Christmas – Season of Promise My baby is born and my joy is complete. Will I ever experience greater joy than that of today? Daily he masters new skills and tricks–a twitchy smile, a purposeful crawl, “Mama.” For this purpose I was born–to prepare for his arrival, to carry him in my arms until he […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise I stand before you, Lord, ready for a new day, a new year. How quickly the years follow one after the other, piling up behind me. I have more to look back upon than to anticipate. The New Year’s Eve service is quiet, then a quiet celebratory dinner with my […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise It takes a village to raise a family, they say, but the reverse is also true. It takes a family to raise a village. God knew what he was doing when he put us into families. Kids fare better when raised by their mother and father in a family setting. […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise Consider the power of words. With them I encourage and congratulate, embarrass and insult, proclaim my love–and my promises. Consider, too, the power of words unspoken, the power of silence. Silence is pregnant, full of potential. Lord, give me the wisdom to know when to speak and when to be […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise Why is it the old year ends and the new year begins in the midst of winter? Why not celebrate the New Year in spring when life bursts forth anew? Winter is the season of dying, not of rebirth, yet each December we celebrate the birth of a baby. Amid […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise Feast Day of the Holy Innocents The slaughter of the innocents–young lives wiped out because of one man’s insanity. How many future lives were lost? How many Rembrandts, Einsteins, Dantes–descendants of unborn generations too numerous to count. Children dying in Syria, dying in Africa, slaughtered during the genocide in Rwanda […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise Eager children reach out to touch the nativity figures arranged in the manger. One caresses the Infant. Another reaches for Mary, while a curious toddler investigates Joseph’s hard beard. These children instinctively reach for the sacred, to physically touch these special figures they have heard so much about: the swaddled […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise He remembered how grown-up he had felt when he attended his first midnight Mass. Before that they had always gone to the children’s Christmas Eve Mass. His brother and he had insisted they were no longer children, had put behind childish ways and were ready to attend midnight Mass at […]
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Christmas – Season of Promise The promise of pregnancy is fulfilled; a baby is born. Yet with each birth the promise remains–for years to come–of a life to be lived, of parental promises to be kept to the newborn. Promises fulfilled; promises to keep. And so life goes on. People are born and die. But […]
Read More Our lives are full of promises–those we have made and those made to us; those we have kept and those we have yet to fulfill; promises we make to ourselves and keep quietly within our hearts, waiting for the best time to speak or act. Consider how promises influence our lives. Our perception of life […]
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