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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“A baby every Christmas,” my grandfather used to say. He certainly did his part. He and my grandmother had eleven children. When those children got married and had children, they easily provided my grandfather with his Christmas baby. I never knew my grandfather. He died when I was three. As long as my grandfather was […]
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You’ve Got Mail – what does that mean? Mail–for us? We’ve yet to learn how to use this email system, are just learning. What is so important that it can’t wait for ordinary mail? What is so unimportant that it doesn’t warrant a telephone call? You’ve got mail – but how do we open it? […]
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The supermarket entices with every variety of food under the sun: fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables; meats and poultry; breads and pastas; condiments and candies; pastries and ice cream; Mexican, Chinese, Italian, and Indonesian delights. The variety overwhelms. The market place bustles with vendors of food from every continent: hot dogs, elephant ears, ice […]
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How wondrous is your dawn, O Lord, that quiet moment before day bursts forth in radiant glory. Sunrise is but a precursor, a prelude before the glory of the full-blown day. Dawn is not day, but a glimmer of the beauty, promise and hope of the day to come. How awesome is the dawn when […]
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