Editor’s note: The following Christmas Mass times are for Catholic parishes across the Anchorage Archdiocese. For last minute updates or changes to Mass times, please visit archdioceseofanchorage.org
Every year, it comes upon a midnight clear or a midnight snowy in Alaska. For at least the last 1,600 years, Catholics around the world have been venturing to church in the middle of a dark December night to celebrate the birth of Christ. The Christmas Midnight Mass is a unique liturgy honoring the Infant Savior — the everlasting Light that brightened the dark streets of little Bethlehem and all of human history.
I am turning 65 this month and a lovely question has come to me: “How do I want to finish this life?” We all may have had some bad starts along the way but the Christian Gospel says we can make a great finish.
It’s a hard Gospel truth, this idea of Christ being with the most marginalized. The truly poor in our midst often don’t smell very good, they often make maddeningly poor choices, and they are sometimes caught up in almost irreversible webs of addiction and despair. Sometimes, all we can do is love them, not fix them, and that can be tough.
One letter this month address how abortion support among some Catholics wounds the wider church. Another letter relates the inspiration one deacon received upon reading about how Deacon Curt Luenberger faced an illness that brought him to the brink of death.
Editor’s note: The following is Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz’s Dec. 15 homily given at the ordination of Bishop Chad Zielinski as the head of the Fairbanks Diocese.
Catholics in the Fairbanks Diocese were urged to accept, love and pray for their newly ordained bishop who “has pledged to give his life to you.” This was part of the homily given by Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz before he ordained Bishop Chad Zielinski as the sixth bishop of Fairbanks.
Editor’s note: The following homily by Pope Francis’ highest ranking ambassador to the United States Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano was given in Anchorage on Dec. 12 during the elevation of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to the status of co-cathedral for the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Church was elevated to co-cathedral status Dec. 12 in a Mass featuring many ethnic cultural celebrations and attended by Alaska’s four bishops and Vatican ambassador, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. More than 700 people packed the largest Catholic church in Alaska and one of the state’s most ethnically diverse parishes. Several attended in traditional cultural costumes, Peruvian, Filipino, Mexican, Columbian, Samoan and Alaska Native peoples and several took part in the liturgy.
Bishop-elect Chad Zielinski will become the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks on Dec. 15. Eight Archbishops and bishops will participate in the ordination Mass scheduled for 3 p.m. at the Carlson Center in Fairbanks. The Mass, celebrated by Anchorage Archbishop Roger L. Schwietz, will both ordain Bishop-elect Zielinski as a bishop and install him as the head of the Fairbanks diocese. More than one thousand people are expected to attend.