St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church

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... to seek the greater honor and glory of God and the salvation of souls by SANCTIFYING ... the faithful through dynamic orthodoxy.

... to seek the greater honor and glory of God and the salvation of souls by ... TEACHING ... the faithful through dynamic orthodoxy.

... to seek the greater honor and glory of God and the salvation of souls by ... SHEPHERDING the faithful through dynamic orthodoxy.

Our parish has adoration of the Blessed Sacrament available 24/7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)! Adorers are always needed! Click below for times with urgent needs for adorers.
"Could you not keep watch for one hour?" Mark 14:37

Attention all adults! Whether you are a Catholic or not, active in your faith or not, merely investigating the Catholic Church for the first time or an individual returning home, Alpha is the place for you! Click below for more information.
(There is no obligation or cost to you!)

My dear family,
A blessed first Sunday of Advent and the start of the year of grace 2011! I hope that you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving and are now ready for our four-week preparation for Christmas.

Every year in our parish,we keep a solemn Novena in preparation for Christmas. Many people like to offer the Novena of Masses as a Christmas gift for their living or departed loved ones. The request envelopes are at the doors of the church: with them is a lovely Christmas card that can be sent informing the person that the novena is being offered for their intentions.

I should have talked about this last week, but I want to thank the sponsors of our Church calendars: Rio Rancho True Value Hardware (owned by Deacon George Meyerson) and John Long at Coldwell Banker Real Estate. These fine people allow us to offer the calendars at no cost to you. Also, we buy our calendars from the Catholic Extension Society. All of the proceeds from the calendars allow that wonderful organization to help poor and isolated Catholic communities throughout America. (How many churches in New Mexico have been helped, and are being helped, by the Extension Society! They build and repair churches, pay the priests, even supply chalices and vestments, in the most remote and poor places.) This is a good and needed organization.

This Friday, December 3rd, is the school Christmas Concert in the church at 7:00 pm. All are welcome, and my, is it beautiful. So much work goes into it from the kids and the adults. If you ever want to know how important a Catholic school is, just come to the Christmas concert. There they celebrate not Rudolph or Frosty but the REAL reason for Christmas - the birth of the Son of God.

A friendly reminder - have you returned your tithing card for 2011 yet?
A blessed week,

November 20th was a busy day at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. In addition to the annual St. Vincent de Paul Society Thanksgiving Basket distribution (say that five times fast), Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan, various clergy, and 13 deacon candidates and their families descended on St. Thomas Aquinas Parish for the Installation of Acolytes. What is an acolyte?
Before 1973, an acolyte was referred to as the last of four minor orders (porter, reader, exorcist, and acolyte), preceeding the major orders (subdiaconate, diaconate, and priesthood). In 1973, Pope Paul VI, issued an Apostolic Letter, Ministeria Quaedam, that reexamined the minor orders and thereafter consolidated the orders and referred to the "minor orders" as "ministries" and that acolyte was the last ministry to be held by a man leading up to ordination in the Church.
Men preparing for ordination as permanent deacons or priests are required to be instituted as lectors and then as acolytes. The Code of Canon Law 1983 states: "before anyone is promoted to the permanent or transitional diaconate, he is required to have received the ministries of lector and acolyte and to have exercised them for a suitable period of time (Canon 1035 1.)" The duty of an acolyte is "to aid the deacon and to minister to the priest (Ministeria Quaedam, 6.)" As such, they are foremost amongst the Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and assist in a variety of functions before, during, and after the Mass.
Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan was the celebrant at the Mass with the thirteen men preparing for the diaconate. Of the thirteen, St. Thomas Aquinas Parish's very own Mr. David Russell was installed. Congratulations Mr. David Russell on this step towards permanent diaconate and, God willing, we all look forward to your ordination in the summer of 2011.

Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan with Deacon Steve Rangell, Deacon Jim Snell, and the 13 deacon candidates.

When people think of poverty or of people in need, it's a safe bet to say that Rio Rancho is not the first place in New Mexico to come to mind. One might assume, "Rio Rancho is a relatively young city and bustling with new life and development!" And when people think of parishes that have a large population of people in need, St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the last parishes in New Mexico to come to mind. One might easily argue, "Don't you have one of the largest parish collections?"

The truth is that St. Thomas Aquinas Parish has hundreds and hundreds of families in need. This was easily evidenced last Saturday. On November 20th at 9:00 a.m. the Society of St. Vincent de Paul at St. Thomas Aquinas set Parish out to distribute the annual Thanksgiving baskets to families in need. Monsignor Raun said, "There was a line of people extending around D'Arco Hall before the doors even opened." Just how many baskets were distributed? Take a simple wild guess. 25? 50? 100? 200? 300?!? If you guessed in that range, you weren't even half way there!
The answer is a stunning 600 and counting. Over six hundred Thanksgiving baskets were distributed. 600! Each basket represents a single family in need! The number of families in need in Rio Rancho are simply staggering. Particularly when these are only the ones asking for help. Yet each family that came forward received all the necessary items to provide a traditional Thanksgiving dinner: a turkey, gravy and broth, cranberries, potatoes, stuffing, etc. And by the looks of it, this was calculated to be approximately 7 tons of food (just under 14,000 pounds of food)!
To say this was an enormous effort would be a grave understatement. This was only possible through the generosity and donations of countless parishioners like you and the hard work of the many volunteers that comprise the parish's St. Vincent de Paul Society. Thank you volunteers and parishioners for being faithful stewards of your time, talent, and treasure and for your generosity and almsgiving in these particularly tough financial times!

A blessed and glorious Feast of Christ the King. With this Sunday, which concludes the Church's liturgical year, we celebrate the Lordship of Jesus Christ over time and space, over the history of the whole human race and over each human heart. Next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, and the start of the Year of Grace 2012!

One of the most beautiful Masses of the year is the solemn Thanksgiving Day Mass at 9 am. There is just no more wonderful way to start this day than by going to God's House and offering Him the greatest prayer of thanksgiving, the Mass (the word "Eucharist" means "thanksgiving" in Greek.) After all, that is what the day is all about. The liturgy and the music (with the combined adult and children's choirs) captures the meaning of the day, and of course the pastor's heart is warmed by seeing so many people come on a day that is not a holy day of obligation. If the Thanksgiving Day Mass has not been part of your Thanksgiving customs, I would really suggest adding it. It changes the whole mood and meaning of the day!
No 6 pm Mass on Thanksgiving - the fathers will be starting to eat their first turkey sandwiches about that time, and I hope you will be doing the same thing.

9:00am - 5:00pm, Monday - Friday. Closed on Holidays and Holy Days of Obligation.

Saturday: 5:00pm, Sunday: 7:00am, 9:00am, 11:00am, 12:30pm, and 6:00pm Teen Mass.

Weekdays: 8:30am & 5:30pm. Saturday: 8:30am, 3:00pm - 4:30pm, and 6:00pm - 7:00pm.