Some sayings of St. Francis de Sales

Be at peace. Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;
rather look to them with full hope as they arise.
God, whose very own you are, will deliver you from out of them.
He has kept you thus far, and He will lead you safely through all things;
and when you cannot stand, God will carry you in his arms.
 
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;
the same everlasting Father who cares for you today
will take care of you then and every day.
He will either shield you from suffering, or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.

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Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself.

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Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.

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Great occasions for serving God come seldom, but little ones surround us daily.

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Be who you are and be that well.

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Every moment comes to us pregnant with a command from God, only to pass on and plunge into eternity, there to remain forever what we have made of it.

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Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue.

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One single act done with aridity of spirit is worth more than many done with feelings of devotion.

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One can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hundred barrels of vinegar.

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We correct ourselves better by a calm and lasting repentance than by one that is bitter and angry.

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You must not only have a kind word for your neighbors and for strangers, but also for the people
with whom you live and your closest friends.

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Refrain from imputing imaginary faults to your neighbor, from revealing those which are secret and from exaggerating those which are obvious.

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To speak little does not consist in uttering few words, but in not speaking useless ones.

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Those who believe themselves to be far advanced in the spiritual life have not even made a good beginning.

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We must not be astonished to see ourselves imperfect, since we must never see ourselves otherwise in this life.

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Great works do not always come our way, but every moment presents us with opportunities to do little ones with excellence.

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Sometimes we so much occupy ourselves with trying to live like angels
that we neglect to be good men and women.

St. Francis de Sales, pray for us!

Saint Meinrad, Pray for Us

Photo by Fr. Lorenzo Penalosa, OSB

The Christmas Gift

Want did you really want for Christmas this year? Did you get it? If so, how big a difference will it make in your life a week from now, a month, a year, 20 years?

What about the gift of Christ himself? Did you truly receive into your heart him who is always available to us? Not just as a cute little infant born in a stable more than 2,000 years ago, but as Savior of the world—the Word Made Flesh who later died for your sins and mine? The Christ who will come again, when we least expect it, at the Final Judgment? And perhaps most importantly, the Christ who beckons each one of us at every moment?

Deep within our hearts, he calls out, day and night: “I stand at the door and knock. Whoever hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

Did you hear his call this Christmas? Did you open the door? And whether or not you received him into your heart, what difference will it make to you tomorrow, and the day after, and the next day … at the end of time?

OPEN THE GIFT

CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS TO ALL

The Master's crib

While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.  -- Luke 2:6-7

 

W

hen I was a child visiting my grandparents in northwest Indiana, my brother, cousins and I looked forward to accompanying Grandpa when it was time to feed the cows out in the fields. He would drive the tractor, and we would ride atop the flatbed trailer filled with bales of hay. Once we arrived alongside the feeding trough, Grandpa would start cutting the bales of hay and tossing them in.

The cows never had to be called for dinner. They came galloping to meet us. They knew what the sight of the tractor meant, and what the trough was for. They knew who fed them.

Compare this image to these words from the prophet Isaiah, lamenting on God’s behalf: “The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib [or feeding trough]; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (Isaiah 1:3). That’s quite an indictment! In other words, stupid and stubborn beasts know who feeds them, but God’s own people, created in his image, do not.

Luke’s Gospel proclaims that, with the birth of Jesus, this woeful situation has been reversed for all who heed such good news. The symbolism of the manger is important for Luke. After giving birth, he writes, Mary laid the infant Jesus in a manger (2:7). Luke goes on to mention this detail two more times—when nearby shepherds hear from an angel the good news of the Messiah’s birth, and then go to Bethlehem to see for themselves the child in the manger (Luke 2:12, 16).

Beginning with those shepherds, God’s people now know their “master’s crib.” And it is God himself—in the Word Made Flesh who came among us, and who is with us always in his Holy Spirit—who closed the gap of understanding. In so doing, he began fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant: “I will be their God and they shall be my people … They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34). This movement by God was finalized some 30 years later with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and continues today in the church’s faithful.

The manger, the ox and the ass in the Nativity scene serve as a reminder: It is God who feeds us, both spiritually and physically.

Preparing for Christmas

NOTE: Good advice here from Erik Varden, OCSO, a Norwegian bishop and Trappist monk, when asked what spiritual practice he would recommend to Christians preparing for Christmas. -- Br. Francis

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I would recommend sitting in a chair for five minutes — 10, if you have time — every day without doing anything. Simply being still, listening to the stillness.

That is one of the great liturgical motifs of Christmas, that in the midnight silence, when everything was still, the Word came. The Word didn’t come with a huge cry. But the Word came as an infant. In Latin, “infans” means “speechless.” Again, that’s one of those great paradoxes that the Fathers loved: that the Word chose to be among us as someone, as any infant is, deprived of speech.

Recovering, and perhaps even discovering, that deep silence within ourselves will help to make us realize that that isn’t an emptily resonant space, but in fact, it is an inhabited space, and a space of openness, and we could almost say of hospitality, because all of us yearn for that receptivity to the Word coming among us and coming to you and coming to me.

-- Excerpted from an interview published in The Pillar

Be a star

[On this feast of the Epiphany], the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognize and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to find Christ.

You must have the same zeal to be of help to one another; then, in the kingdom of God, to which faith and good works are the way, you will shine as children of the light: through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

                                                                                                   --St. Leo the Great

Light shines in the darkness

Today a light shines on us,
for the Lord is born to us.

He is called

Wondrous God,

Prince of Peace,

Father Forever,

and his reign

is without end.

Isaiah 9:1-6
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14

Darkness blankets the earth. Night descends and we seek rest, security, and peace. The dawn promises hope, newness, and joy, but it is a long time coming. Sleep is elusive, fear and worry creep in, and loneliness torments. We toss and turn throughout the long night.

Under the cover of night, we are haunted by the demons of war, oppression, violence, injustice, poverty, racism, disparity, corruption, crime, abuse, lust, greed, selfishness, jealousy, anger, conflict, hostility, isolation, guilt, shame, despair, depression, exhaustion, addiction, illness, pain, grief, sorrow, and death. All the result of the sin of pride inherited from our first parents, humanity’s choice to spurn the God of all and “be like gods” ourselves (cf. Genesis 3:5).

It is a dark, dark world—like Pottersville in Frank Capra’s 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life. Except that Pottersville didn’t exist. It would have existed if it had not been for one man, George Bailey, famously portrayed by Jimmy Stewart. His goodness, his light, kept the evil darkness of Mr. Potter at bay. His light provided hope for the good people of Bedford Falls. And when the darkness threatened to overtake even poor, desperate George Bailey, something small and wonderful happened:

God stepped in.

So it is with us. While “It’s a Wonderful Life” provides an apt metaphor for God’s presence in the world, the Incarnation we recall in the feast of Christmas surpasses all wonder. God became man. God entered the darkness—not to eradicate humanity’s woes, but to give them meaning and purpose within a fallen world grasping at straws. Christ is our hope in a world of darkness. His “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

The theme of light piercing the darkness is prevalent in all of today’s readings. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone,” prophesies Isaiah. “The grace of God has appeared,” writes St. Paul. “The glory of God shone around” the shepherds as the angel of the Lord announced the birth of Jesus. It is interesting to note that this light of God’s glory does not eliminate the dark night. Rather, it shines through it to provide hope and guidance. Christ, the Light of the World (cf. John 8:12), promises to lead us through the darkness, and—if we follow him unreservedly—to keep evil at bay, to even thwart it. As John the Baptist’s father Zechariah prophesies in the Benedictus (Luke 1:67-79) which we chant each morning at Lauds: “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Christmas reminds us to seek that light again, to follow it, to become that point of light along the dark and narrow path of life. Our rejoicing in the light that Christ provides should, like George Bailey, provide a beacon of hope for others on the same journey. We all must become the light that shines in the darkness. As Jesus told the disciples of his day and ours, “You are the salt of the earth” and the “light of the world. … Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly father” (Matthew 5:13,14,16).

A Savior is born for us from God’s zeal, or passion, as Isaiah says (9:6). Interestingly, a few sentences after today’s Gospel passage ends, Luke tells us that the shepherds who had seen the light “went in haste” and found Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus lying in a manger (Luke 2:16). They were eager to find the source of the light, and after seeing Jesus, expressing the zeal of God’s love, they “returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20).

The light shining in the darkness of that first Christmas night had transformed them, as it should with us today. St. Paul reminds us of this in the second reading when he says that the “grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age” as we await the final coming of Christ (Titus 2:11-12). This is our baptismal call as Christians.

The darkness shall not overcome us because God has stepped into it, has shown and given us the light, and because he leads us into the light for all eternity. As the Book of Revelation says:

God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain. … They will look upon his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever (21:3-4; 22:4-5).

A MOST BLESSED
AND LIGHT-FILLED
CHRISTMAS TO ALL !!!