Dear Parishioners and Visitors,

May God bless you on a job well done!  To facilitate our charitable assistance endeavors this year, the Parish Outreach Committee, acting on your behalf, opted to collaborate with the Lincoln Woodstock Rotary to provide Thanksgiving baskets and Christmas dinners and gifts to area friends in need of support.  Especially meritorious were your gifts sent to the rectory, placed in the Poor Box, and left under the Giving Tree.  Stuart Anderson, our liaison between the Parish Outreach Committee and the Rotary, reports below how these generous gestures on your part affected the Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations of the beneficiaries. 

With such a positive impact the St. Joseph’s Parish helped support, nourish, sustain, and bring peace and joy to the following:

▪ 32 Families with Thanksgiving baskets containing turkey dinners and all the trimmings.
▪ 77 Individuals consisting of seniors, veterans, widows, and widowers, with hot dinners on Thanksgiving Day.
▪ 34 Families at Christmas with much needed clothing, gifts, toys, books, arts and crafts, toiletries, and food boxes.
▪ 174 Individuals consisting of seniors, veterans, widows, and widowers, with meals and fruit baskets delivered just before Christmas by teams of carol singers.

Furthermore, the generosity of St. Joseph’s Parish was so plentiful that we were able to extend our support to neighboring communities.

Once again, thank you.  The kindness demonstrated by the Parish is praiseworthy and strengthens the Rotary mottos of ‘Service Above Self’ and ‘People of Action’.

Aside from “thank you and God bless you,” what more can be said?

Peace,
Fr. John Mahoney

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

With deep joy and gratitude, I extend to you – parishioners and visitors alike – my prayerful best wishes for a holy and blessed Christmas Season and New Year!

Several years ago, I received a Christmas card with this message: “This Christmas, I wish you Jesus.”  On the inside it read: “Isn’t it nice to have everything!”  Miracles came to us in all shapes and sizes during this past Advent Season, but the perfect gift was the miracle found in the manger on that first Christmas morning – a perfect gift because it keeps on giving and giving and giving.

The Christmas Season has a way of bringing back to church individuals and families who, for various reasons, have not been to Mass for a while.  What a wonderful and grace-filled opportunity to put aside past differences and old habits and to begin anew into 2022 that prayerful relationship with the Lord.  Over the year to come – and amid all our current challenges and concerns – may we grow together in strength and grace to know and celebrate God’s presence in our lives.

May our Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, bless you, your families and loved ones at this holy time of hope and grace, and may Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother, watch over you always.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Fr. John Mahoney