VIGIL OF THE FEAST OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY,
THE MOTHER OF GOD
AMID the din of Christmas feasting and family frolicking, these words continue to float above the noise with persistence:
This is the Year of The Unfolding…
First published December 25th, 2006…
THOSE hands. So tiny, so small, so harmless. They were God’s hands. Yes, we could look at God’s hands, touch them, feel them… tender, warm, gentle. They were not a clenched fist, determined to bring justice. They were hands open, willing to grab whomever would hold them. The message was this:
"Baby Jesus" by Deborah Woodall
HE comes to us as a baby… gently, quietly, helplessly. He does not arrive with a retinue of guards or with an overwhelming apparition. He comes as an infant, his hands and feet powerless to hurt anyone. He comes as if to say,
I have not come to condemn you, but to give you life.
A baby. A prisoner of love.
THERE was so little time. A stable was all Mary and Joseph could find. What went through Mary’s mind? She knew she was giving birth to the Savior, the Messiah… but in a little barn? Embracing God’s will once more, she entered the stable and began to prepare a little manger for her Lord.
"Peace Dove" by Christmas Spirit
AS Christmas draws near, the time for families to be together approaches. For some, it also means that the time of tension is drawing near.
THESE are the days when Jesus is asking us to have total and absolute trust. It may sound like a cliché, but I hear this with all seriousness in my heart. We must totally and absolutely trust Jesus, because the days are coming when He is all we will have to lean on.
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
POPE John Paul II called her the Star of the New Evangelization. Indeed, Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Morning Star of the New Evangelization which precedes the Day of the Lord.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. (Rev 12:1-2)
I hear the words,
There is coming a powerful release of the Holy Spirit.
THE DAY OF THE LORD — PART II
AS we draw closer to the "Day of the Lord," I want to further explain what this means. This can be considered a supplement to A Heavenly Map.
I rose at 3:30 am on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception this past December 8th. I had to catch an early flight on my way to New Hampshire in the U.S. to give two parish missions.
Yes, another border crossing into the States. As many of you know, these crossings have been difficult for us lately and nothing short of a spiritual battle.
LIKE most Catholic newlyweds, neither my wife Lea nor I knew much about the Church’s teaching on birth control. It wasn’t mentioned in our "engagement encounter" course, nor at any other time during wedding preparations. We’d never heard a teaching from the pulpit on it, and it wasn’t something that we had thought to discuss much with our parents. And if our consciences were pricked, we were able to quickly dismiss it as an "unreasonable demand."
So when our wedding day neared, my fiancée did what most women do: she started taking "the pill."
"The Pill"
Man cannot attain that true happiness for which he yearns with all the strength of his spirit, unless he keeps the laws which the Most High God has engraved in his very nature. —POPE PAUL VI, Humanae Vitae, Encyclical, n. 31; July 25th, 1968
IT was nearly forty years ago on July 25th, 1968, that Pope Paul VI issued the controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae. It is a document in which the Holy Father, exercising his role as chief shepherd and guardian of the faith, decreed that artificial birth control is contrary to the laws of God and nature.
