Saturday, December 27, 2025: Please join us for our Emmaus Celebration Tomorrow.

We begin with a greeting at 1:45 followed by our Liturgy at 2:00

In person at Christ Church United Methodist

1717 Yulupa, Santa Rosa  

Or On Zoom 

Please join our Zoom Meeting using this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5193158573?omn=82142452838

Passcode: 1234

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Meeting ID: 519 315 8573

Passcode: 1234

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Emmaus Liturgy for December 28, 2025

Welcome: Dan Vrooman: John Steinbeck hid in a migrant camp under a fake name – just to see if America would treat him like one of its own. It didn’t. It was 1936, the heart of the Great Depression. Steinbeck kept hearing stories – families from Oklahoma and Texas, farmers who had lost everything to dust and drought, flooding into California in broken trucks. They came chasing a dream, but what they found was hunger, hate, and fields owned by men who saw them as less than human. Newspapers called them “Okies.” Politicians called them “a problem.” 

Steinbeck couldn’t just write about it from a distance. “If you want to understand a man’s pain,” he once said, “you have to walk with him in the mud.” So he borrowed an old car, put on torn clothes, and vanished into the San Joaquin Valley. For weeks, he lived among the migrant workers – sleeping under the stars, eating scraps, and sharing stories by dying campfires. 

He watched mothers try to hush their crying babies with songs instead of food. He saw children digging through trash for rotten fruit. “You have no idea how terrifying hunger sounds when it cries,” he later wrote. “It changes the shape of man’s face. Every night, after the others slept, Steinbeck sat by a lantern and scribbled – pieces of dialogue, sketches of faces, small moments of grace in a world built on suffering. Out of these notes came The Grapes of Wrath.

The experience of the family of Nazareth cannot but make us think of the many families today who are also “in movement.” Mary, Joseph, and Jesus faced the dangers and uncertainties of travel with a young child, dependent on the hospitality of strangers in a foreign land. 

This parallels the physical risks and emotional trauma experienced by refugees on arduous journeys today (e.g., crossing the Darien Gap); but also of those families who live with the apprehension and anxiety of not making ends meet, of unstable marital situations, the fear of illness… If it is true on the one hand that in many situations people feel like “refugees”, “strangers in their own homes”, or in the heart of a dear one, it is also true that every obstacle, every difficulty can be transformed into an opportunity to “depart”, an opportunity for a “journey toward conversion” which alone can lead to serenity, peace, stability. 

The Holy Spirit speaks to today’s families Today, the Holy Spirit still continues to guide “all peoples”, “all couples”, “all parents”. But we need to listen to the Spirit who speaks in us. If the Son of God came to live with us as a child, and only the eyes of faith can perceive His presence, how important it is to remind ourselves that everyday things are never of little importance, that daily occurrences are never useless or purely coincidental. 

The eyes of faith are necessary to grasp the hidden and the beyond. Everything becomes a “place” to encounter or reject God’s presence. Everything is a sign for those who believe.

OPENING SONG: Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel

Opening Prayer

You, the one from whom on different paths All of us have come,

To whom on different paths All of us are going, Make strong in our hearts what unites us.

Build bridges across all that divides us; United, make us rejoice in our diversity,

At one in our witness to your peace, A rainbow of your glory. 

Amen. By David Stendl-Rast, OSB

First Reading: I am a refugee by Ifrah Mansour YouTube video [3:17]

Intro to our Responsorial Song: Shalom and well-being of the circle of life is the song we must sing, the flames we must ignite and the communities we must build for the sake of future generations who live upon the earth. May we continue to dedicate our holy days to the world we wish to see. 

I am willing – Holly Near – Social Justice

Second Reading: 1 John 3;1-2, 21-24

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

GOSPEL: Luke 2:41-52

41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 

44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him.

 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 

48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”[a] 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Dialogue Homily:

 1.The story of the Holy Family seeking safety highlights the role of tyrannical power (King Herod). How does this parallel modern systems that create refugees, such as war, economic injustice, and social upheaval, and what responsibility do other nations have to address or not to address these root causes?

2.When does the use of the Holy Family story of fleeing to Egypt become a political statement rather than a call for compassion and an image of hope? How can societies manage border policies humanely while upholding the dignity of all migrants as human beings with inherent rights?

3.How do we engage our most precious practice: radical hospitality, as we tend transformational solidarity that co-creates a just and loving world?

What do we bring to the table this afternoon?

Eucharistic Prayer: Thanksgiving Prayer 

We give thanks for Jesus of Nazareth, who loved so greatly and taught so clearly and courageously that he was able to set people free from images and ideas and religious practices that bound them into fear and a false sense of separation from the Spirit of all life. Through him we have learned how our loving is a sharing in the life of this Spirit. In him we see the Spirit of life challenging all of us to make its presence on earth more visible.

 P: On the night before He died, Jesus was at table with his friends. He took bread. He gave thanks to God. He blessed it. He broke it, and shared it with his friends and said: 

All: “This is my body, shared with you.” 

P: As supper was ending, Jesus took the cup of wine. He gave thanks. He gave it to his friends and said, This is the cup of my love for you and for all creation.

All: Go forth and be my hands and my feet; carry my love into the world.

P: Now gathered at our table, we offer our gifts of bread and wine, and ourselves, as living offerings of your love. Pour out your Spirit upon all these gifts and all of us that we may be Your Living Body. Your Lifeblood.

Breathe your Spirit over the whole earth and make us all your new creation. In the fullness of time bring us with all your saints from every tribe and language, from every people and nation to feast at the banquet prepared from the foundation of the world.

P: Let us pray the gift Jesus gave us.

All: Heavenly Father, heavenly Mother, Holy and blessed is your true name.

We pray for your reign of peace to come, We pray that your good will be done.

Let heaven and earth become one. Give us this day the bread we need,

Give it to those who have none. Let forgiveness flow like river between us, From each one to each one, Lead us to holy innocence

Beyond the evil of our days. Come swiftly Mother, Father, come,

For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy;

Forever your name is All in One.

Sign of Peace 

May the love of Christ be in our hearts as we offer each other peace.

P: Communion Prayer 

Everyone is welcome to this table. Our God , whom the universe cannot contain, is present to us in this bread. The God who redeems us and calls us by name now meets us in this cup. So, come, take this bread, Drink this wine. In them, God comes to us, so that we can come to God.

Communion Song: Jake Shimabukuro “Eyes of the I’iwi” [7:21…stop at 4:52]

CLOSING PRAYER: 

Jesus, good shepherd, guide, and pastor, open gateway to infinite love; you are foreshadowed in every star that guides the course of sailing and of desire.

 You shine in every initiatory journey to the sacred heart of consciousness and self, in every act of liberation from oppression.

 Guide our lives and communities to green meadows, beyond undisturbed lifestyles of convenience into the transformative, fiery experience of your Spirit.

And the people of this beloved Emmaus community say: Amen.