Rectory: 8148 N Karlov Avenue Skokie, IL 60076 Phone: (847) 673-5090 E-mail: saintlambert@aol.com St. Lambert Parish - Skokie, IL Website: www.StLambert.org Sunday Masses: (5 pm Sat) 8am, 10am, 12pm Weekday Masses: 7:15 am (Mon-Fri) 8am on Saturday

Pastor: Rev. Richard Simon Rev. Know-it-all: reverendknow-it-all.blogspot.com Deacon: Mr. Chick O’Leary Music Director: Mr. Steven Folkers Office Staff: Debbie Morales-Garcia debbie.stlambert@aol.com Mr. George Mohrlein

Religious Education : Gina Roxas youthchurchred@gmail.com To Register as a Parishioner: Go to stlambert.org under “About Us” or by phone. Weddings: Arrangements must be made 6 months in advance. Baptisms: Third Sundays of the month at 1:30 pm. Baptismal Prep Class is the first Tuesday of each month at 7pm in room 103. For guidelines and to register email Debbie.

St. Lambert Parish

Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord December 24, 2017

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Page 2 St. Lambert Parish Fourth Sunday of Advent

Saturday, December 23

5:00 † Dentzer & Poglitsch Families

Sunday, December 24

8:00 † Gannon & Weides Families

10:00 † Hernandez/ Peulido Families

12:00 People of St Lambert

5:00 † Pedro & Victoria Alvarado,

† Danny Morales and † Saul Hernandez

9:30 Christmas Carols

10:00 Olita, Cheryl & Aimee

Monday, December 25

8:00 † Dscd Members of Styczynski & Dionne

Families and Michael J. Polakowski

10:00 People of St. Lambert

12:00 Gualberto/ Bayani Families

Tuesday, December 26

7:15 † Frank Niewiadomski

Wednesday, December 27

7:15 Ava Ruby Sulton Birthday

Thursday, December 28

7:15 † Theresa Kepes

Friday, December 29

7:15 Fr. Richard T. Simon

Saturday, December 30

8:00 Sharon & Herb Bass

5:00 † Arsenia Calisa

Sunday, December 31

8:00 † Patrick Gaynor

10:00 People of St Lambert

12:00 Ernesto & Myrna Lainez in

Thanksgiving

Masses for the Week

READINGS FOR THE WEEK

Monday: Vigil: Is 62:1-5; Ps 89:4-5, 16-17, 27-29; Acts 13:16-17, 22-25; Mt 1:1-25 [18-25] During the Night: Is 9:1-6; Ps 96:1-3, 11-13; Ti 2:11-14; Lk 2:1-14 Dawn: Is 62:11-12; Ps 97:1, 6, 11-12; Ti 3:4-7; Lk 2:15-20 Day: Is 52:7-10; Ps 98:1-6; Heb 1:1-6; Jn 1:1-18 [1-5, 9-14] Tuesday: Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59; Ps 31:3cd-4, 6, 8ab, 16bc, 17; Mt 10:17-22 Wednesday: 1 Jn 1:1-4; Ps 97:1-2, 5-6, 11-12; Jn 20:1a, 2-8 Thursday: 1 Jn 1:5 — 2:2; Ps 124:2-5, 7cd-8; Mt 2:13-18 Friday: 1 Jn 2:3-11; Ps 96:1-3, 5b-6; Lk 2:22-35 Saturday: 1 Jn 2:12-17; Ps 96:7-10; Lk 2:36-40 Sunday: Sir 3:2-6, 12-14 or Gn 15:1-6; 21:1-3; Ps 128: 1-5 or Ps 105:1-6, 8-9; Col 3:12-21 [12-17] or Hb 11:8, 11-12, 17- 19; Lk 2:22-40 [22, 39-40]

GOD’S PROMISE The lengthy passage from Samuel is a wonderful exposition of God’s promise to the house of David: that his throne would forever be gloriously occupied by his descendants. Hidden in the mystery of the prophecy is the promise of the Savior, the Messiah, Son of God and Son of David. The prophet Nathan, speaking in God’s name, poetically turns around David’s plan to build a house for God, and announces God’s plan to build a “house,” that is, a dynasty for David. From this house of David will come the Messiah, the Christ, not in kingly splendor as David ruled, but as a humble man, destined to rule forever and over all. When God gives a gift, it’s amazing what we are given—so different from what we ever could have imagined. Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co., Inc. Youth Church, our

Religious Ed grp. will host coffee hour next

week. To assist, please contact Gina at 312.560-6799. Donations are appreciated!

December 24, 2017 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 3

March for Life Chicago Sunday, January 14, 2018

2:00 pm to 4:00 pm Location: Federal Plaza, 50 W. Adams St., Chicago

Speakers: To Be Announced Hosted by the March for Life Chicago Committee

Marching in peace through the streets of Chicago

during an annual public event composed of people from diverse ethnic, social and religious

backgrounds dedicated to defending and protecting all human life. Our goal is to serve as a

visual and vocal reminder that the people of Chicago and the Midwest stand for LIFE.

Rally

The Rally will start from The Frances Xavier Warde Catholic School (Auditorium) on 751 N. State Street Chicago, IL 60654

Doors open at 8 a.m. door and the rally will end at Holy Name Cathedral around 11 a.m., when

Mass will be celebrated.

Cost: $10 per ticket (lunch option is separate)

Cardinal Cupich will preside Mass starts at 11 a.m. at Holy Name Chicago

Please visit www.marchforlife-chicago.org/marchinfo/

for more information

Date Amt Book # Winners Name

Sunday, Dec 17, 2017 $ 100.00 1291 FFOS

Monday, Dec 18, 2017 $ 50.00 1333 Lojo, Dante & Linda

Tuesday, Dec 19, 2017 $ 50.00 2147 Loy, Jean

Wednesday, Dec 20, 2017 $ 50.00 2336 de la Paz, Myra

Thursday, Dec 21, 2017 $ 50.00 2430 Bartels, Sean

Friday, Dec 22, 2017 $ 50.00 2979 Castaneda, Henry

Saturday, Dec 23, 2017 $ 50.00 1864 Precht, Lorene

Winning raffle booklet numbers are put back in the hopper. Giving you more

opportunities to win throughout the year! PRIZES: $50 Monday-Saturday

$100 Weekly Sunday (except 1st Sunday)

$500 Every 1st Sunday of the Month

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION Children of the parish are somewhat focused on Santa Claus these days, who is keeping an eye on who’s naughty and who’s nice. Santa Claus, with his heavenly patron St. Nicholas, has been more or less in charge of gift-giving to American children for a hundred years or so. In other places, perhaps more attentive to our Christian tradition, there are different gift-bearers. In Greece, St. Basil delivers the presents on his feast day, December 31, and makes sure everyone is sprinkled with holy water. The Baby Jesus is in charge elsewhere, called the Christkind in Austria and Belgium, El Niño Jesús in Columbia, and Le Petit Jesus in France, where he shares his duties with Père Noël. In the Czech Republic almost everyone is atheist, but Ježíšek, the infant Jesus, brings gifts to one and all. In Poland the “Star Man” is said to bring the gifts, although often he turns out to be the village priest in disguise. St. Nicholas, not his Americanized cousin, is the giver in Holland, where he wears a bishop’s miter, and in Russia, where he wears a bishop’s crown. Soviet Russia tried to dethrone St. Nicholas and promote Grandfather Frost, but no one was much fooled by this attempt to squeeze religion out of Christ’s birth. Onecountry has a saintly woman in charge of the gifts, St. Lucy, honored in Sweden on December 13,when children serve their parents breakfast in bed, and others awake to news that they have been nominated for a Nobel Prize. Some children have a second round of gifts on Epiphany, when the magi assume the gift-giving duties. In general, the gifts of Christmas are simple pleasures, not great heaps of treasures. Once upon a time, a new pair of socks or an orange was enough for us. No matter what gifts we receive, all of them are to point us to the true gift, and the true giver.

—Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.

Dear Rev. Know it all, I have a non-Christian friend with whom I got into a big argument the other day. He is really offended by the idea of the Holy Trinity. He said that Jesus is not the Son of God, and belief in the Trinity is just too much to swallow. Jesus may be the Messiah, but He is just the Son of Mary and some other human being. He was only a messenger of God, if that. One should believe in God and His messengers, but there is no reason to believe that any of those prophets are God, only God is God. It is a contradiction of His transcendent majesty that He should have a Son. He went on to say that Christians have no right to call themselves monotheists (believers in one God) because they actually worship three Gods by claiming that God is a Trinity. I couldn’t answer him, so automatically I thought of you. Yours, Otto Mattock Dear Otto, Our difference with our fellow monotheists is not about the oneness of God, but about the nature of that oneness. The Trinity is a very reasonable idea if you believe what Jesus taught, that God is Love. Human beings can only long for perfect unity. God who is infinite can accomplish it. Who doesn’t want to be perfectly one with his or her spouse and their children? For us it is not possible, for God perfect diversity and perfect unity are possible if He is as so many people say absolutely sovereign. I remember meeting a holocaust survivor who was truly an amazing man. He was a good friend of a very dear nun who taught me Early Christian studies in grad school. She loved to bring her students to meet him and have him shake them

up. We were having lunch when he looked at me and said, “You Christians! You say God has a Son. We Jews gave the world monotheism. This idea of God having a Son is step backwards to the religion of the Greeks and the Romans. God can’t have a Son!” I looked at him squarely and said who are you to say what God can and can’t do?” He was amazed. I was the first of Mother Mary Agnes’s students who had dared to challenge him. I hold to what I said. Those who say that God is so absolutely sovereign that He can’t enter into real relationships are actually limiting His sovereignty. If God wills to be relationship, then He can be. If God is love, true sacrificial self-giving love, then He reasonably has diversity within himself. If God is Love, then whom is He to love? If He IS love, but has only His creation as the object of His love, then He would be dependent on His creation for His very existence and would disappear along with the universe in a puff of logic! If you believe that God is love as Jesus of Nazareth taught, then God can be a Trinity, of Lover, Beloved and perfect Love itself, Father Son and Holy Ghost! The Trinity is a very reasonable idea, if (and only if) you believe what Jesus revealed, that God is love. Belief in the Trinity also says a lot about humanity. Christians believe, as said by St. John Paul the Great, that God is the perfect family. Your family and mine attempt to be families, but God is family in its perfection. My destiny as a human being is to be adopted into that relationship which is God, the relationship that called all things into existence. The purpose for my existence and all existence is eternal and perfect love. It is the destiny, not the fate, of the universe and it is my destiny, should I choose to accept that destiny. The purpose of existence for the Christian is more than existence. The other monotheisms promise heaven, or at least the possibility of heaven. We Christians don’t just go to heaven. We go home to a Father who loves us and to a perfect family gathered from all time and space. Even in this world, to believe in the Trinity means that we

The Reverend Know-it-all “What I don’t know… I can always make up!”

Page 4 St. Lambert Parish Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 24, 2017 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 5

believe in the reasonableness of love. Spouses should be faithful, neighbors should be kind, parents should love their children and children should love their parents and the poor are our brothers. Life’s purpose and fulfillment is relationship, not just power and pleasure. To believe that oneness of God excludes any real relationships is to isolate human beings and to demonize God. In his classic the "Screwtape Letters", C. S. Lewis contrasts the absolute sovereignty of the Devil with the humility and self-giving of the Christian God. By “father below” he means the devil.

One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself - creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle that can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

In other words, the devil insists that two things can be perfectly united only by one thing devouring the other. Two unique and separate things cannot be perfectly one and perfectly other. In our limited existence that may be true, but God who is absolutely and infinitely perfect can unite things which our limited power hold as completely separate, in other word for the devil, three cannot be one, unless one subjects the other

two to its power. Unity must be a devourer “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1Peter 5:8) The Trinity is reasonable. To hold that the creator of the universe is anything less is actually quite unreasonable and a bit disturbing. Yours, the Rev. Know it all

Jan.14, 2018 12-1:30. Rec Rm

3535 Thornwood, Glenview.

847-826-4704 Refreshments served.

Free-Will Offering

SPEAKER SERIES 2017-20 Fr. Paul Stein

Pastor, St. Frances of Rome Parish

The Truth: Faith & Science In our culture, people o en think faith and science are in conflict. But did you know that: • The Big Bang theory of the origin of the • universe was proposed by a Catholic priest?

• Jesuits were so influen al in astronomy that 35 craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scien sts?

• Roger Bacon, “Father of the Scien fic Method”, was a Franciscan Friar?

• What really got Galileo in trouble was his insistence that the Church change her method of interpre ng Scripture, even when he had insufficient evidence for heliocentrism?

• Official teaching allows for Catholics to believe or not believe in evolu on?

Join us at St. Nicholas Catholic Church The Feast of the Holy Family and Kwanzaa:

Celebrating Family, Community, & Culture

December 30, 2017 at 4:30 Mass

We honor Kwanzaa and its values, as we celebrate the Holy Family and a call to faithful love, devoted community, and unity.

Every year from December 26th to January 1st, many African Americans celebrate Kwanzaa--which means “the first fruits of the harvest.” The holiday is modeled a er the first-fruit harvest celebra ons that happened across the African con nent since an quity.

Join us for Mass and Karamu Pot Luck Feast at St. Nicholas Parish. Bring a dish to share which serves 8 people.

December 30, 2017 at 4:30 Mass 806 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, IL

All are welcome. For Informa on call/email: Yvonne Smith 224-534-7471 yvonsmith@gmail.com or

Sandra Davis 847-328-6031 shasha2@earthlink.net

Page 6 St. Lambert Parish Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 12, 2017 Three Months After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Still Suffers When Pope Francis asked Cardinal Blase Cupich, chancellor of Catholic Extension, to make a pastoral visit to Puerto Rico, the cardinal turned to Catholic Extension to assist with the trip.

On a whirlwind tour of the island from Dec. 3-6, Cardinal Cupich visited and talked with bishops, priests, and laypeople. Nearly three months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, it was clear to the cardinal that "there's a lot of work to do, a lot of people suffering."

The pope had sent the cardinal to the hurricane-battered island to make a visit before Christmas to express his deep concern for the people and reach out in solidarity on his behalf to those who are suffering.

Cardinal Cupich speaks to Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima Dec 4th in Guuanica, Puerto Rico, after presenting them with a check for $40,000. The funds were raised by members of St. Anne’s Parish in Barrington, IL in partnership with Catholic Extension to help poor communities throughout Puerto Rico.

(CNS photo/ Rick Kalonick, Catholic Extension)

December 24, 2017 Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord Page 7

Our Lady of Victory Presents Elvis Tribute

Ronnie Vegas is performing as Elvis at Our Lady of Victory Parish 4434 N. Laramie Ave. Chicago, IL 60630, January 13, 2018. Enter through the gym door off of Sunnyside at Laramie Ave. Dinner includes a beef sandwich, salads, chips, water, soda, dessert and coffee. Cash bar for Beer and Wine.

Doors open at 5:30 PM, Elvis performs at 7:00 PM. Dinner and show $25; tickets at ElvistributeOLV.brownpapertickets.com or call 312-209-7297.