Farewell to 2024

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  Remember, the Christmas season has hardly begun. Traditionally, it continues until Candlemas Day on February 2nd. So keep the celebration going. If you have any family birthdays or other events, rejoice and enjoy them. Keep the tree and the creche up, the lights lit, the carols playing, and the feasts going! After the seasons of penance in the Church, the celebrations are always longer. And the Master of the House is Jesus Himself. Let us adore Him with praise and thanksgiving and keep the wedding feast of God's love for mankind in style!

•  I'm grateful to God to have made it through another year as I run, walk, limp, crawl, stumble through this valley of tears. 2024 had its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its blessings and curses. Thank you, God for everything. As Fr. John Hardon, whose anniversary into eternal life was yesterday, often said nothing "just happens." All is God's will; all is His Providence.

Come, O Holy Spirit, Fill the Hearts of Your Faithful and Enkindle in Them the Fire of Thy Love!

My husband and I gave our priests worldly and otherworldly gifts for Christmas. The more important was our spiritual gift of the novena to the Holy Spirit which we plan to begin on New Year's Day. What a good way to begin a new year, we decided, by entreating the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and those of our spiritual guides. We expect that not only the priests will benefit from this gift, but we will too. Can you ever pray without being immersed in a pool of grace?

 This morning, during my prayer time, I read an excerpt from St. Claude de la Colombiere's 1674 notes from a retreat in Lyons. It confirmed for me the wisdom of choosing the Holy Spirit novena as a starting place for 2025. What better helper can we invoke as St. Claude writes; and what easier way to endure all things in peace and tranquility?:

Sunday Meditation: The Feast of the Holy Family

Murillo

Do you ever pray for your ancestors? Just think...without them you wouldn't be here. And are you a Catholic? Then you need to thank your ancestors for passing on the faith, unless you're a convert, of course, in which case you'll have others to thank. 

The Feast of the Holy Innocents should be the feast day for the aborted babies.

Herod lives! Every day he sends out his mobs to murder the little innocent ones. His soldiers are legion. They work for the federal and state governments. They wear white lab coats and turn hospitals and clinics into killing centers running with blood. They fill prescriptions for poisonous drugs. They run lobbies and pharmaceutical firms and teach in our schools perverting the minds and hearts of the innocents' brothers and sisters.

I can never see this feast arrive without thinking of all the millions of dead babies, spiritual siblings of the Holy Innocents. We need to do everything we can to spread the truth about abortion. It's a monstrous lie to call it "reproductive health care." It's a monstrous lie to pretend it makes women free." 

Random thoughts as the new year approaches.

• I pray a lot of novenas, sometimes for the needs of specific people and sometimes for specific intentions. Reflecting on this, I realized that I've never prayed a novena for myself. So two days ago I started a novena to my patron saint, Mary's mother Ann, for myself. It's not very specific -- I just want to be conformed to the will of God. If you've never prayed a novena for yourself why not make one. After all, we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Do we love ourselves enough to pray for ourselves. We certainly need it!

Reflecting on Family Trees and St. Stephen

A priest friend once told me, "There's no one deader than a dead priest." They have no descendants to pray for them and are soon forgotten. But the reality is that we are all "soon forgotten." I remember my grandparents on my dad's side, but I never knew my mom's adoptive parents and no one in our family knows anything at all about my mom's birth parents. My mom didn't even know she was adopted until after she was married. 

Wishing All Readers a Very Merry Christmas!

 

Santa will be kneeling at the manger tonight before his rounds!

 "Hail and bless the hour and moment that the Son of God was born to the pure Virgin Mary at midnight in Bethlehem in the piercing cold."

O King of All Nations, O Emmanuel, God with us: Let us pray for the Social Reign of Jesus Christ!

O King of all nations and keystone of the Church:

come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!

O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law:

come to save us, Lord our God!

“The dethronement of God on earth is a crime, to which we must never become resigned. Let us never cease to protest against it.” – Cardinal Pie [1815-1880]

Sunday Meditation: Gratitude, Hospitality, and Regenerative Repentance

St. Augustine says that gratitude to God is the beginning of faith. Are we grateful in these  last days of Advent? What a blessing to fill the manger with straws of gratitude softening and overflowing and making ready the rough bed for the infant Savior.

 Beginning in the days before Thanksgiving, my husband and I started filling Santa's sleigh with gratitude messages to deliver to the Holy Family in the stable at Bethlehem. Before a rosary lunch I held in November and before Thanksgiving dinner, we invited our guests, from the littlest on up, to write notes of gratitude to God in thanksgiving for all his gifts. That little sleigh full of thanks will grace our kitchen table throughout the Christmas season. I love to sit there and pull out reminders of the many gifts God gives us. And to add still more love notes. Praise be to You, Lord Jesus Christ.