday nights of Advent.  Having found what Iconsider an excellent book by Twenty Third Publications and their Threshold Bible Study, this volume is titled, "ADVENT LIGHT", by Stephen J. Binz. It is a series of short reflections on the Advent and Christmas Scriptures, with ample discussions for the further shared discussion of the participants.  We are focusing on six lessons of the Advent Word of God, each of the 4 Mondays, and I and Father Steven Avella, our Parish Mission presenter  next week, will use the Christmas Reflections together and I will also fold them into my Christmas preaching.....Father Tony Traynor are heading out the rectory now to attend the Funeral Mass of Monsignor James Church's sister, Catherine Mae Church Jones.  Cathy was a First Grade Teacher by profession and had suffered from Parkinson's Disease the past quarter of a century.  She went home to God last week at age 76.  I have known since the summer of 2006, when I was assigned to Presentation Parish and was privileged to celebrate monthly Mass for and with her, and the residents of College Oak Care Center.  Cathy was assertive and articulate all her life, and kept me and the parish priests punctual, as on Mass Day at College Oak each month, she would remind the care center aides to be sure all the Catholics were gotten ready to come to the Mass in the facility Rec Room, and if I or Father Andrew were late, she would insist we be called immediately.  In the last years of her kife she could hardly talk as valiantly as she continued to communicate, and succeeded in getting her messages about things important to her understood and acted upon.  May God now grant Cathy Eternal Life..........Fr,  Troy