In the month of December, we will celebrate the entirety of the Advent season, Christmas eve and day, and the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. December is always busy for pastors, parish leaders, and their people. Since this month includes two seasons, I am including two issues of Impact, one for Advent and the other for Christmas with the hope that this resource may provide encouragement for your people to celebrate “the reason for the season.” I will hold you in prayer as you help your people celebrate God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. May you be filled with great joy!
November 2025
The month of November is often filled with activity in the parish as well as in the other aspects of our lives. Liturgically the month of November is filled with special celebrations which provide an opportunity to lead our people to consider deeply their call to live as Christ’s people in the world. This month, we celebrate the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, known as All Souls Day. We also celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica and mark the end of the liturgical year and the beginning of the season of Advent, a time to anticipate the return of Christ in glory and to prepare for the celebration of the Incarnation at Christmastime. In November, we gather at table to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Our people will likely be more focused on “Black Friday” and “the Christmas season.” Advertisements will be plentiful, as will reminders of the days, count them, days, to Christmas. Maintaining attention on the presence of God and the call of Christ can be challenging this month. Still, November holds promise, as we join with family and friends for Thanksgiving. This month’s issue of Impact invites people to become more readily aware of the many blessings in their lives, to make Christ’s presence known through their stewardship of their life, gifts, and resources, and to spread Christ’s kingdom of truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, love, and peace. May your November be blessed with every good gift.
October 2025
As is the case in all three liturgical cycles during the autumn, the Sunday readings this month invite us to take the call of discipleship to heart. For many who are with us during the celebration of the Sunday liturgies, the demands of discipleship sound harsh. Yet Jesus’ teaching must be heard with the great love of the Master in our hearts and minds. This month’s readings urge us to be grateful and prayerful disciples who respond to the grace of God faithfully and with humble hearts. I will pray for you and your people this month, that you may hear the voice of the Lord speak to you in love as you embrace the call to become more Christ-like and share God’s love with the world.
September 2025
For many, September is a little like the start of a new year. Vacations wind down; school resumes; people return to their more typical routines. Our Sunday readings this month call us back to what is essential, what it means to live as a child of God and a follower of Jesus Christ. Throughout this month, the Gospel pericope is from the portion of the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus and his followers are on the road to Jerusalem, ultimately leading to the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. The Sunday narratives follow in succession, one building upon another. Our focus is on the cost of discipleship and the call to take the Gospel to heart.
August 2025
Each issue of Impact features the tag line, “Bring faith to life. Find life in faith.” Since in many ways, this month’s readings focus on faith, this issue of Impact is a reflection on the role of faith in our lives. Does our faith really direct the way in which we live, how we gather and use material possessions, the ways in which we interact with others? As we continue to enjoy the more relaxed pace of summer, I pray that you and your people will be renewed in faith, ready to be good and faithful stewards of the blessings of life, grace, love, and hope.
July 2025
This month’s readings ask us to reflect on the place of God in our hearts and lives. Where our people’s understanding of love may be influenced by movies, television, and articles on the internet as much or more than by the Gospel, we have a great opportunity to invite them to ponder the ways God’s love may make a difference in their lives, and through them, the lives of others. May you be filled with the warmth of the sun and of God’s love in these summer weeks of Ordinary Time.
June 2025
June 2025 In June, we celebrate the fullness of the mystery of God through pivotal feasts and solemnities: the Ascension of the Lord, Pentecost, Holy Trinity, Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Each invites us to focus on who God is and who we are called to be as God’s people. This month’s issue of Impact includes a reflection on the Holy Spirit, ever-present and yet often-hard-to-understand as well as one on the Body of Christ. I pray this month in a particular way for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon you and all in your community as you grow in communion with Christ and one another.
May 2025
May 2025 As is always the case during Easter, we ponder readings from the Acts of the Apostles each Sunday of the season. In a moment in which many people are weighed down by the effects of scandal and polarization in the Church and the growing secularization and pressure to leave active practice of the faith behind, the stories of the early communities of believers may rouse our commitments to be Church in our time. The Easter season is a perfect time to reflect on the incredible love of God and our call to steward the love and hope we have in Christ. May the Lord’s peace and love be with you and all in your community.
April 2025
We enter into April with hearts that are full — filled with the grace of God, which we have witnessed and experienced in the season of Lent, and which now leads us to ponder the fullness of Christ’s Paschal Mystery in the sacred Triduum and the Easter season to come. In order to bring faith to life this month, we must hear the story again, for the first time. May we hear the Good News of the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord, invite the Holy Spirit to dispel any doubts we may have, and bring peace to our lives and world. May you and all in your community be filled with grace and peace in this holy season.
March 2025
March 2025 As we enter into Lent, we invite people to make the season one that will have lasting impact on their life and faith. We place ourselves alongside Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem, and take up the practices of prayer, fasting, and sharing with renewed commitment. We pray you and your people find meaning at the foot of the cross in this holy season within the Jubilee Year 2025.
A pastoral note about Impact this March and April: since Easter falls in the middle of April, the March issue focuses on Lent, while the April issue will focus on Triduum and Easter joy.
February 2025
February 2025 This month, we focus on the grace of God who is always with us, in times when we must wait for something, in times when we are called to share hope, in times when we are mindful of the call to live as Christ’s people in the world. May you and your people find hope and strength in God’s grace in all of the circumstances of your life as individuals and in community.
January 2025
January 2025 Blessings in this new year of our Lord 2025! As we begin this year, we reflect on the difference in our lives that might be experienced in living each day with the commitment to make this the “year of our Lord,” entrusting our hearts and lives to the Lord. With this commitment, we vow to “do whatever he tells us,” and to share love and care as a sign of Christ’s love for all. As we enter into a Jubilee year, may we place our hope in the Lord!
December 2024
We begin a new liturgical year and enter into the season of Advent this month. Many of our parishioners, and perhaps we ourselves, will find it difficult to focus on the waiting and anticipation of the season in the midst of the shopping, social gatherings, and celebration preparations that consume much of our attention during December. This month’s issue of Impact reminds us of the incredible Good News of the incarnation and our call to share Christ’s light and love as good stewards who pray, serve, and share. Page 1 of Impact focuses on Advent; page 2 on Christmas. May your Advent be richly blessed with God’s grace and goodness.
November 2024
This month, we find ourselves nearing the end of another liturgical year, and as is always the case in these latter weeks of the season, the readings begin to encourage us to reflect on the ultimate meaning of our faith in Jesus Christ and call to live as his disciples. November is also when we mark our civic celebration of Thanksgiving, which always feels a bit like a national stewardship day, in which we give thanks for the many blessings of our lives. This month’s issue of Impact focuses on the command to love God and neighbor and includes a reflection on the gospel narrative of the widow who gave all she had. May your season be blessed with grace and peace.
October 2024
The readings this month invite us to ask ourselves important questions: Do we often turn to God in prayer, confident that the Lord looks at us with love? Do material possessions or the desire for wealth weigh us down? Are we attentive to the deepest desires of our hearts, and recognize God’s call through them? This month’s issue of Impact invites all in your community to ask themselves these questions, and to shape their lives accordingly.
September 2024
This month, we hear familiar passages that carry key aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching. We are to be the last and to serve, to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow the Lord. It is good for us to take these challenging words to heart in the weeks of Ordinary Time in the autumn, to think about who we are as Christ’s people, and the way in which faith directs, or does not direct our lives.
June 2024
We return to Ordinary Time this month, and also enter into the summer season, with its longer days, gatherings, and vacations. This month’s issue of Impact focuses on faith and our call to give of self in response to the presence of Christ with and for us. May this month be filled with every blessing for you and your people.
August 2024
In these weeks of Ordinary Time Cycle B, we hear the bread of life discourse from the Gospel of John, and we sing Psalm 34 with its refrain “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” In this month’s issue of Impact, we encourage readers to see and respond to the abundant goodness of the Lord in their lives. The disciples who were with Jesus chose to remain with him even when others returned to their previous way of life. Joshua and his house declared their commitment to serve the Lord. I pray you and your people will be richly blessed with God’s abundant grace and goodness as you commit again to love and serve the Lord.
July 2024
As many people take time in the summer for vacations and family gatherings, the Sunday readings this month provide many opportunities to help people recognize the abundance of God’s life and love in their midst and our call to respond to the abundance by giving gratefully to all who need. We pray that you will find blessing and God’s providential love.
May 2024
May 2024 As we continue to journey through Easter season, we begin to anticipate, and celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In Impact this month, we reflect on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit’s presence within us as a gift, which we are called to steward. We reflect on the gift of the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live Christ’s mission in the world. The month concludes with the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. I pray that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be with you and your people in this season of grace.
