Town Hall Meeting Sunday, January 5, after 11:00 am Mass Church Activity Center (church basement) As Bishop Walkowiak announced earlier this year, it has been more than a decade since the Diocese of Grand Rapids underwent a pastoral planning process. It is now time to create an updated plan to assess more intentionally the needs and resources of our local church, along with exploring opportunities for growth and evangelization. The process involves data collection, parish visits, and dialogue to identify challenges and opportunities facing our parishes, schools, and the diocese. On Sunday, January 5, after the 11:00 am Mass we will have a town…

As the dawn breaks on a new year, let us give thanks for all we hold dear: our health, our family and our friends. Let us release our grudges, our anger and our pains, for these are nothing but binding chains. Let us live each day in the most loving ways, the God-conscious way. Let us serve all who are in need, regardless of race, color or creed. Let us keep God of our own understanding in our hearts and to chant God's name each day. Let us lead the world from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth and…

Celebrate the birth of Jesus with us during the following times.

To discover the story of the pink candle, we first have to look at the origins of the season and the wreath. Until Advent was instituted toward the end of the fifth century, the only season Christians observed was Lent. As preparation for Christmas, the Church established Advent in the spirit of Lent–as a season of reflection and penance. A wreath of hope The custom of the Advent wreath originated with pre-Christian Germanic peoples whose evergreen wreaths and fires signified hope in the darkness of December. Christians maintained the tradition and by the 16th century German Catholics and Protestants used…

Among Catholics there never has been any question of the fitness of the Immaculate Conception. In the early ages of the Church the doctrine was taken so much for granted that no one thought it necessary to define it as a dogma…. It was left for the 19th century to declare as an article of faith that Mary was sinless through the anticipated merits of her Son…. This, one of the latest of her feasts, was announced to the world on the eighth of December, 1854. Since 1846 Mary in her Immaculate Conception has been the patron of the United States.…