(Given throughout the year during the homily)

January 10 (Baptism of the Lord): Who we are and why we Celebrate Mass
February 7: The Church Gathered in the Presence of God
March 14: The Penitential Act and the Gloria
April 18: The Presence of Christ in the Word
May 2: The Creed
June 13: The Presentation of the Gifts and Preparation of the Altar
July 25: The Eucharistic Prayer
August 29: THe Lord's Prayer and Rite of Peace
September 12: The Lamb of God
October 24: Real Presence and Reception of the Eucharist
November 21 (Christ the King): Blessing and DIsmissal 
December 12: The Meaning and Importance of the Obligation to Sunday Mass

To you, 0 blessed Joseph, do we come in our afflictions, and having implored the help of your most holy Spouse, we confidently invoke your patronage also.
Through that charity which bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and
through the paternal love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you
graciously to regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ has purchased by his Blood, and
with your power and strength to aid us in our necessities.
0 most watchful guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ; 0 most loving father, ward off from us every contagion of error and corrupting influence; 0 our most mighty protector, be kind to us and from heaven assist us in our struggle with
the power of darkness.
As once you rescued the Child Jesus from deadly peril, so now protect God's Holy
Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; shield, too, each one of us
by your constant protection, so that, supported by your example and your aid, we may be
able to live piously, to die in holiness, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven.

Amen.

Did You Know?

• The Procession: The priest and ministers (representing the whole people of God) symbolically move from the ordinary (the world) to the extraordinary (the sanctuary, which is a symbol of heaven itself) - from the secular to the sacred, from the everyday to the eternal.
• The Altar: The altar represents Christ himself. When we see the priest kiss the altar, we should reverence Christ in our heart. The altar is the center, where the mystery of our faith is celebrated.
• Sign of the Cross: We begin Mass with the Sign of the Cross. This is not an introduction to prayer, but is in fact a prayer in and of itself. It is a prayer! It affirms our faith in the Triube God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We recall our baptism and are reminded of the great act of the love of Christ, who suffered and died for us.

The Penitential Act and the Gloria

• At the beginning of each Mass, we take time to prepare ourselves through the Penitential Act to enter into the sacred liturgy and encounter Christ. We ask God to help us that by acknowleding our sins we may prepare ourselves to listen to his Word and share in the Body and Blood of Christ. We recognize our need for God'd help - our need to be saved - so we ask his mercy upon us: "Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy."
• Immediately following this (on Sundays outside of Advent and Lent and on solemnities, feasts and at other solemn celebrations) we join the angels and saints in heaven and sing the Gloria- the same hymn sung by the angels to the shepherds heralding the birth of Jesus (Christmas). The incarnation is is God's response to our sinfulness! During Lent and Advent, we do not sing the Gloria due to the penitential nature of the seasons and the emphasis on expectancy.
• In these seemingly routine moments of the Mass that we can become all too familiar with, the Lord invites us to bring our minds and hearts into the deep mystery of our faith - God, so loves us that he sent his Son. Jesus has come not to condemn the world, but to save the world.

The Presence of Christ in the Word

The Creed

• Every family has a story. We are the people of God -  we are God's family - and we have an incredibily important family story! Each Sunday at Mass and on certain holy days, we retell and enter into this story of God's love for us when we say the Creed (or the profession of Faith, because in it we express the central truths of our faith).
• The term creed, comes from the latin credo, meaning "I believe," and the first creed we profess is at baptism, through which we enter into the family of God, the Church, which is the Body of Christ. When we pray the Creed at Mass, we state our belief in God 1) the Father,  2) the Son, and 3) the Holy Spirit, and then we profess in faith in 4) the Church. What we profess is what we celebrate!
• The Creed is our response in faith to God who has just spoken to us in the Readings - it is our joyful YES to God's Word and our acceptance of his invitation to life with Him. In the Creed, we each recommit ourselves to God, to our beliefs, and to a life of discipleship.

The Presentation of the Gifts and Preparation of the Altar

• Following the Prayers of the Faithful each week, the collection begins and then all that is collected along with the bread and wine are brought forward to the altar. This is a prayer - it is an incredibly significant part of the Mass and one that calls for the full conscious, and active participation of the assembly.
• This is the time when we prayerfully gather up all our gifts - our sarcifices from the week, our monetary contributions, our pains, our joys, and our Thanksgiving - and we present these along with the central gifts of bread and wine. The bread and wine are central for they are what Jesus offered at the Last Supper and asked us to continue to do in memory of Him. In connecting our gifts (our very lives!) to the gifts of bread and wine which will be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, we, too, seek to have our lives (with our joys and pains) transformed and offered wholly to God.
• So each weel when we come to Mass, we cannot come unprepared or empty-handed. We must bring our whole selves which we truly place on the altar of our Lord! We bring all that we are - even when that might not seem to be enough - and we trust that as the Lord joins our offering to His own, that we will be acceptable to God and transformed by his life-giving Body and Blood.