Friends in Christ,
Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday is the Fourth Sunday of Advent. The Advent season spent in preparation for the arrival of the promised Messiah nears its conclusion. Christmas is right around the corner: The liturgical celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord will commence in four days hence! Such has always been the joy attached to this day that the traditional liturgy provided three separate Masses for the faithful: First Mass at Midnight, Second Mass at Dawn and Third Mass During the Daytime. In the words spoken by the angel to the shepherds in the Gospel reading for Mass at Midnight: “Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: for this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find the Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.”
Calendar of Special Observances
Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962.
DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)
Sunday, December 28 – Sunday in the Octave of Christmas (II) – Commemoration of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs
Monday, December 29 – Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas (II) – Commemoration of St. Thomas Becket
Tuesday, December 30 – Sixth Day in the Octave of Christmas (II)
Wednesday, December 31 – Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas (II) – Commemoration of St. Sylvester I, Pope
Thursday, January 1 – Eighth Day in the Octave of Christmas (II)
Friday, January 2 – Sacred Heart of Jesus (III)
Saturday, January 3 – Immaculate Heart of Mary (III) – Our Lady on Saturday (IV)
Fourth Sunday of Advent
The links provided below can be used to download printable copies of the Proper Prayers for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. A link to Dr. Michael P. Foley’s New Liturgical Movement commentary is also provided. The propers for Christmas are provided with the Christmas schedule below.
Traditional Latin Mass Schedule
Diocese of Charlotte Sunday Masses
Chapel of the Little Flower (757 Oakridge Farm Road, Mooresville, NC)
Note: Only Sunday Latin Masses and Holy Days are offered at the Chapel. This is the only Diocese of Charlotte location which offers the Traditional Latin Mass.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, the Little Flower, pray for us!
Diocese of Raleigh Sunday Masses
Diocese of Charleston Sunday Masses
Diocese of Charleston Daily Traditional Latin Masses
Christmastide Traditional Latin Masses
The following are announced Traditional Latin Masses for Christmastide.
If additional Masses are announced we will share them in our email
updates and post them on our website.
Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord (Thursday December 25)
Diocese of Charlotte
Diocese of Charleston
Note: Stella Maris Church on Sullivan’s Island will offer a 9:30 p.m. Solemn High Latin Mass on Christmas Eve, Wednesday December 24.
Diocese of Raleigh
Propers for Midnight Mass & Mass During the Day
Feast of the Circumcision (Thursday January 1, 2026)
Diocese of Charlotte
Diocese of Charleston
Diocese of Raleigh
As a reminder, travelers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in the schedule of Mass times.
Chapel of the Little Flower Announcements
Mass Intentions for Sunday December 21
Sunday December 21, 10:00 a.m. - +William Ferrante by the Ferrante family
Father Jones’ Contact Info
If one has questions about the Chapel of the Little Flower, that are not related to one’s parish, please email Father Jones directly at: tlmchapel(at)rcdoc.org
Bulletin Volunteer for Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish
To help Chapel attendees/visitors stay connected with their parishes, the Chapel is providing Sunday bulletins, specifically Saint Ann Parish. Father Jones is looking for a volunteer(s) who could bring a stack of current bulletins from Saint Thomas Aquinas parish to the Chapel on Sundays. If one can assist, please contact Fr. Jones at: tlmchapel(at)rcdoc.org
New Fund for the Chapel of the Little Flower
There will soon be a fund established to which one may contribute to the Chapel of the Little Flower. The procedure will work as follows: Please make out the check to the “Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte” and earmark it very specifically (in the check memo) as to how one would like the funds to be used. For instance “Artwork - Chapel of the Little Flower”. More details will be forthcoming on how to contribute. For questions please contact Father Jones at: tlmchapel(at)rcdoc.org
Upcoming Holy Day Masses
Father Jones has announced Traditional Masses for the Holy Days of Christmas (December 25), and the Feast of the Circumcision (January 1). Mass times are listed above.
Mass intentions for the Chapel of the Little Flower
Mass intentions have now been filled through February and new Masses are currently unavailable. The Mass intentions book will be reopened sometime in February for the Spring Masses.
Visiting the Chapel of the Little Flower
If you haven’t attended Mass at the Chapel of the Little Flower yet, you are welcome to join us this last Sunday in Advent and during Christmastide. Seating is adequate at both Masses, and there is plenty of parking; a cry room; open space outside for the kids after Mass.
General Announcements
Help Thy Neighbor – For those looking to help those struggling financially this time of year, Fr. Reid announced a link to the parish’s Help Thy Neighbor program, which helps families in need. To give, one can either write a check to St. Ann with "Help Thy Neighbor" in the memo line, or donate at the parish’s online link.
Christmas Prayers for Bishop Martin and Diocesan Priests – This week is probably (next to Holy Week) one of the busiest and often demanding times for our priests, deacons and bishop. Please keep them in your prayers and Mass intentions as they prepare for Christmas liturgies this week.
Support Our Parishes – Father Reid noted that Saint Ann parish will bear much of the financial costs of keeping the Chapel of the Little Flower open and encourages our continued generosity (and our occasional visits!). Parishioners from other parishes should continue to support their own parish.
Prayer Request – In your charity, please continue to pray for the healing of Tony Reitz from a rapidly progressing Lymphoma. He is the brother-in-law of Amanda Banville who attends Our Lady of Grace parish. Pray also for Tony’s wife and young children.
Rosary for the Traditional Latin Mass – A Rosary is offered for the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass in the church on Sundays after the 11:30 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass at Saint Thomas Aquinas Church.
Daily Holy Face Chaplet for Sacred Liturgy (perpetual novena) – For the preservation of the Traditional Latin Mass, it has been recommended to all friends of the sacred liturgy in the diocese to consider continually praying the powerful Holy Face chaplet, under the banner of Our Lady of the Holy Name. To pray the chaplet, please see this link.
Cardinal Burke’s Prayer for Pope Leo XIV – His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke has released a prayer for Pope Leo XIV. Please see the prayer at the links below and consider praying this daily for the Holy Father as he leads the Church. PDF copies can be accessed at these links: [English] [Español] [Latin]
Holy Face Devotions
Prayers of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus are offered each week at the following churches on the indicated days:
Note: Days and times may be subject to change due to holidays.
“Jesus, Your ineffable image is the star which guides my steps. Ah, You know, Your sweet Face is for me Heaven on earth” (from Canticle to the Holy Face by Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, the 19th century Discalced Carmelite nun who took the name in religion, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face).
Traditional Latin Mass and Liturgical News
Saints and Special Observances
Saint Thomas, Apostle is celebrated on December 21 in the Traditional Latin Mass (suppressed this year due to it falling on the Fourth Sunday of Advent). The Feast celebrates one of the twelve apostles, whom the St. Andrew Daily Missal describes as “this great Apostle who had the happiness of hearing continually the word of Christ and enjoying his intimacy."
As described by Dom Guéranger in The Liturgical Year:
Thomas the Apostle, who was also named Didymus, was a Galilean. After he had received the Holy Ghost, he travelled through many provinces, preaching the Gospel of Christ. He taught the principles of Christian faith and practice to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hircanians, and Bactrians. He finally went to the Indies, and instructed the inhabitants of those countries in the Christian religion. Up to the last, he gained for himself the esteem of all men by the holiness of his life and teaching, and by the wonderful miracles he wrought. He stirred up, also, in their hearts, the love of Jesus Christ. The King of those parts, a worshipper of idols, was, on the contrary, only the more irritated by all these things. He condemned the Saint to be pierced to death by javelins: which punishment was inflicted at Calamina, and gave Thomas the highest honour of his Apostolate, the crown of martyrdom.
Saint Thomas’ mission work and martyrdom in India comes to us from various sources, notably from oral tradition and the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. After the dispersion of the Apostles, Thomas was chosen to travel east to India and there established the first Church, likely in Taxila, a city in the far northwestern Indus valley (Pakistan) which had a Jewish community and trading ties to the Roman Empire.
After returning to Palestine for the Council of Jerusalem around 50 A.D. (and the Dormition of the Blessed Mother), Thomas then set sail for his final mission to the southwestern Malabar coast of India, but not before stopping on the Arabian island of Socotra, along the new sea route to India, to evangelize its inhabitants. Finally arriving around 52 A.D., in the area of Cranganore, near modern day Kerala State, Thomas began to preach the Gospel and make converts. He challenged the idolatry so engrained and widespread, converted prominent residents, and according to a tradition, cured hundreds and baptized thousands. After seventeen years, Thomas moved to the southeastern coastline to preach around Madras (Chennai) and was martyred in Mylapore around 72 A.D., where his body was buried.
Thomas’ work in India is now well known, but his mission in other places remains less known, or even unknown. As Dr. Warren H. Carroll, founder of Christendom College, and author of the excellent series, A History of Christendom (Vol. I)., noted that Saint Thomas’ undocumented missions (mainly southern India), “[M]ay be the greatest lost epic in the history of the Church.”
Indeed it may be even greater than Dr. Carroll himself realized, as Fr. Peter De Roo uncovered in a fascinating 1899 article, The Apostle Saint Thomas on the American Continent. The article highlights reports among the early Spanish missionaries, as well as indigenous oral traditions in South America, that Saint Thomas, during his own life time, traveled to South America to evangelize the native peoples on that continent.
The Placement of Saint Thomas’ Feast Day Near Christmas
While it will be up to historians and archeologists to explore evidence of Saint Thomas’s ancient missionary work further, the Apostle will be evangelizing today's faithful about the coming of the Redeemer. Dom Guéranger, writes how the placement of Saint Thomas’ feast day – just days from the Nativity – is perfectly situated to help us prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas:
This is the last Feast the Church keeps before the great one of the Nativity of her Lord and Spouse. She interrupts the Greater Ferias in order to pay her tribute of honor to Thomas, the Apostle of Christ, whose glorious martyrdom has consecrated this twenty-first day of December, and has procured for the Christian people a powerful patron that will introduce them to the divine Babe of Bethlehem. To none of the Apostles could this day have been so fittingly assigned as to St. Thomas. It was St. Thomas whom we needed; St. Thomas, whose festal patronage would aid us to believe and hope in that God whom we see not, and who comes to us in silence and humility in order to try our Faith. St. Thomas was once guilty of doubting, when he ought to have believed; and only learned the necessity of Faith by the sad experience of incredulity: he comes then most appropriately to defend us, by the power of his example and prayers, against the temptations which proud human reason might excite within us. Let us pray to him with confidence. In that heaven of Light and Vision, where his repentance and love have placed him, he will intercede for us and gain for us that docility of mind and heart which will enable us to see and recognize Him who is the Expected of Nations and who, though the King of the world, will give no other signs of his majesty than the swaddling clothes and tears of a Babe. [December 21 – Saint. Thomas, Apostle]
Saint Thomas the Apostle, pray for us!
Sources: The Founding of Christendom: A History of Christendom Volume 1 by Dr. Warren H. Carroll; The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger.
Closing Commentary
In closing, we share a commentary extracted from The Liturgical Year of Dom Prosper Guéranger on “The Fourth Sunday of Advent.” A link to the full text of the great liturgist’s commentary is included below.
Fourth Sunday of Advent
We have now entered into the week which immediately precedes the birth of the Messias. That long-desired coming might be even to-morrow; and at furthest, that is, when Advent is as long as it can be, the beautiful feast is only seven days from us. So that the Church now counts the hours; she watches day and night, and since December 17 her Offices have assumed an unusual solemnity. At Lauds, she varies the antiphons each day; and at Vespers, in order to express the impatience of her desires for her Jesus, she makes use of the most vehement exclamations to the Messias, in which she each day gives Him a magnificent title, borrowed from the language of the prophets.
Today, she makes a last effort to stir up the devotion of her children. She leads them to the desert; she shows them John the Baptist, upon whose mission she instructed them on the third Sunday. The voice of the austere Precursor resounds through the wilderness, and penetrates even into the cities. It preaches penance, and the obligation men are under of preparing by self-purification for the coming of Christ. Let us retire from the world during these next few days; or if that may not be by reason of our external duties, let us retire into the quiet of our own hearts and confess our iniquities, as did those true Israelites, who came, full of compunction and of faith in the Messias, to the Baptist, there to make perfect their preparation for worthily receiving the Redeemer on the day of His appearing to the world. [Fourth Sunday of Advent]