It is difficult to be in the holiday season when you are dealing with sadness over the death of a loved one, loss of a marriage, or other changes in life that take us away from our traditions and ties to the past. Click on the links below for resources to help navigate through the holiday season.

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Broken Family can Become Holy Family

Grief, Loss and Change Through the Holidays

Coping Through the Holidays

Managing Grief During the Holidays

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Mother Teresa left this beautiful prayer for us to ask

for peace to reign at the heart of our families.

O God, Father of all people, you call us all

to carry love where the poor are downtrodden,

joy where the Church is discouraged,

reconciliation where people are separated —

father from son, mother from daughter, husband from wife,

those who believe from those who don’t believe,

the Christian from his unloved Christian brother.

You prepare our way so that  the wounded Body of Christ,

your Church, may become the leaven for the community of the poor

on earth and for the entire family of mankind.

Amen.

Preserving the dignity of those

who have passed on.

"The reason we have these services is to show that every human being deserves a dignified burial as each individual is created in the image of God, and that fact does not cease with death. Some of the deceased may never have experienced respect or loving kindness. Many of them may have passed on lonely with no human contact or care. Mother Teresa once said: “One of the greatest diseases [in our time] is to be nobody to anybody.” Unfortunately, this applies to many of the individuals whose remains we place in the compassion crypts, otherwise their remains would have been taken care of by family and/or friends." ~ OLQP Cemetery.

Bambinelli Sunday, December 15

The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday) has for many years been the day when the children of Rome bring the figurines of Baby Jesus from their family cribs to St. Peter’s Square to be blessed by the Pope during the Angelus. The day is affectionately known as “Bambinelli Sunday.” Instituted by Pope Saint John Paul II during his Papacy, the tradition has continued and has grown in popularity across the universal Church. Children are invited to wrap the blessed figurines in Christmas wrapping when they return home, and to place them under the tree, to be opened as the first gift of Christmas; thus encouraging young children to make the connection between the gifts they receive on Christmas Day and the greatest gift that any of us can receive, Jesus; and the connection between the Nativity set at home and the local Church where they worship each weekend.