Count Your Christmas Blessings
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Just me on Monday, January 09, 2012
Unless you’re one of those stalwarts who can keep celebrating right through Candlemas on February 2, our Christmas celebration closes with Epiphany (yesterday) and today’s transferred feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
Each feast celebrates public manifestations of Christ: news of his coming reaching beyond Israel to the gentiles, and the beginning of his public ministry.
I thought it might be nice... READ MORE
The Restless Heart of God
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Friday, January 06, 2012
You must read the Holy Father’s homily for Epiphany this year.
The whole thing is quotable, but I’ll whet your whistle with this:
The restless heart of which we spoke earlier, echoing Saint Augustine, is the heart that is ultimately satisfied with nothing less than God, and in this way becomes a loving heart. Our heart is restless for God and remains so, even if every effort is made today, by means of most effective anaesthetizing methods, to deliver people from this unrest. But not only are we restless for God: God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us. He knows no rest either, until he finds us. God’s heart is restless, and that is why he set out on the path towards us – to Bethlehem, to Calvary, from Jerusalem to Galilee and on to the very ends of the earth.
Merry Christmas, Day 12
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, January 05, 2012
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, The Family of John the Baptist Visiting Christ
Thank God, this negative detail [“no room in the inn”—mankind too preoccupied with itself to make space for God] is not the only one, nor the last one that we find in the Gospel.
Just as in Luke we encounter the maternal love of Mary and the fidelity of Saint Joseph, the vigilance of the shepherds and their great joy, just as in Matthew we encounter the visit of the wise men, come from afar, so too John says to us: “To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12).
There are those who receive him, and thus, beginning with the stable, with the outside, there grows silently the new house, the new city, the new world.
The message of Christmas makes us recognize the darkness of a closed world, and thereby no doubt illustrates a reality that we see daily.
Yet it also tells us that God does not allow himself to be shut out. He finds a space, even if it means entering through the stable; there are people who see his light and pass it on.
—Benedict XVI, Midnight Mass 2007
Merry Christmas, Day 11
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Wednesday, January 04, 2012
The first thing we are told about the shepherds is that they were on the watch – they could hear the message precisely because they were awake. We must be awake, so that we can hear the message. We must become truly vigilant people.
What does this mean?
The principal difference between someone dreaming and someone awake is that the dreamer is in a world of his own. His “self” is locked into this dreamworld that is his alone and does not connect him with others. To wake up means to leave that private world of one’s own and to enter the common reality, the truth that alone can unite all people….
Awake, the Gospel tells us. Step outside, so as to enter the great communal truth, the communion of the one God. To awake, then, means to develop a receptivity for God: for the silent promptings with which he chooses to guide us; for the many indications of his presence.
There are people who describe themselves as “religiously tone deaf.” The gift of a capacity to perceive God seems as if it is withheld from some. And indeed – our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today’s world, the whole range of our experience is inclined to deaden our receptivity for God, to make us “tone deaf” towards him. And yet in every soul, the desire for God, the capacity to encounter him, is present, whether in a hidden way or overtly. In order to arrive at this vigilance, this awakening to what is essential, we should pray for ourselves and for others, for those who appear “tone deaf” and yet in whom there is a keen desire for God to manifest himself.
Benedict XVI, Midnight Mass, 2009
Merry Christmas, Day 10
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Tuesday, January 03, 2012
See more of Sheila Diemert’s work at SheilaDiemert.com
In the Bethlehem Grotto human loneliness is overcome, our existence is no longer left to the impersonal forces of natural and historical processes, our house can be built on the rock: we can plan our history, the history of humanity, not in Utopia but in the certainty that the God of Jesus Christ is present and goes with us.
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let us run joyfully towards Bethlehem, let us welcome in our arms the Child that Mary and Joseph will present to us. Let us start out from him and with him, facing all the difficulties. The Lord asks each one of you to cooperate in building the city of man, seriously and enthusiastically conjugating faith and culture. For this reason I invite you to seek always, with patient perseverance, the true Face of God…. Seeking the Face of God is the profound aspiration of our heart and is also the answer to the fundamental question that continues to surface ever anew in contemporary society.
—Vespers for the University Students of Rome, December 15, 2011
Merry Christmas, Day 9
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Monday, January 02, 2012
Icon, The Nativity of Christ
Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but…it seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason.
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We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable.
—Benedict XVI, Homily for Midnight Mass, 2011
Merry Christmas, Day 8
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Sunday, January 01, 2012
Madonna, Marianne Stokes
God’s Face took on a human face, letting itself be seen and recognized in the Son of the Virgin Mary, who for this reason we venerate with the loftiest title of “Mother of God.” She, who had preserved in her heart the secret of the divine motherhood, was the first to see the face of God made man in the small fruit of her womb. The Mother had a very special, unique and, in... READ MORE
Merry Christmas, Day 7
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Saturday, December 31, 2011
Julius Schnorr
God himself had spoken in many and various ways to mankind. But now something new has happened: he has appeared. He has revealed himself. He has emerged from the inaccessible light in which he dwells. He himself has come into our midst. This was the great joy of Christmas for the early Church: God has appeared. No longer is he merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a picture of him on the basis of mere words. He has “appeared”. But now we ask: how has he appeared? Who is he in reality? The reading at the Dawn Mass goes on to say: “the kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed.”
—Benedict XVI, Homily for Midnight Mass, 2011
Merry Christmas, Day 5
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, December 29, 2011
The Birth of Jesus, James Tissot
“The Word became flesh.” Before this revelation we once more wonder: how can this be? The Word and the flesh are mutually opposed realities; how can the eternal and almighty Word become a frail and mortal man? There is only one answer: Love. Those who love desire to share with the beloved, they want to be one with the beloved, and Sacred Scripture shows us the great love story of God for his people which culminated in Jesus Christ.
Pope’s Christmas Message, 2010
Celebrating Christmas
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Where did you sleep on Christmas Eve?
I was at home in my own bed, for only the second time since I’ve been married. And since the first time I was eight months pregnant with Blaise and the house was crowded with my parents and siblings, I’m counting Christmas 2011 as our first At Home Christmas. It was just our little family and it was lovely.
Bryan and I got married in 2002, and we’ve taken advantage... READ MORE
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