November 29, 2023

Letter From the Pastor – December 3, 2023

One of the best loved of all Christmas carols is “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, written more than a hundred years ago.  The first part of the song is primarily historical, celebrating those events that surrounded the birth of Jesus.  But the last verse makes Christmas a very personal thing.  It says: “O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend on us we pray.  Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.” We have never understood Christmas until it goes beyond a historical fact and becomes a personal experience.  It is true, of course, that all of us […]
November 22, 2023

Letter From the Pastor – November 26, 2023

                Six days a week – Monday through Saturday – we live our lives in a highly competitive world.  Nations compete for power.  Politicians compete for votes.  Business competes for customers.  Workers compete for victories.  All of us, it seems, are competing with someone for something that both of us want but only one of us can have.  That is how we live six days a week.  Then on Sunday we come to church at Annunciation-Our Lady of Fatima for worship and encounter a totally different emphasis.  In Church we pray that God’s […]
November 16, 2023

Letter From the Pastor – November 19, 2023

I read a story recently about a woman who got on a crowded subway in New York City.  When a man got up and offered her a seat, the surprise was so great that she fainted.  When the woman recovered she said, “thank you”, and the man fainted. I suspect that this story isn’t true.  Well at least, I am reasonably sure it isn’t.  But one wonders how much of it is really exaggerated!!  It seems that in our society common courtesy and simple gratitude seem to be so rare that we are pleasantly surprised by them. We need to […]
November 8, 2023

Letter From the Pastor – November 12, 2023

There is a sense in which every area of life places upon us a category of   demands, a minimum set of duties which we are required to meet.  An employee is expected to show up for work at a particular time, remain on the job a certain number of hours, and do certain things while he is there.  To meet these demands is his duty.  He’s expected to perform at least at this level. The same thing is true of family life.  To be a father or a mother, a husband or a wife demands that certain minimal duties be […]
November 2, 2023

Letter From the Pastor – November 5, 2023

In recent times a great deal of news centers on the Middle East.  As we all know in the year 70 AD, the Roman legions, under the leadership of Titus, put down a Jewish rebellion, over ran the city of Jerusalem, and scattered its inhabitants to the four winds.  At that point, for all practical purposes there was no longer a nation of Israel.  The Jews had no homeland.  This dispersion    continued for one thousand, eight hundred, seventy-eight years. In 1948, the modern nation of Israel was established with Tel Aviv as its  capital.  Now, for almost 75 years, […]