Merry Christmas everyone!  Christmas is a season that starts on December 25th, not ends!  This weekend we celebrate the Holy Family, on New Year’s it is Mary the Mother of God and the World Day of Prayer for Peace.  Next weekend is the Epiphany and the arrival of the Magi.  The Christmas concludes on January 12 as we honor Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan.  

‘Thank you!’ to all the church decorators, singers and musicians, liturgical ministers, servers, ushers, scouts and everyone who helped to make our Christmas Masses so beautiful and memorable.  It was all going great until this happened during the Midnight Mass (if you haven’t already seen it making the rounds) . . .

Thank you for the patience of all who were in attendance, and for Comtronics owner John Campau for leaving his pew to help us solve the problem!

I want to acknowledge everyone who helped with the 26th Community Wide Christmas Dinner, especially our business sponsors, chairs and co-chairs.  There were plenty of helpers on hand and it was the biggest crowd we have entertained at the dinner since Covid.  

Lastly, many thanks to the many kind people who brought gifts, spirits, food and baked goods to me and the Queens staff for Christmas!  Your generosity is always overwhelming and very much deeply appreciated! 

Wednesday January 1^st is the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, a holy day of obligation.  All those expected to attend Mass on Sundays are expected to attend on holy days as well.  New Year’s Day is also the World Day of Prayer for Peace.  Queens will have three holy day Masses:  a 5:30pm Vigil Mass on New Year’s Eve Tuesday December 31^st and on Wednesday, January 1^st, New Year’s Day, holy day Masses are scheduled for 9 and 11am.  Regardless of what new year’s resolutions you’re making, make sure one of them is to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days and to invite your family and friends to do the same.

MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD is a feast day steeped in both history and controversy.  I will have much to say about why in the homily at Mass for the solemnity, but it all boils down to this:  If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, then Mary is the Mother of God.  It does not make her a goddess, just the chosen one, conceived without sin by the grace of God to become the mother of His son and our savior, Jesus. 

Great 50/50 Raffle tickets are on sale after all weekend Masses and at the parish and school office during the week.  Checks should be made payable to ‘Jackson Catholic Schools.’  Your $100 ticket enrolls you in 10 monthly drawings in 2025.  Two winners will be chosen each month.  In the recent past, each monthly winner has walked away with somewhere between $2,000 and $2,500!  The prize is determined by the number of tickets sold by January 31, 2025.   

With school being out of session for the holidays there is NO middle school or high school youth group this weekend, December 28-29, or next weekend, January 4-5.  The Youth Group resumes meeting on Sunday January 12th.    

S3 COMMITENT WEEKEND is coming up January 25-26 here at Queens.  During the Masses that weekend I will be asking everyone who has yet to financially support this campaign to make a one-time gift or pledge commitment.  We will be taking time in the Mass for you to fill out the cards in the pews.  Pledge cards and pencils will be provided for that purpose.  Commitment weekend took us over goal in the Witness to Hope Campaign of 2016 as we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single weekend.  We still need over $300,000 to make our S3 target goal of $2,665,000.  I believe we can do it and I believe we will do it!

These are my closing arguments in asking for the support of Saints and Scholars.  This campaign is vitally important.  As Americans turn away in droves from the Catholic Church and faith in general, we who remain must make sure our children know who God is.  If they do not, then they will never fully understand themselves. 

Pope St. John Paul the Great was fond of quoting the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, where it says, “Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all . . . truths find their root and attain their crown” (GS, 22).  When we teach children about the God who made them, we are also teaching them who they are and what they are called to become – saints and scholars, the goal of every penny raised in this campaign. 

Our current history is bearing this out as people are all of a sudden confused about topics that used to be etched in stone, things like how many genders there are, what is a woman, when life begins, whether gender is assigned at birth or something we decide at a later time.  The moral laxity and confusion of our times stems largely from people abandoning a ‘Biblical worldview’ where there is the rule of Absolute Truth and the Natural Law.  In this worldview, some things are always true and always right, where other things are never true and always wrong.  One thing we can guarantee in a Catholic school, there is no confusion about who God is and who we are.  We teach truth and try to live by it inside and outside of church and school. 

If we pay teachers more, we will hire and retain better teachers who are on mission and on fire for the Lord and for the Catholic faith.  More financial aid will make a Catholic education available to more and more people.   We need over 300 gifts to this campaign on Commitment Weekend in order to meet and surpass our participation total from the 2016 Witness to Hope Campaign.  I believe we can do it if we all work together and take a shared responsibility for our schools.  Perhaps you have no children, your children are grown, or you and your kids went to public school, that doesn’t mean you can’t become an ardent supporter of making saints and scholars by donating to this campaign.  Everyone who has a concern for the ideologies polluting and indoctrinating the minds of today’s youth should join me in making a sacrificial gift to this campaign. 

Some people have told me they don’t want to make a gift to support the Saints and Scholars Campaign because they believe it will somehow deny help for our local schools.  To those that think that, I say this:  a gift to S3 is meant to be above and in addition to our support of the parish offertory and current help we may already be providing for Jackson Catholic Schools and/or Lumen Christi, at the same time acknowledging that these causes are all worthy causes and interconnected, none of them are mutually exclusive.

Lumen Christi is set to receive $2,000,000 of S3 funds.  Every teacher in the four Jackson Catholic Schools will see pay increases and potential retention bonuses thanks to S3 support.  The families of the 1,000 students enrolled in Jackson Catholic Schools will be able to seek greater resources for financial aid thanks to gifts and pledges made to S3.  The Jackson Catholic Schools supports the Saints and Scholars Campaign because S3 supports JCS!

The link below will take you to the Saints and Scholars website where you can set up your gift or pledge commitment:

CAMPAIGN PRAYER

Lord, everything we have is a gift from you. 
You call us to receive your gifts with thanks,  
to develop these gifts fully, 
and to share them generously.
Through the Stewardship for Saints and Scholars campaign
help every young person in the Diocese of Lansing
see your truth, beauty, and goodness;
help families to raise their children in the Faith;
and help parishes make a truly Catholic education
available to all.
May the work of this campaign bear abundant fruit
in the Saints and Scholars you are raising up for the future.
We ask these blessings through Christ our Lord.
Amen.   

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us 

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teaching” (Heb 13:8-9).

I wish all of you a very Merry 12 Days of Christmas and a Happy New Year 2025 that is full of health, happiness and holiness! 

Fr. Tim MacDonald

Pastor

Queen of the Miraculous Medal Catholic Church

606 S. Wisner St.  Jackson, Michigan 49203

(517) 783-2748  www.queenschurch.com