St. Lambert Parish Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord · 12/29/2019  · December 29, 2019 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 3 The Escape to Egypt - Matthew 2:13-15 An angel of

St. Lambert Parish Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord

I have called my son out of Egypt.

December 29, 2019

The Holy Family of Mary, Joseph and Jesus

Mt 2:15

Sunday Offertory Collection

Dec 14/15, 2019 Envelopes: $5,120.00 Loose: 1,669.00 GiveCentral: 655.00 Total: $7,444.00

Youth Church: $ 25.00 Simbang Gabi:$1,510.60

Thank you for your continued support!

For Online Giving go to: www.givecentral.org

Page 2 St. Lambert Parish The Holy Family

The Coffee Hour will be hosted next week by the St Lambert Senior Club and the contact

is Marilyn Sala. She can be reached at 847-675-5103. Your assistance is

greatly needed.

If you would like to host a coffee hour please contact Marcella Young.

Eucharistic Vigil

“The Lord thy God thou shalt adore, and Him only shalt thou serve" -Matthew 4:10

Join us on next Sunday, January 5, 2020 for the Eucharistic Vigil starting at 1:15 pm followed by the Holy Hour from 3 to 4 pm and Latin Mass at 5 pm.

St. Lambert Intercessors’ prayer hour follows after the noon mass every Sunday in the chapel. Our prayer teams and members intercede for the needs of St. Lambert parish and individual parishioners. Join us in prayer; drop your written petitions into our prayer box; or request of us immediate soaking prayer in private with you. You may also email us your petition(s) at [email protected]. Blessings with affections in Christ, Intercessors of St.Lambert

READINGS FOR THE WEEK Monday: 1 Jn 2:12-17; Ps 96:7-10; Lk 2:36-40 Tuesday: 1 Jn 2:18-21; Ps 96:1-2, 11-13; Jn 1:1-18 Wednesday: Nm 6:22-27; Ps 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Gal 4:4-7; Lk 2:16-21 Thursday: 1 Jn 2:22-28; Ps 98:1-4; Jn 1:19-28 Friday: 1 Jn 2:29 — 3:6; Ps 98:1, 3cd-6; Jn 1:29-34 Saturday: 1 Jn 3:7-10; Ps 98:1, 7-9; Jn 1:35-42 Sunday: Is 60:1-6; Ps 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-13; Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6; Mt 2:1-12

NEW YEAR The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

―G. K. Chesterton

Bulletin Cover: Flight Into Egypt – Tiepolo

Masses for the Week

Saturday, December 28

5:00

Sunday, December 29

8:00

10:00 † Basilio Poyatos Jr.

12:00 People of St Lambert

Monday, December 30

7:15 †

Tuesday, December 31

7:15

5:00

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

10 am

12 pm

Thursday, January 2

7:15

Friday, January 3

7:15

Saturday, January 4

8:00

5:00

Sunday, January 5

8:00 People of St Lambert

10:00 † Maxine & Robert Madsen

12:00

December 29, 2019 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 3

The Escape to Egypt - Matthew 2:13-15

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet : "Out of Egypt I called my son."

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December 29, 2019 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 5

whom were in provincial dress. The scene intended to emphasize that everyone, wealthy and poor alike, must come to the manger. A Nativity from New Mexico following the Pueblo tradition was made of clay painted with traditional colors and geometric shapes. Each face was fashioned to have a prominent nose and a wide open mouth. "The idea behind it is what is most important in life is indeed life, and so therefore the breath of life, or the open mouth, and the nose that highlights that," Father Roten said in an interview for Catholic News Service. Another set from Australia contained both a koala and a kangaroo. Some figures were depicted as European and others as indigenous people; showing peace between two groups often at odds. A Swiss creche painted in subdued tones carried a subliminal message characteristic of the German tradition. Two of the wooden shepherds were intentionally identical. "You have to go to the manger in order really to know who you are, your identity as a human person because there is a danger to always consider one's self as interchangeable with another person," said Father Roten. "In other words, the two identical figures actually are a way of saying we have a tendency of seeing ourselves in whoever we meet. So the alter ego idea is highlighted there, typical of the German tradition, very ambitious and very psychological," he said. The depiction of the Nativity spans across not only cultures, but also centuries. St. Francis of Assisi is credited with erecting the first live Nativity scene in 1223 in Greccio, Italy, recreating the moment using animals, people and perhaps even an infant stand-in for Christ. The Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome contains fragments of a Nativity scene by the 13th-century sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio. Around the 18th century, small Nativity sets began to be displayed in homes, allowing for even more devout customization of the scene. "Our own beliefs and religion actually hinges upon our own tradition, the life of the family, what we heard from our father, mother, the kind of objects they left us," explained Father Roten. "We need to be very visual, very concrete, in order to represent our beliefs. ... The Bible is very important, but it's abstract. We need something a little bit more that speaks, that actually talks to the heart," he said. Father Roten suggested that, no matter what cultural traditions were followed, the Nativity be used as a tool to bring the family together in the "feast of love" known as Christmas.

Creches tell the Nativity story using materials, symbols of local culture

By Katie Rutter | Catholic News Service, December 16, 2019

An Italian Nativity scene

displayed at the University of Dayton in

Ohio Dec. 2, 2019, shows St. Joseph observing the arrival of the Magi. The university selects about 100 Nativity sets from its collection of around 3,600

to display each Christmas season.

(CNS photo/Katie Rutter)

DAYTON, Ohio (CNS) -- Each culture, if not every home, has its own unique rendition of the Nativity. The Christ child may lay on a manger made from materials as diverse as wax, blown glass, yarn, papier-mache and terra cotta. Mary might don the dress of a first-century peasant or Renaissance royalty. The ubiquitous manger scene makes the perfect illustration of enculturation, that is, adapting the principles of faith to a specific cultural setting. The Incarnation, the moment God becomes human, allows the nations to envision Christ as one of their own. "Enculturation is a step further from the Incarnation," said Marianist Father Johann Roten, a scholar at the University of Dayton and expert on cultural interpretations of the Nativity. "The Incarnation is the son of God becoming human and enculturation will then be, he becomes not only human, but he becomes Afghani or he is Persian or he is German or French," Father Roten told Catholic News Service. The University of Dayton, which is a Catholic and Marianist institution, has amassed what curators believe is the largest collection of Nativity sets in North America. The archives contain about 3,600 creches from around 100 different countries. "They're really important examples of popular devotion," said Sarah Cahalan, director of the Marian Library at the university, which houses the Nativity sets. "We have pretty comprehensive coverage for Europe and North America," she said, "so we're really excited these days to get donations of materials from the African continent, from Asia. We have a great deal of materials from Latin America." Each December the university publicly displays around 100 curated sets. On Dec. 2, the opening day of the Nativity display, a creche from France filled three tables in an attempt to portray an entire Provencal village. Along with the Holy Family, there were depictions of fishermen, peasants carrying wood, the parish priest and the town mayor, all of

some reason bureaucrats think that going to meetings is real work. They will plan endless meetings that you will be expected to attend. The devil will gradually convince you that there is nothing spiritual about the priesthood, by having you forget that he even exists. Again, C. S. Lewis:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

You will get some very strange people who think that everything is going bump in the night. I remember a woman who was absolutely frantic about being attacked by demon-possessed birds. They would charge at her windows and terrify her. I explained that male birds will charge their own reflection during mating season and that nothing supernatural was going on. She was not convinced. On the other hand, you will meet people who, when they see someone floating five feet over a bed will insist that there is just a strong updraft in the room. The middle position is the correct one. Part of the job of the priest is to be a little skeptical about spiritual phenomena. A little skeptical, just a little. We usually become so skeptical that if a miracle or a demon came up and bit us in the ankle, we wouldn’t notice it. That’s just where the devil wants the clergy. He wants us firmly planted on our fundamental fundament, and never on our knees. There is a saying, “Whom the devil cannot make bad he makes busy.” I would change it slightly for the clergy, Whom the devil would make bad he would first make busy. I am a lousy prayer. There is so much else I have to do. God is very patient. When I come late to prayer, and spend only a little time, the Lord never gets mad. On the other hand, the people who so want you to see things the way they seem things will get very huffy if you are late for their event, or only spend a little while at it. The Almighty usually gets the leftovers in my life, because, oddly, the All Powerful never insists on having His own way – unlike the head of the parish llama herding committee.

ADVICE TO A YOUNG SEMINARIAN - PART 8 Letter to Robinson K. Russo a young seminarian, continued… For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12) As a priest, you will be in constant danger of thinking that your struggle is against the parish council, the finance committee and the diocesan bureaucracy. It is not. Our struggle is against the devil. In his brilliant book, “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis has the devil calling human beings, “amphibians.” We live like frogs on the edge of the pond. We, like the frogs, live in two worlds. They live in water and on the land. We live in a spiritual realm and a physical realm. It is much easier to live on the land, quite frankly. You can see what’s out there more easily and travel becomes simply backward and forward sort of arrangement; whereas in the water, vision may be obscured, and opportunities as well as dangers are much more omni-directional. So it with us, especially us priests. The visible world is much easier to deal with. The devil will try to convince us that the real work of the priesthood is dealing with baptisms, weddings and funerals (called the hatch, match and dispatch part of the business) we get the ceremonies done with as little hassle as possible. It always amazes me that people will complain to the proper authority, meaning the bishop if they were unhappy with your “performance.” (I am not making this up. A person, not a parishioner, not even a Catholic, used that exact word in a letter to the bishop regarding a funeral I offered.) You will fight with wedding planners who want the bride brought down the aisle in a chariot drawn by llamas, and you will fight with the mother of the bride who wants the llamas to remain in the sanctuary during the Mass. (This part I am making up, but not by much.) Above all, the devil will want you to believe that the most important thing you will do is go to meetings. For

The Reverend Know-it-all “What I don’t know… I can always make up!”

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Rectory: 8148 N Karlov Avenue Skokie, IL 60076 Phone: (847) 673-5090 E-mail: [email protected] St. Lambert Parish - Skokie, IL Sunday Masses: (5 pm Sat) 8am, 10am, 12pm Weekday Masses: 7:15 am (Mon-Fri) 8am on Sat. Confessions: Saturday at 8:30am

Pastor: Rev. Richard Simon Rev. Know-it-all: reverendknow-it-all. blogspot.com Deacon: Mr. Chick O’Leary Music Director: Mr. Steven Folkers Office Staff: Debbie Morales-Garcia Mr. George Mohrlein

The worst is the late-night party. People will invite you to an event that starts at 8:00 PM. They will expect you to stay until midnight. No mind that you must be up at 5:30 AM to be awake for a 6:30 AM Mass at which you will be expected to preach a reasonably coherent, but very brief, sermon. They will say, “But father, it’s only once in a blue moon.” For them maybe. For you it happens a few times a week. There are birthdays, there are anniversaries, there is the arrival of the Nouveau Beaujolais. Most people celebrate the great events in the lives of ten or twenty people. You will have a family of thousands. That’s at least three or four birthdays a day. They will expect you to get just a little tipsy to help them celebrate the great event. That means you will need treatment for alcohol or liver failure or maybe both in pretty short order. Once Jesus was asked, “What is the work of God?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) Remember that the Greek word in question is “pisteuein.” To

believe in modern English primarily means “to be of an opinion” the word in the text of scripture, “pisteuein” primarily means to trust. The Christian’s first task is to trust Jesus. How do you learn to trust someone? By getting to know them. Time spent in the study of Scripture and time spent on one’s knees before the Blessed Sacrament is the great task of the priest. If you have no spiritual power, what can you give a world ensnared by the devil? There is a great deal of talk these days about accompanying the people. What good is my company, if Christ does not accompany me? The great work of the priest is accomplished in prayer; and the world, the flesh, and the devil will conspire to keep you from prayer, and for the most part I go happily along with them, forgetting the incredible power that waits for me in prayer. To be continued.

December 29, 2019 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 7

Website: www.StLambert.org To Register as a Parishioner: Go to stlambert.org under “About Us” or by phone. Bulletin Guidelines: Submissions should be received at the office 10 days preceding the date of bulletin publication. Submissions should be in electronic format and sent to debbie.stlambert. @aol.com.

Religious Education : Gina Roxas [email protected] Baptisms: Third Sundays of the month at 1:30 pm. Baptismal Prep Class is the first Tuesday of each month at 7 pm. For guidelines and to register call the rectory. Weddings: Arrangements must be made 6 months in advance.