Welcome to Catholic Stuff youf should know the J10 initiative welcome to Catholic Stuff youf Should know I was gonna. I was gonna start us up. That's a real bike. Well, you were taking forever.
Yeah, because I was letting it calm down. I should have told you. I'll let it calm. I'm gonna let it quiet, and then we're coming in the block.
All right, you start. You start. Hello and welcome to Catholic Stuff. You should know this.
Father Jacob here with. This is Father Sean Conroy. How are you doing, Father Sean? I'm doing fantastic right now.
I will say it's kind of a unique situation. Recording remotely. Yeah. First time we're trying out something new.
I wasn't able to get down and record with Father John for our last episode. So here are five Father Sean and I recording from distance. I've got him on the phone in my ears while I'm recording to a mic here in my room in Glenwood. That's right.
And I'm down in my parish office at Our lady of Lourdes. And it is December 23rd, two days before Christmas. And we just wanted to record a Merry Christmas. Quick little podcast.
Not gonna be a whole episode. We wanna wish you all a very merry Christmas. We hope that you have been celebrating already Christmas well. And now posted Thursday, the second day of Christmas.
How's your Christmas going, Father Sean? It hasn't already happened yet. Well, fourth Sunday of Advent was great. It was actually funny.
After Mass on Sunday, I was like, all of you are gonna come up to me afterwards and say, merry Christmas, but don't, because it's not Christmas yet. So I was like. I was like, happy fourth Sunday of adventure. I think the exact same thing happened to me.
I didn't get the announcement, though. I just had people coming up and say, merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. And I just, you know, Pavlovian response.
Merry Christmas. Wait, it's still Advent. Happy fourth week of Advent. Celebrate it for two and a half days.
But then now we are at least in listening land. We're now in Christmas, so I'm excited. It should be good Christmas. This is a.
This is my 1, 2, 3 is my third Christmas as a priest or fourth. I don't know. I lose track. I guess it'd be my third Christmas, but I'm going into my fourth or this is my fourth year of priest, so it'd be my third Christmas.
But yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I got few masses, as always, but I don't know. I'm looking forward to it. No comments about how it's gone yet.
But we have a crystal ball. Are you excited this is your first Christmas? Yes, my first Christmas. I am very excited.
I feel like I had big plans. Christmas was gonna be awesome. And then I didn't realize how much just kind of gets added on in Advent and all the penance services. And I was doing a talk one night and then kind of increased confession times and I ended up just kind of like, wow, there's just a lot going on and didn't really do like more on top of that other dreams ideas with like caroling with school kids and trying to get some carolers together to sing before the four o' clock class.
I just have time to get all that stuff together this year, so. But very excited because no matter what, Christmas is coming and whether I was ready for it or not, Christmas is here. And I think everybody else. Yeah.
Just know that Christmas, your best laid plans of mice and men might fail and you might not have gotten all your gifts wrapped before Christmas Day. And maybe the house wasn't exactly decorated how you wanted before family came into town. But no matter what, Christ still came and it's still Christmas time to celebrate. That's right.
Do you have any highlights from the year, Father Jacob? 2024. Oh, highlights from the year. It's a good jumping gun.
I thought we're going to do this when we're all together. But highlights of the year, definitely. Well, outside of the podcast stuff, highlights of the year would be getting ordained and going on the Camino. Those are probably the two peak.
Peak highlights. And then moving out here to Glenwood and get started parish. I'd say Those are my three highlights for the year. Love it.
And I turned 33, so I've got four highlights. The Jesus year. Except for I didn't turn 33. I turned.
Yeah, I turned 33 while we were in Camino. I'm sorry, I'm confused now. That's great. How about you?
Highlights. Highlights of the year. 2024. Camino was definitely a highlight.
Great gift to walk the Camino with you Padre as well. Soaking in everything in the parish. This might or might not be my last year in the parish, so I really try to soak it in. Father Brian got back from sabbatical, which was nice because then he's in charge again, not me, which was great.
Yeah, I had some good climbs with John this summer. Um, I don't know, those are probably big highlights. I would have to think about it a little bit more. But those are the ones that come to Top of mind right now.
Do you have any words of wisdom for how to celebrate the Christmas season? Well, we've been in Advent, it's now Christmas, Christmas doesn't end tomorrow. How do we celebrate Christmas? Well, I think one of the biggest things just reflecting on Advent as a joyful anticipation, preparation of joy now that Christmas is here.
Like, be joyful. Yeah, it's so easy just to walk down the street, be like, oh yeah, Merry Christmas. I've been hearing about this for a month now. But like, if you live Advent well, it makes Christmas and the Christmas spirit much more joy filled, much more exciting.
So when someone says Merry Christmas, like say Merry Christmas, like be excited, be joyful. Entering into the season, I think prayer is a great way feasting. Not that Advent is a season of fasting per se, but it's a preparation and there's an octave of Christmas and then there's 12 Days of Christmas. So I think with different festivities, maybe music, maybe praying the joyful mysteries of the rosary, eating cookies, I don't know.
But making it kind of special to make it stand differently with that joy and say, keep your Christmas tree up at least until epiphany, which ends the 12 days of Christmas. So we go the octave the week after and then continues on the 12 Days of Christmas to epiphany. Yeah, we just want to wish everyone out there and listening to Merry Christmas Nova prayers for you. We really do pray for people who listen to this podcast and in fact every time before we even record an episode, we offer it to the Lord back to the Lord that he would bless those who listen and could touch their lives.
So know our prayers. Merry Christmas. We hope you have a good 2025. We're grateful for your support you the podcast in different ways.
We're hoping to reach more and more people every day, every episode, every year. Catholicstuff podcastmail.com if you want to get in touch with us. But if you go to our website, there's some good information there. There's also a place to donate if you feel so inclined to donate to the podcast.
We'd be grateful for for that as well. Yeah, I actually just celebrated my Mass today with the intention for all the hosts, the podcast and listeners. So just even today on December 23rd, praying for all of you listeners at the Mass and continue to keep an eye for as well. So thanks for listening.
Thanks for all your great questions, your feedback, the stories you shared. It's striking, it was striking to me the amount of stories I heard from listeners about how we actually impacted your life was very humbling and grew my faith. So thank you for sharing the stories and again, celebrate well, rejoice. Christ is here.
It is Christmas and the light has entered the darkness. Beautiful. Thanks, Father Jake. Thanks, Brother Sean.
I'll see you. I'll see you in Denver. On the other side of Christmas, I think we're gonna do a little reunion. Right, so.
That's right. Yes. All four. But yeah, that's a good point.
Like just an update. Like I've been recording with Father Mike, you've been recording with Father John. We're gonna continue this kind of series of trimesters. I'll be with Father John January through April.
So we're kind of going back, but we figured Father Jake and I could do a quick Christmas greeting this week. Yep. So, yeah, no shout outs. The shout out is to all of you listeners, thanks for a great year and God bless.
God bless. Thanks, everyone.