Entries for December 2024

Mass times for the Solemnity of Mary: Tuesday, December 31: 5:00 pm | Wednesday, January 1: 9:00 a.m.

Dear Parishioners:

As we begin this New Year Msgr. Leykam, Deacon Tom and I wish you a blessed, graced-filled and healthy 2025. This year is a special year in the Church, a Holy Year. Every 25 years the Church celebrates a jubilee: the Theme for this year is a Holy Year of Hope.

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 filed 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 his heavenly kingdom. 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:

This Christmas season welcome all to the Church of the Annunziata parish as we celebrate 95 years of parish life. Welcome to the stranger, the traveler, the neighborhood visitor, and the guest! Annunziata Church welcomes students home from college for a good winters rest. We welcome parishioners who have moved far away but join us again as old friends. We welcome all who have not been active of late in the Catholic faith, and hope that they will come back again and again. We welcome our faithful parishioners, loyal and true, may the Lord bless you for all that you do.

Welcome to all! May our gatherings gladden the hearts and deepen our bonds of Faith, Hope and Love.

We are after all, one people of God, redeemed by the light. May we walk by the Light and live by the Light, together in the Lord’s love, as we embark on this New Year. God bless you for all you have done this past year and for all that awaits this Holy Season.

A Christmas Prayer

Wonderful the dignity
you bestowed, O God,
on human nature
when you created it;
more wonderful still its condition
when you recreated it.
Grant we pray, that Jesus Christ your Son,
stooped to share our human nature,
so we may share the lot of his divine nature,
through that same Jesus Christ , your son, our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
has shared one life and kingly power,
one godhead, from all eternity.
Amen

Christmas Blessings!

Msgr. John Shamleffer

Msgr. John Leykam

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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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