The Grace of God Has Appeared! (Titus 2:11)

This verse from the Christmas Mass at Night sums up the blessings God has showered upon IHM in 2024.  “The grace of God has appeared” in our midst in countless ways thanks to so many people sharing their gifts with our parish family.  

Isn’t it amazing how people all over the world make a special effort to exchange gifts during the Christmas season?  What is the original reason for this practice?  It is a way to imitate God.  God gave the first gift of Christmas when, for love of the world, He gave His only-begotten Son so that we might have eternal life (cf. John 3:16).  Let us remember this reason for the season.  Then every gift we give or receive will be a way of exchanging some of God’s love with each other.  This is what brings Christmas from the distant past into the light of our present moment.     
 
God has blessed our parish with a few special gifts this Christmas through the generosity of the Knights of Columbus and an anonymous donor.

New Projectors:  After 15 years of faithful service, the projectors in church began to lose their faithfulness.  Occasionally, one or the other would fail, then eventually they both died.  Members of our parish Knights of Columbus Council took notice and offered to help.  After consultation with numerous parishioners and members of our Parish Ministry Team (staff) we now have two High Performance Pro Class Laser Projectors (Eiki EK-1300LU 13,000 Lumen 3LCD) with long-throw zoom lenses.  

New Projection Screens:  Our video technicians have often been challenged to resize video to fit the proportions of our screens.  So, in addition to the projectors, we decided to upgrade our screens to the proportions that are more common for contemporary videos.  This upgrade gave us an extra 24” horizontally. 
The vast majority of the cost for these upgrades was paid for by our parish Knights of Columbus Council, with the remaining cost paid by an anonymous donor.  For this we are filled with gratitude.      

New Pews:  The word is out:   we are also planning to get new pews in the church.  An anonymous donor is tired of having our clothing stick to the pews.  This has been a problem since the Covid Era when sanitizing cleansers stripped the finish from the pews.  So, even though some may be sentimentally attached to these pews from the original church (1969), it is obvious that we should honor this person’s request, which I suspect is shared by many others.  Currently we have plans to reuse the wood for things like crosses and interior walls.  If any of you would like a portion of an original pew just let us know.  The new pews will not be a Christmas gift.   But we hope to have them in by Easter.

I am amazed by the generosity of our parishioners!   You give of your time, talent, prayers, treasure, faith, hope and love.  In the spirit of Christmas, you give to our parish family in so many ways all year long.  Thanks for the blessing you are to me, Fr. Andrew, Fr. Tadeusz and our whole parish family.  You are truly instruments through which “the grace of God has appeared, saving all…” (Titus 2: 11).

May you have a Blessed Christmas Season.
Your Loving Shepherd,
Fr. Ernest Bayer