Entries for December 2023

Dear Parishioners:

As we begin this New Year, Msgr. Leykam, Deacon Tom and I wish you a blessed, graced-filled and healthy 2024.  A new year always fills us with hope for the future.  We begin with a clean slate and anticipate the good changes we will make in our lives, our new year’s resolutions.

Jesus came into the world to “make all things new.”  Life has been profoundly and dramatically renewed by the Lord’s coming into the world to forgive sins and to open the gates of heaven.  May you and your family be filled with the joy of the Christmas season as you celebrate your new year knowing that because our savior was born, lived among us, died and rose for us, a place awaits each of us in heaven. As we begin this new year let us pray:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
 to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

On another note, I would encourage you to subscribe to the St. Louis Review; this is one way to keep informed about our Church here in St. Louis.  I would also like to remind you that information about our parish and parish events can be found on our website: annunziata.org.

Lastly, and most especially, thank you to all who so beautifully decorated our Church, to our many ministers, Margie Meyers and all volunteers for all their help and support during this Christmas Season and throughout the year.  Your ministries enhance all our celebrations and help to bring joy to all who worship here at the Church of the Annunziata.  I receive so many thankful comments about the beauty of our Church and its availability for prayer.

New Year Blessings!

Msgr. John Shamleffer

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Dear Parishioners:

Every Christmas T.V. has some movie about a heroic effort made by someone to get home by Christmas.  Following that theme, I thought this year we might make some kind of heroic effort and help someone return home for Christmas, return home to the Church of the Annunziata.

All of us know some person, some neighbor who has stopped actively participating in Church.  Maybe it is time for us to reach out to them, listen to them, and support them in returning to Church.  We know what a precious gift our faith is and like any good gift we wish to share it with others.  So I encourage each and every one of us to reach out to someone and invite him or her to join our community of faith here at Annunziata. 

Each of you by living out your faith becomes the greatest ambassador our parish community possesses.  I would also be happy to contact anyone, if you would please send me their name and number; I will invite them to join our community.

"Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice."  This week as we rejoice that the light of the world draws near, with Gaudete Sunday, I also invite you to give yourself any early gift with some quite time.  Time to be with your loved ones and with the Lord.  Let us pray for one another as we continue our Advent journey.

Advent Blessings!

Msgr. John Shamleffer

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Dear Parishioners:

A few years ago Pope Benedict in a talk to children who brought the baby Jesus, from their nativity scenes, to be blessed by him said:

"The crib is a school of life where we can learn the secret of true joy. This does not consist in having so many things, but in feeling loved by the Lord, in becoming a gift for others and loving one another. Let us look at the Nativity Scene: the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph do not seem like a very lucky family, they had their first child in the midst of great hardship, and yet are filled with deep joy, because they love each other, help each other and, above all, are certain that in their history God is at work, present in the Infant Jesus. And the shepherds? What reason would they have to rejoice? That baby will not change their condition of poverty and marginalization. But faith helps them to recognize in the 'infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger', the 'sign' of the fulfillment of the promises of God for all men 'whom he loves' (Luke 2,12.14), even for them!”.

My sisters and brothers this is what true joy is; the feeling that our personal and community lives are visited and filled by a great mystery, the mystery of God’s love.   We need more than things to rejoice, we need love and truth: we need a God close at hand, who warms our hearts, and responds to our deepest yearnings.   This God was manifested in Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary.   So that Child, that we put in the manger, is the center of everything, He is the heart of the world.   We pray that every man, woman, or child, like the Virgin Mary, may accept as a center of their lives the God who became a Child, the source of true joy.

Many thanks to all of you who make your homes a place of love and respect and that the words spoken and the acts performed there help us grow closer to the Holy Family and our Lord.  I also give thanks to our school community our leadership and faculty for helping to foster God’s graces and love on all there.

Stop by our Nativity Scene and give thanks for the real gifts of our lives.

Blessings this Holy Season as we celebrate the gift of life, the gift of love, both here at the Church of the Annunziata, in our homes and throughout the year.

Advent & Christmas Blessings!

Msgr. John Shamleffer

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