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Finance Committee Corner
Last Sunday $10,764 was received in the offertory baskets at Mass and $8,253.5 was received through Parish Pay, for a total of $19,017.5.  Our average weekly operating budget is $15,000.  Thank you for so generously giving to our regular collection.
 

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Dear Parishioners and Friends,
 
Merry Christmas and welcome to all who have come today to celebrate this glorious feast.
 
Long before the birth of Christ, as God was preparing His people to receive the gift of His very Son, the prophet Micah proclaimed, Out of you, O Bethlehem, shall come forth the one who is to be ruler in Israel (5:2). For this feast of Christmas, in a way, we find ourselves in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was not the most significant place to be born…Jerusalem was mightier and more socially advanced. God’s ways typically are not our ways…the Almighty became an infant born in a stable in a small village. Bethlehem evokes, too, the idea of roots. It was David’s home, where he was anointed King of Israel, but not where he settled. Can we allow the Incarnation to call each of us back to the roots of our faith? Wherever we find ourselves settled now, where are the roots of our encounter with the living God? Finally, Bethlehem means House of Bread. What we observe today is not just a historical celebration of God’s incarnation, but the prayer that feeds us, as it does every Sunday, the Eucharist. Jesus is with us, and I pray that this is for you a very Merry Christmas, in which we find ourselves consoled by God’s abiding presence and renewed with the desire to be close to one another in faith, hope, and love.         
 
Let us be mindful, too, that this Christmas week is filled with feasts. St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and the Holy Family. If you are able, why not come and celebrate Eucharist together. These feasts all present to us the models of faith that were struck by the coming of Christ.
 
I write this letter on the Tuesday before Christmas and I have just been told that today we have reached $3,000,000.00 in pledges for the Capital Campaign. I am offering thanks to God and even more I am offering thanks to those 134 families who have so far participated. We still have a-ways to go and I ask each of you to prayerfully consider what you might be able to do. To the right you will see two pictures of some of the damage that needs immediate repair. More pictures of disrepair can be found on the parish website www.blessedsacramentnyc.org.  
 
Let us continue to pray for peace.
 
Fr. Duffell