Father Kelly has just completed his week 3 lesson of A Small Course of Spirituality: Soundings from the Great Doctors. We will be recording all the Zoom lessons and posting them to the parish website.
Our Mass Schedule for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is as follows:
Monday December 7: 6pm and 7:30pm Vigil
Tuesday December 8: 6:30am, 9am, 12pm, 4pm Traditional Latin Mass, 6pm, 7:30pm Bi-Lingual
In order to accommodate everyone who wishes to attend Christmas Mass, St Mary will celebrate all our Christmas Masses at the Fredericksburg Expo Center. In keeping with the governor’s orders for churches, there will be a maximum limit of 1000 people per Mass. Social distancing will be maintained, and the Expo Center cleaned and aired out after every Mass, so it will be cold (bring a coat and gloves!). Masks will be required to be worn inside the Expo center. The Expo Center’s address is 2371 Carl D. Silver Parkway, Fredericksburg, VA 22401. The Mass schedule is as follows:
2pm (We encourage at risk parishioners to attend this Mass)
4pm
6pm
8pm in Spanish
10pm (This will be our “midnight” Mass)
7am
9am
11am
1pm
Dear Folks,
I will share with you one of my favorite Advent books, The Reed of God by Caryl Houselander. She beautifully builds the image of the Blessed Mother as a reed: empty and open to becoming an instrument of God. How do we perceive emptiness? The virginity of the BVM is not barren emptiness, but a beautiful receptivity to the Lord. As we are grateful for the abundance of God’s blessings, and let us move forward with an eye to avoiding the excesses of our culture by focussing on the life giving, virginal, receptivity of the Blessed Mother. The more generously we can imitate her this Advent, the more fully we can help bring Jesus into the world this Christmas.
Expo Center 2020 Christmas! And folks, just a heads up that this week we signed a contract to use the Expo Center for all Christmas Masses! In order to allow as many folks to safely and confidently come to Mass for this pandemic-year Christmas, we will be celebrating our Christmas Masses in the Expo Center! This bulletin shares the Mass schedule. Look in future bulletins for more details!
pax et bonum,
Fr. John Mosimann
