Foot-washer

St. Agnes Catholic Church  December 27/28, 2025 Feast of the Holy Family https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122825.cfm  Happy 3rd / 4th Day of Christmas, and happy Feast of the Holy Family.     Despite our lovely Christmas carols and our beautiful nativity scenes, the little town of Bethlehem would not sleep in heavenly peace for long.  We sing together with the angels, “peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!"  But the reality is that the powers of the world recognized Jesus, not as Lord at his birth, but as a threat to their rule.   From his hilltop fortress three miles from Bethlehem, King Herod looked down on royal David’s city and did not plan to come and adore Jesus.  Instead, the old dictator, who was in his mid-seventies and was wracked with illness, became increasingly desperate to cling to power.  He hatched a plan to massacre every boy two years old and younger in Bethlehem and its vicinity.  ...

St. Agnes Catholic Church Feast of the Holy Family https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122924.cfm Good evening / morning, St. Agnes, Merry Christmas and happy Feast of the Holy Family.  My maternal grandmother, Barbara Emrich, grew up in the Highlands.  She and her family lived in a little house on Princeton Dr. not far from where Bellarmine University is now.  Her father, Joe Emrich, was a railroad man, working for the old Louisville & Nashville or L&N company.  Her mother, Nona, stayed at home and raised 9 children.   There were five boys and four girls in the Emrich family.  They were a deeply Catholic German family; two of the sons became priests and one of the daughters an Ursuline nun.  They embodied, in a way, an old model of what a Catholic family looked like.   In that little house, the boys had one bedroom and the girls another and they  shared one, solitary bathroom.  My grandmother was the baby of the fam...