St. Joseph of the Lakes

Happy and blessed New Year to you and your families!

I am writing this before we celebrate the Christmas liturgies, but already I am seeing the choirs doing extra practice, the decorators spending their time in the church getting it ready for our celebrations. It takes so many different people to rise to the occasion of the Christmas celebrations. I am grateful to the social justice commission and all the others who helped collect and distribute gifts to members of our communities as well as the White Earth Indian reservation. I am grateful to all those ministers (choir, liturgical ministers, decorators, and video/sound techs) who helped us celebrate these days.

Today, as we celebrate the Epiphany I am grateful to our faith formation staff, catechists, students, and parents who helped us to celebrate the Epiphany through their re-enactment and singing of the Epiphany story.

Last year was a good recovery year and although we are hanging on the edge of the omicron variant of the Covid virus I am grateful that we are pushing ahead to re-engage our community life. I look forward to what promises this new year holds out for each of us!

God bless each of us as we begin and continue into 2022.