From Season to Season

 And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,  until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star,  and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures  and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh .  —Matthew 2:9b-11 When Saint Luke wrote his account of the birth of Jesus, he spoke of shepherds tending their flocks by night. Inspired an angelic messenger and the multitude of the heavenly host with their songs of God’s glory, these shepherds “went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger” (Luke 2:16). We hear this story in the gospels proclaimed in the Masses of Christmas “ During the Night ” and “ at Dawn .”    Saint Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus has a very different tone. Concerned as he is with demonstrating how Jesus was the fulfillm...

Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.   —Luke 2:51-52 Christmas is a time for family. Whether we are spending the holidays with our biological families, religious communities and parish families, or “chosen” families of friends, Christmas is a season when we come together with those whom we love to celebrate love, especially God’s love enfleshed in the gift of his Son. This truth of Christmas was brought into sharp focus this year, as the realities of the coronavirus pandemic kept us from being with our families and those we love.  Contemporary icon of the Holy Family  by Marko Ivan Rupnik, SJ (2012) The Feast of the Holy Family, celebrated on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, is an invitation to reflect on the lives and relationships of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and on how God’s grace is at wo...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God … And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. —John 1:1–2, 14 The Gospel of the Christmas Mass “During the Day”   The Lord said to me: “You are my son; today I have begotten you.”   As unlikely as these words (the Entrance Antiphon for Christmas Mass  in the Night ) may seem, they are a powerful reminder that there is more to the celebration of Christmas than the birthday of Jesus. Every Christmas we celebrate the truth that God became a human being. This belief is so essential that to deny it or to try to explain it away is to give up  the  foundational belief of Christians. The Solemnity of Christmas invites us to pause and reflect on what these words really mean. It is one thing to simply profess the words “and by the Holy Spirit w...

How can we begin to grow and see in the events of life the hand of God, and see in each other the face of Christ? Saint. Paul suggests the answer: Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the things that are in the earth. (Colossians 3:2) That is the secret. Look beyond and above the things of men and earth. It is there — paradoxically, surprisingly and unexpectedly — that we begin to see the hand of God in the events of daily life, the face of Christ dimly outlined among those whom we know and love. Stained glass window by Marc Chagall in All Saints Church in Tudely, England We have to seek constantly the transcendent, plunge more deeply into the mystery that is God, and worship him more reverently. Like him we must establish and deepen community life. We must refuse to be intimidated by opposition or oppression. We must seek every means of communicating freely with the peoples of today who, no matter under what political system they live, are sta...

I will now praise the godly, our ancestors, in their own time, The abounding glory of the Most High’s portion, his own part, since the days of old. —Sirach 44:1-2 Knowing our family stories from the past is an important part of understanding who we are today. This is as true of the Church, as it is of your own family. Although we most often think of the saints as the figures of our “family” history who left the most important mark on the Church, it’s important to realize that the life of every Christian forms an essential part of our family’s story. Among those we hold most dear are those saints honored as “Doctors of the Church.” This select group of 36 saints includes some of the greatest minds in the Church’s history, such as Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Hildegarde of Bingen, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Francis de Sales, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. But this list also includes saints who are less-known but whose contributions to our understan...

At the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess That Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. — Philippians 2:10-11 Buried deep within the Catechism of the Catholic Church , in the fourth part—“Christian Prayer”—are three brief paragraphs that teach us something fundamental about prayer: 2664: There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father. 2665: The prayer of the Church, nourished by the Word of God and the celebration of the liturgy, teaches us to pray to the Lord Jesus. Even though her prayer is addressed above all to the Father, it includes in all the liturgical traditions forms of prayer addressed to Christ. ...

If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?... In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost. - Matthew 18:12, 14   The image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most well-beloved ways of understanding God’s provident care. Saint Gregory the Great, reflecting on Christ, the Good Shepherd, noted that anyone who follows this Shepherd will “enter into a life of faith; from faith he will go out to vision, from belief to contemplation, and will graze in the good pastures of everlasting life… Beloved, let us set out for these pastures, where we shall keep joyful festival with so many of our fellow citizens.” He concluded, “No matter what obstacles we encounter, we must not allow them to turn us aside from the joy of the heavenly feast” ( Homily 14 ,  3-6).     For the exiled people of Israel, this vision of the On...