christmas remarks, with the archbishop

As we go home tomorrow to spend Christmas with our families and in our respective parishes, we would like to thank you Your Grace for giving us even this short moment to spend with you to greet and to cheer you, our spiritual father, the head and the unity of our bigger family and community which is the Archdiocese. 

Today in our archdiocese we end the year of the family and begin the year of the parish.  However our pastoral office have insisted that we are not ending programs to begin another rather we allow the previous program to flow to the next.  And indeed it is only proper that after a year of celebrating the family we celebrate the communion of families which is the parish.  As you go home it is important to reflect and re appreciate these two pillars of the church and even of society.  That as you go home to your family you should not forget your parish, and as you enjoy parish life you do not forget your family.  You cannot appreciate one without the other for indeed a parish can never be without healthy and lively families, and the family can never be without the support of other families in the parish.

Your grace we ask you for your blessing as we go home for vacation as we also invoke God's blessing on you, for your health, for wisdom, and most especially for joy.  Thank you so much for your guidance and support, for opening our Academic year last June, for investing our second year college seminarians last August, for gracing with your presence our major production calle cuartero and for meeting us this morning to bless us this Christmas.  Thank you and may the incarnation of Jesus be for us an assurance that no matter what, the Lord dwells, he has pitched his tent among us and he will always be for us Emmanuel, God who is with us.