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Prepare Your Heart for Christmas!
Mary delights in the hospitality and gifts, the festivities and decorations, all that we do to celebrate Christmas. At a deeper level, she wants the birth of Jesus to be a time for us to come to know and love Him more intimately. In fact, Mary offers us a model of how to prepare our hearts to receive her Son.
Accept Mary’s invitation to carve out a sacred time and space where the Living Word of God can “take flesh within you”. Like Mary, say “YES!” to the power of the Holy Spirit and allow God to become more visible to those around you.
Join us! Encounter Mary and her Son in a deeply personal and transformative way.
This retreat will include presentations, ample time for personal prayer, opportunities for Confession and/or private conferences, and small and large group sharing. Mass will be celebrated on Friday and on Saturday, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
What is the meaning of Mary’s Immaculate Conception?
“Full of Grace”
Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God (Lk 1:28), was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 491)
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