The St. Mary's Children's Choir will be featured guests at the Northboro Area Community Chorus Concert next Sunday (December 8th) at Algonquin Regional High School at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are $5 at the door. Please come and show your support for our choir kids.
St. Mary's is forming a youth group for teens in High School. Anyone interested is invited to join Fr. Javier on Sunday, December 8th at 7:00 PM in the Media Center. All are welcome!
Begin your Thanksgiving Day by giving God thanks around the Table of the Eucharist and receive again the gift of God’s love and abundant blessings. Then your Thanksgiving dinner and the time you spend with family and friends will have even more meaning. Please bring a bag of non-perishable food with you to Mass on Thanksgiving and bring it forward to the altar during the offertory procession.
Our first-ever Breakfast with Santa will be held on Sunday, December 8th. Stop by for a delicious breakfast and visit with Santa! This event is $10 per child (includes activities) and $8 per adult. The cap per family is $50. Children under the age of 2 eat free!
Saint Mary School would like to invite the seniors of the parish to its annual luncheon on Friday, November 22nd from 11:30am to 1:30pm. Please join us for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Space is limited so please reserve early! RSVP to Jamie Horvath at 719-322-3532 or Ljjb14@hotmail.com by Monday, November 18th.
On the following dates, there will be training for Liturgical Ministers. The sessions are open to all who are interested in being a minister in the Church. • Eucharist Ministers-Wednesday, November 13 and Thursday, November 21. • Lectors-Thursday, November 14 and Wednesday, November 20. • Altar Servers-Tuesday, November 19 and Thursday, November 21. All the training will take place at 7:00 pm in the church.
Online Volunteer Registration is Open!!! For the St. Mary's Festival to be successful we need hundreds of volunteers to do a little bit of everything before, during, and after the Family Festival. We have over 700 volunteer slots to fill! Volunteer opportunities range from selling tickets to helping kids at the inflatables, and all kinds of things in between.
Have you been feeling hurt, angry, or demoralized about the sexual abuse crisis plaguing the Catholic Church? With these scandals in mind, our parish has decided to share with you a new book by Bishop Robert Barron. The book is titled Letter to a Suffering Church: A Bishop Speaks on the Sexual Abuse Crisis. A free copy of the book for everyone in the parish is available today. For Catholics questioning their faith, searching desperately for encouragement and hope, this book will offer reasons to stay and fight for the Body of Christ.
2019 St Mary’s Family Festival Grand Raffle Tickets can now be purchased! Tickets are $100 an only 800 Tickets will be sold. Enter for your chance to win: GRAND PRIZE: $ 15,000 SECOND PRIZE: $5,000 THIRD PRIZE: $1,000 Winner to be drawn at 5:00 PM on Sunday, September 15, 2019 at the St Mary’s Family Festival
This past Sunday’s celebration of the Feast of Pentecost marked the culmination and conclusion of another Easter season. As we celebrated the birth of the Church we were reminded again that the gift of the Holy Spirit has also been given to us. As on that very first Pentecost the Holy Spirit continues to empower, guide and unite the disciples of Jesus Christ. In a world and nation so divided and polarized we look for and celebrate experiences where unity, friendship and love bring us together. These become for us true modern day signs of the Holy Spirit still present and active in our world.
We will celebrate the Feast of the Lord’s Ascension May 30th. The schedule of Masses for this holy day of obligation are 8:30am With St. Mary School, 12:00 Noon, 7:00 pm
Next weekend on Mother’s Day children of all ages and even adults will find traditional and unique ways to honor, celebrate and remember their mothers. With gifts and flowers, brunch or even breakfast in bed, we will express our love and gratitude.
Every year for the last 3 years at St. Mary's, during Lent, we schedule a Lenten meal packaging program with an organization called Rise Against Hunger. They are affiliated with Catholic Relief Services. Check out the photos from this year's event held on Saturday, April 6th.
Congratulations to the 21 adults from our parish who participated in last weekend’s Light of the World Retreat. We continue to pray that this experience will renew and deepen your faith in Jesus Christ as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter.
Here are a few photos from our Lenten Soup Supper and Stations of the Cross last night. We invite you to join us next week for a simple meal of soup and bread at 6:00 PM and stay for the candlelit Stations of the Cross at 7:00 PM. Hope to see you there!
The St. Mary Fish Fry Committee would like to thank all of our sponsors, volunteers and attendees for their part in the largest Lenten Fish Dinner to date! Thanks to a team of more than 100 volunteers, we served 880 meals which included 430 pounds of fish, 28 large pizzas, 120 servings of mac&cheese, 3 sheet cakes, and 700 cookies! We hope you enjoyed your meal!
This winter certainly has not been the worst one we have endured here in New England, but it sure is hanging on with these smaller storms. Even without any blizzards, however, when the month of March arrives we all seem to be more than ready for Spring. The Red Sox spring training camp is well underway in Florida, and this week on Ash Wednesday we will begin our spiritual “spring training camp” as Christian disciples. The 40 days of Lent each year give us all the opportunity to get back into spiritual shape.
Massachusetts bishops are addressing the state’s Catholics prior to the Feb. 21-24 Vatican Summit on the sexual abuse crisis. It is a crisis, they say, “that has again enveloped the life of the Church.” “The Summit Meeting, convoked by Pope Francis, will involve the presidents of over 180 Episcopal Conferences from throughout the world; along with (Boston) Cardinal (Sean) O’Malley, participating in his role as President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Children. The goal of the Summit Meeting, as stated by the Holy Father, is ‘catechesis’ of the episcopal conferences,” the bishops said in a letter to the people of the Commonwealth, published below.
We are still in the Christmas season of giving and receiving gifts - all done in imitation of our God who gave His Son, Jesus, to the world. There are so many different cultural traditions and customs surrounding this season, but “gifts” seem to be the common denominator in every land. Last Sunday on the Feast of the Holy Family I shared an ancient Jewish folktale and was asked to share it again with you in my January blog.
We extend our thanks to Yli & Marilyn Vallejo for coordinating our second SIMBANG GABI Mass at St. Mary's last Saturday afternoon. This Filipino Christmas tradition celebrates the nine days of waiting for the coming of Christmas with the "Misa de Gallo"- Mass of the Rooster each morning at 4:00 am. Thank you to our Filipino parishioners and their friends who provided the music and prepared and cooked for the reception following the Mass. We will look forward to celebrating this Mass again next year.