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Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 18, 2016

Coffee and Donuts - There will be Coffee and Donuts today following the 10AM Mass.  Please join us in the social hall in the school basement.

Update Membership Information - If you have moved, changed your contact information,  or had a change in the members of your household since registering with Mater Dei, please send this information to the office before the end of the year so that we can update your records.

Year End Contributions - Those considering making a year-end donation, please remember Mater Dei as we prepare to look toward the long-term future of our community.

Adult Convert / Confirmation Class - On Tuesdays at 7pm we offer our Convert / Adult Confirmation class taught by Fr. Eichman.  There will be class this Tuesday, before we take a Christmas break.  Classes will resume Tuesday, January 10.

Sunday  Parking Reminder - We have permission to park behind the buildings located across the street from the church during evenings and weekends.  The entrance to these parking spaces is by way of Academy Alley, which is directly behind these houses.  It is the first alley immediately after State Street.  These parking spaces can only be reached by turning left off Front Street.  Please report any incident that might cause the owners concern, as we do not want to jeopardize the parking hospitality given to us from these generous property owners.  Also remember, the parking lot along the side of St. Lawrence is not to be used.

Accepting Mass Intentions - We are now accepting Mass Intentions for 2017.  Mass offering envelopes can be found on the cabinet in the vestibule.  Note: for any Mass stipend received which is over $10, the excess amount is placed in the general fund.

Hand Missals For Sale - 1962 Daily Hand Missals are available for purchase in the church office for $55.  The edition was published in 2008 by Baronius Press in association with the Fraternity of St. Peter.

Stay Home if Sick - If you are sick and contagious, it is not necessary to come to Mass.  In such instances, it is an act of charity toward your fellow parishioners, especially those more susceptible to illness, to remain at home.

Christmas Schedule

Christmas Eve

  • 8:00am Adoration (Confessions during)
  • 9:00am Low Mass (Confessions following Mass)

Christmas

  • 12:00am Midnight Sung Mass (No Confessions before Mass)
  • 8:00am Low Mass
  • 10:00am Sung Mass

Jan 1 - Octave of the Nativity

  • 8:00am Low Mass
  • 10:00am Sung Mass (Benediction following)

Jannuary 5

  • 7:10am Low Mass
  • 7:00pm Blessing of Epiphany Water (No Mass)

Humility Makes Us Love Our Own Abjection

 In all and through all, you should love your own abjection.  But you will ask me what it is to love your own abjection.  In Latin, abjection signifies humility, and humility signifies abjection: so that when our Lady, in her sacred canticle, says that all generations should call her blessed, because our Lord had regarded the humility of His handmaid, her meaning is that our Lord had graciously looked down on her abjection, her meanness and lowliness to heap His graces and favors upon her.

Nevertheless, there is a difference between the virtue of humility and our abjection.  Our abjection is the lowliness, meanness and baseness that exists in us without our knowledge, whereas the virtue of humility is a true knowledge and voluntary acknowledgment of our abjection.  Now, the main point of this humility consists in being willing not only to acknowledge our abjection, but in loving and delighting in it.  This is so not through want of courage and generosity, but for the greater exaltation of the divine Majesty and holding our neighbor in greater estimation than ourselves.

To this I exhort you, and that you may comprehend me more clearly, I tell you that among the evils which we suffer, some are abject and others honorable.  Many can easily accommodate themselves to those evils that are honorable, but scarce anyone to such as are abject.  When you see a devout old hermit covered with rags, everyone honors his tattered habit and compassionates his sufferings; but if a poor tradesman or a poor gentleman be in the same predicament, the world despises and scoffs at him – you see how his poverty is abject.

A religious man receives a sharp reproof from his superior with meekness like a child from his father, and everyone calls this mortification, obedience and wisdom; but should a gentleman or lady suffer the same from another and although it were for the love of God, it is then called cowardice and want of spirit.

Behold, then, here another evil that is abject.  One has a canker in his arm and another in his face; the first has only the disease, but the other together with the disease, has contempt, disgrace and abjection.  I say then that we must not only love the evil which is the duty of patience, but also embrace the abjection by virtue of humility.

A Devout Life: Part 3, Ch. 6