Story by Joe Pisani

My friend George has a saying taped near the front door, which he reads whenever he goes out.

It says, “Good morning! This is God. I will be handling all your problems today. I will not need your help, so relax and have a great day! (Enjoy your weekend as well.)”

Somewhat appropriately, it’s above the keypad for the alarm system.

I often wonder whether God will handle ALL my problems, not to mention yours and everyone else’s. Or if the real problem is my lack of total trust.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to relax and not to have to white-knuckle your way through the day? To sit back and let everything happen, convicted in a childlike trust that God is not only handling the crises but also taking care of the details, sort of like a personal assistant, or more accurately a loving, protective parent.

I wish I had that kind of trust during the decade I worked in Manhattan and seemed to go from crisis to crisis and back again. I suppose all of us need to get out of the driver’s seat and let God do the driving when life is spinning out of control for any of a thousand reasons: A medical test doesn’t turn out the way we hoped. A recalcitrant child persists in self-destructive behavior. The company downsizes and you lose your job. A family member or friend dies. There’s an infidelity or a betrayal. Will God handle them all and help us get through them?

On my bedroom door, there’s a small plaque, which says, “Before you go to bed, give your troubles to God. He will be up all night anyway.” (Another reminder to trust.) If that’s true — and I certainly hope it is — then why am I up all night, worrying about my kids, my grandkids, my health, my wife’s health and every other conceivable thing that could go wrong. Sometimes I even think of new things to worry about when I get tired of worrying about the old things.

A priest once told me that six months from now I won’t remember what I’m distraught about today. That may be true, but it doesn’t make today any easier.

My father was a recovering alcoholic who had problems (and who created a lot of problems before he got sober). Whenever he saw my world spinning out of control, he’d say, “Let go and let God.” Great advice. Unfortunately, I usually don’t let go and let God until I’m hanging by my fingertips off the side of cliff.

In recovery, he also tried to live by the 12 Steps, and the 11th step is pretty specific about the need to trust God: “We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

The most important thing we can do, and perhaps one of the hardest, is to trust Jesus without hesitation or reservation. So as my New Year’s resolution, I’m making a renewed effort to trust more. My first step is to begin praying the Litany of Trust, which was written by a Sister of Life, and stresses the importance of living in the present, and the need to turn our will and our life to God. Get a copy and pray it every day. It says in part:

From the false security that I have what it takes, deliver me Jesus.
            From rebellion against childlike dependency on you, deliver me Jesus.
            From anxiety about the future, deliver me, Jesus.
            That you are continually holding me, sustaining me, loving me, Jesus I trust in you.
            That not knowing what tomorrow brings is an invitation to lean on you, Jesus I trust in you.
            That you are with me in my suffering, Jesus I trust in you.
            That your plan is better than anything else, Jesus I trust in you.
            That you will teach me to trust you, Jesus I trust in you.

from the Litany of Trust

I also got one of those “Good morning, this is God” plaques, which I gave to my wife for Christmas.      

As George told me: “When I read the assurance from God that he will take care of our wants, needs and problems today, I am positive he has done that all my life. So I understand what it means when I see the words, ‘Good morning, this is God. I will be handling all your problems today, I will not need your help, so relax and have a great day.’”

Story by Joe Pisani    

St. John Fisher Parish invites the homebound to join in

Five years ago during the height of the coronavirus, Deacon John McKaig of St. John Fisher Parish in Marlborough was invited to join two parishioners to pray the rosary on a Zoom call.

“I was going through chemo at the time, and my wife Patty and I started joining them the following Monday,” he recalls. “Nine months later, my cancer was in remission.”

Every Monday at 8:30 a.m., the prayer community begun by Jennifer O’Neill and Kurt Filosa gathers online to pray the Scriptural rosary, and that half hour has been a source of solace for people who often can’t leave home.

“The big advantage,” says Gil Thompson, who hosts the prayer session, “is that if someone is too sick to come to church, they can sit at home with their laptop and pray with us. Some, who have cancer, can turn on their video and not worry about transportation. We could be anywhere in the world and pray together.”

His wife Laurie recalls a member of the church who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s Disease and was committed to praying with them.

“When he first joined us, you could see the impact it had on him,” she says. “He asked to do the responses, and tears would be flowing from his eyes.”

The community of 10 people was so committed they would often go to his home to get him up.

“He needed us and we needed him,” Laurie says. “It got to the point where he could no longer speak, but two weeks before he passed, his caregiver brought him on.”

The group prays for many intentions, including those who are sick, new babies, job seekers, graduates and people who have overcome illnesses.

“We pray for everything,” Gil says, “including our pastor, Father George Mukuka.”

Word of the online rosary ministry spread and parishioners often reach out with intentions.

“It’s fulfilling to pray for people,” Laurie says. “Parishioners who are ill are happy when they hear they’re in our prayers. And whether they’re here or not, they know we’re praying for them.”

“We’re starting our week with prayer and thinking about people who are less fortunate because of health issues or whatever,” Gil says, “And we think about them for the rest of the week.”

During the rosary, Gil reads the Scriptural verse for each Hail Mary, while Laurie prays the response and others recite it at home.        

“This method of praying the rosary keeps my mind focused on the Scripture reflections that the leader reads before each Hail Mary,” Deacon McKaig says.

The beauty of the rosary, he says, is that it offers Catholics a way to meditate on the life of Jesus and the Blessed Mother, starting with the Annunciation when Mary said “yes” to God’s invitation, and culminating in Jesus’ Ascension and her Assumption.

“When we join others in this spiritual practice, it’s a powerful way to live out our baptismal promises by living the Greatest Commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and the Second Commandment, which is like it, to love our neighbor as ourselves,” Deacon McKaig says. “This lets us always remember it’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s all about what we can do for someone else.”

To join the rosary prayer group on Mondays at 8:30 a.m., go to St. John Fisher’s website, stjfchurch.org, and click on the “Ministries” tile and then the link for “Online Rosary.”

Story by Joe Pisani

When Father Jeffrey Gubbiotti was in high school, five friends came over for pizza two days before Christmas, and while they were hanging out, someone mentioned caroling. That night, young Jeffrey, who had never seen carolers, began a lifelong tradition when the six friends went out singing Christmas carols in the Oakville neighborhood of Watertown.

There’s also another tree he displays that has special meaning. It’s a tree he bought for $3 15 years ago, which he decorates with New York Yankee ornaments. At the top is a star he got for 50 cents that blinks blue and white — the team’s colors. Sometimes, he says, friends surreptitiously hang Boston Red Sox ornaments on it when he’s not looking.

Story by Joe Pisani

Even though we say “’tis the season to be jolly,” “joy to the world” and all that other stuff, I approach the Christmas season with a measure of anxiety because I’m convinced I’ll be visited with some calamity or family tragedy. A lot can happen between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

For much of my adult life, I’ve been apprehensive that something unsettling will happen…and it usually did. Let me start with the small stuff.

There was the Christmas Eve my mother fell down the stairs carrying an armful of presents from the attic, and we spent the night in the emergency room.

There was the year my wife was nine months’ pregnant with our first daughter and fell while crossing a stream at the Christmas tree farm because I insisted we had to cut our own tree. She spent the holiday in bed.

There was the year I had to throw our half-decorated tree out into the snow, stinking of Raid, because my daughters discovered a spiders’ nest in the branches, and hysteria erupted. Pretty soon spiders — not to mention my four daughters and wife — were running for cover.

Then, there was the year the doctors told us my mother’s cancer had spread, and it would be her last Christmas. That was one of the saddest holidays ever. (Spoiler alert: She lived for ten more Christmases.)

Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of Christmas joy, great presents and wonderful food, and the wondrous awe of Midnight Mass. But there was loss. One year, I spent the season alone in St. Petersburg, where we lived, because my wife and two young daughters returned home when her adoptive father died two days before Christmas. A year later her grandmother died on the same day.

Then, there was the Christmas Eve I got a call from my sister and learned my father had died while we were 300 miles away, stranded in a snowstorm. It’s crazy to be angry with God on Christmas, but I was.

My sister spent the night by herself in an empty emergency room. At midnight, a young minister saw her and stopped. He asked if she was OK, and she told him what happened. His first words, which I remember years later, were “What a wonderful gift to spend Christmas in Heaven.” At the time, I had my doubts.

Whenever I tell people that story, they have their own versions. Someone they loved died during the holiday season. 

For those who mourn, it hardly seems like a gift, but when you think about it, just imagine the majestic joy of celebrating Christmas in Heaven with the Baby Jesus, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, the choirs of angels, the saints and everyone else.

However, for the families and friends left behind, the loss of a loved one can be a particularly intense sorrow over the holiday. The grief never entirely goes away, and you relive it every year.

Nevertheless, as a priest friend once told me: Christmas is always a source of joy and hope, even amid adversity.

The Christmas story, itself, is a story of trials. A young couple travels more than 70 miles to an unfamiliar village, arriving as she is about to delivery her baby. Human kindness is in short supply, and there’s no room at the inn, so they seek shelter in a cave with the animals, where she delivers her son and lays him in a manger. And yet there was joy and hope and peace on that cold and lonely night.

The tinsel-covered “holiday season” can never give us joy and hope and the peace. All it can offer are fleeting pleasures.

In a Christmas greeting written 500 years ago, a 16th century friar, Fra Giovanni Giocondo, understood all of this. He said:

“There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much, very much that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see. And to see it, we have only to look. …And so at this Christmastime, I greet you with the prayer that for you — now and forever — the day may break and the shadows flee.”

May the shadows flee for us all. Wishing you a joyful, peaceful and hopeful and  Christmas.

Story by Shelley Wolf

Monsignor Lucian Bojnowski, who served as a pastor to the Polish community in New Britain beginning in 1895, was an enterprising priest who dreamed of many ministries to uplift the locals. As pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, he founded a congregation of religious women, two grade schools, an academy, an orphanage and a home for the elderly.

One of his creations that continues to care for God’s people to this day is St. Lucian’s Residence, a residential senior living facility, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year (1925 to 2025).

“He had an incredible vision,” Robert Skarba, administrator of St. Lucian’s Residence, says of Monsignor Bojnowski. Today, that vision is summarized in St. Lucian’s Residence logo with the tagline “comfort, care and compassion.”

“The ministry of St. Lucian’s is a priority of the Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception,” says Sister Mary Janice Zdunczyk, a member of the congregation and director of St. Lucian’s, who is in charge of providing that compassionate care. “It’s our mission to support St. Lucian’s financially, spiritually and socially.”

Activities include exercise classes, bingo, movies and holiday parties. Meals, assistance with medication, laundry and other services are also available, if needed.

Resident Kasimier (Kaz) Marchut, a former long-distance runner, takes advantage of the weekly exercise classes. He also loves to read. “I’ve read every book in the library,” he says, of the small library with English and Polish titles. But he says the best thing about living at St. Lucian’s is “having good friends.”

Story by Shelley Wolf

On a Saturday in November, 15 teens from St. Ann Parish in Avon spent their morning serving the men and women who protect our country far from home.

In the gymnasium of New Britain High School, they joined hundreds of other people from throughout Central Connecticut in wrapping and packing food gifts for military members in time for the Christmas holiday.

“It’s important to help. Some deployed members don’t have family looking out for them,” says Victoria Borisov, a St. Ann Youth Ministry member who is in the eighth grade. “A big part of our Catholic faith is helping others, and this fits with that. It’s a good cause.”

“Service work is important when you’re Catholic,” adds Henry Madison, a seventh grade youth ministry member. “We’re here to support the men and women overseas, so they can have the holiday spirit. I wish I could do more.”

The “Operation Cares 2025—Giving Thanks to Our Troops” event was sponsored by “Boxes to Boots,” a nonprofit started in 2015 by Karen Cote, a military mom in Berlin. At the 2025 event, the Avon teens and hundreds of others worked at 90 tables packing care packages of breakfast treats and snacks, and fun gifts such as Frisbees, for 1,800 to 1,900 service members.

Story by Jim Tierney

For Omar Acosta, every nail driven and every beam aligned is an act of prayer. A self-employed contractor from Windsor and a third-year candidate in the Archdiocese of Hartford’s Diaconate formation program, Acosta views his craft as a way to glorify God—and to draw others closer to him.

This Advent, parishioners and passersby at Sacred Heart Church in Bloomfield will encounter one of Acosta’s most heartfelt creations yet: a handcrafted manger that stands as both an artistic and spiritual expression of love.

His early years were shaped by hardship—his father’s struggle with addiction and his mother’s quiet, heroic perseverance.

“My mother was the instrument God used in my life,” he says. “She was my hero. She showed us mercy by visiting strangers in nursing homes, just to bring them company. That planted something deep in me.”

Whether serving others or shaping wood, Acosta finds God in the work of his hands.

“I’m an artisan,” he says simply. “I dream of designing church furnishings, grottos, Stations of the Cross—anything that glorifies God through beauty. The manger is just one small way to offer that.”

As the Christmas season approaches, Acosta hopes his latest creation becomes a place of encounter.

“The idea of being able to build a manger is to capture someone’s mind, eye, and attention,” he adds. “They’re looking up at God whether they know it or not.”

Story by Jim Tierney

When Father Joseph Keough, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Suffield, traveled to Mexico City earlier this month, he expected a meaningful pilgrimage. What he didn’t expect was how his visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe would impact him and shape his plans for the parish’s upcoming feast day celebration.

“It was something I always wanted to do,” he says. “My dad always had a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. It’s an image of her I wanted to learn more about, especially the Miracle of the Tilma.”

He was also struck by the symbolic depth of the image.

“Everything on the tilma has meaning – the stars on her mantle reflect the night sky of Dec. 12, 1531,” Keough explains. “There’s a heavenly message embedded in every detail.”

In the afternoon, the parish hopes to host a brief devotional program highlighting key moments from the pilgrimage and the history of the apparition.

The simple, but profound message behind the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe resonates in the lives of parishioners today. “That message of trust and drawing closer to our Lord through his mother,” Keough adds. “I am your mother, you are my son.”