On Thursday Dec. 11 Holy Family in Corpus Christi held their annual celebration of Or Lady of Guadalupe. The celebration is consistent with the Mexican tradition of paying homage to Our Lady of Guadalupe before her feast day on Dec. 12.

Children’s hands joined those of employees and a technician to create a Nativity scene set against a backdrop of Bethlehem at The Ark Assessment Center and Emergency Shelter for Youth in Calallen.

Incarnate Word Academy featured middle and high school level art exhibits and performances by band, choir and theatre arts classes at the Christmas Fine Arts Festival held in the high school's Mother Patricia Gunning Gymnasium on Dec. 11.

I have continued my visits to the women in Pod B at the Brooks County Detention Center. We have become family, a community of support and hope. I plan to continue to visit three times per week for 90-minute sessions. We have outgrown our metal picnic table and now make a circle on the cement floor. Women take turns being called by their peers to lead our service of worship, praise and proclaiming the Word of God. Yesterday's singing was heavenly. Some words are so heartfelt that tears run down faces and dampen the orange prison garb.

Through Dec. 31, 2014, with each donation of $10 or more to the Mother Teresa Shelter, a beautiful angel Christmas card will be mailed to the donor’s honorees to notify them of the tribute (without specifying the gift amount). For gifts of $25 or more per Christmas card, a keepsake Christmas tree ornament will also be included.

Members of the Incarnate Word Academy Middle Level Student Council and IWA High School Level National Honor Society delivered a busload of canned goods, food, and a total of $600 in monetary donations Dec. 5 to the KIII 3 News Studios for the Share Your Christmas Food Drive.

La navidad es una de las principales celebraciones en todo el mundo, cuando los cristianos de distintas culturas se unen para celebrar el nacimiento de Jesús. Dios y Rey, tan humilde que su destino fue nacer en un pesebre. Sin embargo, con las compras, listas de regalos y ofertas que incitan al consumidor a gastar más dinero, es difícil mantenerse enfocado en el verdadero significado del Adviento y la Navidad y la oportunidad que nos ofrece para preparar nuestros corazones para la llegada de Jesús, de realizar obras de caridad para el necesitado, y compartir con nuestros familiares y amigos.

God does not usually surprise us without first preparing us, sometimes for a long period of time, for what He is about to do. And yet, we are often surprised because we do not recognize his preparations. All of history, up to the first Christmas, was a preparation for that Holy Night. That Christmas, and every celebration of Christmas since, was a great revelation of a simple but astounding truth: God's plan, his desire, his dream, is to dwell with us, to make his home among us, so that he might be our God and we might be his people.

Father Patrick Donohoe, pastor of Holy Family Parish, blessed the new early development playground for preschooler's at Holy Family School on Dec. 3. Father Donohoe, the students and representatives of the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation participated in the ribbon cutting of the playground.

Christmas is the season of giving–at least that is what a group of visually impaired thought when they handed out sandwiches, shoes, toiletries and coats to area homeless on Dec. 2 at the Mother Teresa Shelter. "We've been given so much that we wanted to give back, because they don't have what we have a home," Elouisa Guerra, who is visually impaired, said.

Christmas! With the business world putting pressure on 21st century people to spend money buying gifts, the most important reason for the celebration of Christmas--the celebration of the human birth of Jesus--is apt to get lost in many lives.

On behalf of our publisher, Bishop Michael Mulvey, our theological consultant, Father Joseph Lopez, JCL, our staff, Mary Cottingham and Adel Rivera, and our correspondents and contributors, I wish to extend to all of our readers our wishes that they are having a blessed Advent and will have a joyous Christmas.

Marie, an eight-year-old child in second grade, was from a family who had no church affiliation. She and her older sister Angelica were loved and provided for by their parents, Roberto and Letty, who both worked. The family did not talk about God or church much, but somehow both Marie and Angelica knew there was something more. Then one day, Marie found herself enrolled at Sacred Heart School in Rockport and everything began to change.