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