Merry Christmas from Father Rick!

Dear Friends:
I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a very blessed and joyous Christmas. I’ve been making ‘joy’ the main theme for all my Advent messages this year—because joy is one of those gifts from God that make life truly worth living, especially in difficult times — and joy is one of the things that makes Christmas such a beautiful and special time.
The word joy appears over 230 times in the Scriptures—which means that God really wants us to be joyful in all things and at all times. But although joy is in some sense a gift, it is also a discipline. Meaning that joy is more of a decision than it is an emotion. Christian speaker and author Wess Stafford put it best when he once said: “Joy is a decision, a really brave one, about how you are going to respond to life.” So, my Christmas wish and prayer for all of you is that you will continue to make joy a way of life — and that you will experience in full the joy that overwhelmed the shepherds at Bethlehem at the first Christmas—and that this joy will sustain you throughout the new year. Merry Christmas.
~ Fr. Rick