Best Advent Ever (Day 3) – Unexpected
Best Advent Ever (Day 2) – Your Brokenness Can be Healed
Minute Meditation – A Season of Transition
Transitions are tender seasons, not unlike the nine months when a woman gestates a seed prior to the birth of a child. New awareness can be fragile, and our old ways of being have the strength and energy of long-lived habits to give them considerable momentum and power. As the image of being attentive to a seed implies, you have to become more watchful. Care needs to be exercised. Fresh insights and new awareness have not yet been tested outside of your own heart, nor subjected to the gaze of others. It takes practice.
— from the book Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds As Light by Paula D’Arcy
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – God’s Loving Design
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, is one of the centerpiece feasts of the Advent season. Pope Francis points out that, like all the Marian feasts, this is about us and our call to holiness as well as something special in the life of Mary:
“Full of grace! This is how God saw her from the first moment of his loving design. He saw her as beautiful, full of grace. Our Mother is beautiful! Mary sustains our journey toward Christmas, for she teaches us how to live this Advent Season in expectation of the Lord….The mystery of this girl from Nazareth, who is in the heart of God, is not estranged from us. She is not there and we over here. No, we are connected. Indeed, God rests his loving gaze on every man and every woman!”
—from the book The Joy of Advent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis by Diane M. Houdek
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation: Emmanuel – God with Us
The Advent name for God is Emmanuel. We sing it over and over in the familiar hymn, “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” The name means “God is with us” and comes to us from the prophet Isaiah. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus was a fulfillment of this prophecy, God with us in the flesh, born a human baby, like us in all things. It’s an echo of the more exalted language of the prologue of John’s Gospel, which tells us that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Scripture scholars tell us that the second half of John’s Greek phrase translates literally as “pitched his tent among us.” This was an image that a first-century, semi-nomadic people would understand. In the Old Testament, God’s presence among the people was often described as a messenger or angel of the Lord. But the revelation of the incarnation is that now it is God himself in our midst and one of us. It’s difficult for us to grasp this concept. Perhaps this is why Matthew and Luke make such a point of describing the baby in the manger visited by shepherds, the child receiving gifts from the magi.
Perhaps this is why we have such a resonance with Christmas. We understand the great gift of life in a newborn child. There’s a purity in a newborn, a sense of both innocence and ancient wisdom, that gives us a glimpse of God. Knowing that God not only knows but experienced what it was to be a human being, composed of blood and flesh and bone, limited by all the things that limit us, should give us patience with our weakness and joy in our strength. In our prayers for help, we can say, “You know what it’s like,” and be confident that he does. But we can also look to the end of the story and know that by being one of us, he was able to raise us up to overcome those limits—and the final limit of death itself. As St. Irenaeus put it so well, “He became human so that we might become divine.”
The holiday season with its hustle and bustle and seemingly endless activities places demands on our bodies as well as our spirits. We can, if we like, imagine Jesus in the busy days of his preaching and teaching and healing ministry. If we do, we may also hear him calling to us and saying, “Come aside and rest for a while.” Because we know that he knows what it is to feel tired and need to be rested and refreshed.
—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections from Pope Francis by Diane M. Houdek
Saint of the Day – December 13 – Saint Lucy (283 – 304)
Saint Lucy’s Story (283 – 304)
Every little girl named Lucy must bite her tongue in disappointment when she first tries to find out what there is to know about her patron saint. The older books will have a lengthy paragraph detailing a small number of traditions. Newer books will have a lengthy paragraph showing that there is little basis in history for these traditions. The single fact survives that a disappointed suitor accused Lucy of being a Christian, and she was executed in Syracuse, Sicily, in the year 304. But it is also true that her name is mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer, geographical places are named after her, a popular song has her name as its title, and down through the centuries many thousands of little girls have been proud of the name Lucy.
One can easily imagine what a young Christian woman had to contend with in pagan Sicily in the year 300. If you have trouble imagining, just glance at today’s pleasure-at-all-costs world and the barriers it presents against leading a good Christian life.
Her friends must have wondered aloud about this hero of Lucy’s, an obscure itinerant preacher in a far-off captive nation that had been destroyed more than 200 years before. Once a carpenter, he had been crucified by the Romans after his own people turned him over to their authority. Lucy believed with her whole soul that this man had risen from the dead. Heaven had put a stamp on all he said and did. To give witness to her faith she had made a vow of virginity.
What a hubbub this caused among her pagan friends! The kindlier ones just thought her a little strange. To be pure before marriage was an ancient Roman ideal, rarely found, but not to be condemned. To exclude marriage altogether, however, was too much. She must have something sinister to hide, the tongues wagged.
Lucy knew of the heroism of earlier virgin martyrs. She remained faithful to their example and to the example of the carpenter, whom she knew to be the Son of God. She is the patroness of eyesight.
Reflection
If you are a little girl named Lucy, you need not bite your tongue in disappointment. Your patron is a genuine authentic heroine, first class, an abiding inspiration for you and for all Christians. The moral courage of the young Sicilian martyr shines forth as a guiding light, just as bright for today’s youth as it was in A.D. 304.
Saint Lucy is the Patron Saint of:
The Blind
Eye Disorders
Saint of the Day – December 12 – Our Lady of Guadalupe
The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe
The feast in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe goes back to the 16th century. Chronicles of that period tell us the story.
A poor Indian named Cuauhtlatohuac was baptized and given the name Juan Diego. He was a 57-year-old widower, and lived in a small village near Mexico City. On Saturday morning December 9, 1531, he was on his way to a nearby barrio to attend Mass in honor of Our Lady.
Juan was walking by a hill called Tepeyac when he heard beautiful music like the warbling of birds. A radiant cloud appeared, and within it stood an Indian maiden dressed like an Aztec princess. The lady spoke to him in his own language and sent him to the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumarraga. The bishop was to build a chapel in the place where the lady appeared.
Eventually the bishop told Juan to have the lady give him a sign. About this same time Juan’s uncle became seriously ill. This led poor Juan to try to avoid the lady. Nevertheless the lady found Juan, assured him that his uncle would recover, and provided roses for Juan to carry to the bishop in his cape or tilma.
On December 12, when Juan Diego opened his tilma in the bishop’s presence, the roses fell to the ground, and the bishop sank to his knees. On the tilma where the roses had been appeared an image of Mary exactly as she had appeared at the hill of Tepeyac.
Reflection
Mary’s appearance to Juan Diego as one of his people is a powerful reminder that Mary—and the God who sent her—accept all peoples. In the context of the sometimes rude and cruel treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards, the apparition was a rebuke to the Spaniards and an event of vast significance for the indigenous population. While a number of them had converted before this incident, they now came in droves. According to a contemporary chronicler, nine million Indians became Catholic in a very short time. In these days when we hear so much about God’s preferential option for the poor, Our Lady of Guadalupe cries out to us that God’s love for and identification with the poor is an age-old truth that stems from the Gospel itself.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patron Saint of:
The Americas
Mexico
//Franciscan Media//
Saint of the Day – December 11 – Saint Damasus
Saint Damasus’ Story (304 – DECEMBER 11, 384)
To his secretary Saint Jerome, Damasus was “an incomparable person, learned in the Scriptures, a virgin doctor of the virgin Church, who loved chastity and heard its praises with pleasure.” Damasus seldom heard such unrestrained praise. Internal political struggles, doctrinal heresies, uneasy relations with his fellow bishops and those of the Eastern Church marred the peace of his pontificate.
The son of a Roman priest, possibly of Spanish extraction, Damasus started as a deacon in his father’s church, and served as a priest in what later became the basilica of San Lorenzo in Rome. He served Pope Liberius (352-366) and followed him into exile.
When Liberius died, Damasus was elected bishop of Rome; but a minority elected and consecrated another deacon, Ursinus, as pope. The controversy between Damasus and the antipope resulted in violent battles in two basilicas, scandalizing the bishops of Italy. At the synod that Damasus called on the occasion of his birthday, he asked them to approve his actions. The bishops’ reply was curt: “We assembled for a birthday, not to condemn a man unheard.” Supporters of the antipope even managed to get Damasus accused of a grave crime—probably sexual—as late as A.D. 378. He had to clear himself before both a civil court and a Church synod.
As pope, his lifestyle was simple in contrast to other ecclesiastics of Rome, and he was fierce in his denunciation of Arianism and other heresies. A misunderstanding of the Trinitarian terminology used by Rome threatened amicable relations with the Eastern Church, and Damasus was only moderately successful in dealing with that challenge.
During his pontificate, Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman state, and Latin became the principal liturgical language as part of the pope’s reforms. His encouragement of Saint Jerome’s biblical studies led to the Vulgate, the Latin translation of Scripture which 12 centuries later the Council of Trent declared to be “authentic in public readings, disputations, preaching.”
Reflection
The history of the papacy and the Church is inextricably mixed with the personal biography of Damasus. In a troubled and pivotal period of Church history, he stands forth as a zealous defender of the faith who knew when to be progressive and when to entrench.
Damasus makes us aware of two qualities of good leadership: alertness to the promptings of the Spirit, and service. His struggles are a reminder that Jesus never promised his Rock protection from hurricane winds nor his followers immunity from difficulties. His only guarantee is final victory.
//Franciscan Media//
Saint of the Day – December 10 – Our Lady of Loreto
Our Lady of Loreto is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with the house where Mary was born, the site of the Annunciation, and the dwelling place of the Holy Family. The tradition and history of the Holy House goes back to Apostolic times. In the 13th century the house was mysteriously moved in one piece from Nazareth in the Holy Land to a final resting place in Loreto, Italy, carried by angels, a miracle to which the Church attests. It was transported to prevent its destruction by Muslims who destroyed the basilica which housed it. A new basilica was built around the Holy House in Italy, known as the Shrine of Our Lady of Loreto, one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world. Written at the door of the basilica are these words: “The whole world has no place more sacred … For here was the Word made Flesh, and here was born the Virgin Mother.” Our Lady of Loreto is the patron of aviators, fliers, pilots, and builders. Her feast day is December 10th.
//Catholic Company//