Friday, December 23, 2011
A BLESSED CHRISTMASTIDE TO YOU FROM SAINT JOSEPH CHURCH, MACON, GEORGIA AT CHRISTMAS
Saint Joseph Church has a wonderful decorating team for every Sunday and especially for special events such as Christmas and Easter. Steve Gonser and Elaine Schmitt and a cast of thousands put this together and I took the photos with my iPhone!
Do you see Saint Joseph Church's exterior in this shot and the real water fall:
Modified Benedictine Altar arrangement:
Looking at the decorated choir loft and magnificent Rose Window:
The view of the decorated ambo with Poinsettia tree in background:
I've added the Lord's prayer in English under the Latin version, because the English is on the previous page and you have to turn the page for the doxology, but now I don't. And I placed a tab at the bottom of the Doxology's page to make it easier to turn the page as the tab was at the top and made it more difficult:
Since 1985 I've been stationed in churches like Saint Joseph's, first the Cathedral in Savannah, then the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta and now here. Why am I so blessed? "O Lord, I am not worthy to come under your roof!"
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6 comments:
Gorgeous - absolutely, gloriously,stunningly,marvelously beautiful. My heart sours just looking at your pictures. Thank you for this gift & Blessed ChristMass to you from all of us to you! -pgal
Journey of the Magi (T.S. Eliot)
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of year
For a journey,and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes,the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbert.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in a meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,And feet kicking empty wine-skins.
But there was no information,and so we continued
And arrived at evening,not a moment too soon
Finding the place;it was (you may say)satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again,but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly.
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death.
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
______________________
May the Blessed Christ Child fill our hearts this Christmas, reminding us how God's Sovreignty and Majesty are shown in love...
Gene Williams
That photo of the Rose Window and the Cross moves me. The Parish of St Joseph and the City of Macon is blessed.
FWIW, I cheat with tabs, too. If I can prepare ahead I use the ribbons in colour order.
rcg
As another very wise priest once said to me, "Nobody deserves to be Catholic; that's got nothing to do with it." How wonderful that God has led us to it anyway. Alleluia!
I just gotta say this - SOARS! (as opposed to sours...) LOL -pgal
Beautiful! Great job!
Dan and Angie
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