Gratitude is the proper response of children toward their parents. Out of this gratitude comes respect. When we are children at home, this respect includes “true docility and obedience.” Fr. Mike emphasizes respect for parents doesn’t expire when we leave home as adults. Grown children are responsible for caring for and supporting their parents in their old age. As Fr. Mike stresses, this can be the simple but often overlooked phone call to mom or dad. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2214-2220.
Often we hear the phrase “Christmas is for children” and while it may seem like a cliché, it really is true. Children have an ability to abandon themselves to the joy, the anticipation, the expectations of this marvelous holiday that we lose when we become adults with responsibilities and budgets and hard economic realities. They enter into preparations with a glee that knows nothing of the perfect Pinterest project or decorations inspired by glossy magazines. Watching children create worlds out of their imaginations and doing our best to take part in their visions shows a respect for God’s movement within them and reminds us of our own more carefree days. There’s no doubt that the pope follows the one who encouraged us to become like little children: dependent, needy, but open to the grace and protection and providence of God.
Find ways to include children in your Christmas preparations as well as the celebration of the day itself. Let them decorate their rooms themselves. Encourage them to help with decorating cookies, even if they use half a bottle of colored sugar on one cookie in the beginning. Overlook the five ornaments on one branch of the tree because that’s where the four-year-old could reach. Take delight in the Fisher-Price donkey on the roof of the stable where an adult would put the star. Christmas reminds us that there’s more to life than the workaday adult world.
Saint Nicholas’ Story (March 15, 270 – December 6, 343)
The absence of the “hard facts” of history is not necessarily an obstacle to the popularity of saints, as the devotion to Saint Nicholas shows. Both the Eastern and Western Churches honor him, and it is claimed that after the Blessed Virgin, he is the saint most pictured by Christian artists. And yet historically, we can pinpoint only the fact that Nicholas was the fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Lycia, a province of Asia Minor.
As with many of the saints, however, we are able to capture the relationship which Nicholas had with God through the admiration which Christians have had for him—an admiration expressed in the colorful stories which have been told and retold through the centuries.
Perhaps the best-known story about Nicholas concerns his charity toward a poor man who was unable to provide dowries for his three daughters of marriageable age. Rather than see them forced into prostitution, Nicholas secretly tossed a bag of gold through the poor man’s window on three separate occasions, thus enabling the daughters to be married. Over the centuries, this particular legend evolved into the custom of gift-giving on the saint’s feast. In the English-speaking countries, Saint Nicholas became, by a twist of the tongue, Santa Claus—further expanding the example of generosity portrayed by this holy bishop.
Reflection
The critical eye of modern history makes us take a deeper look at the legends surrounding Saint Nicholas. But perhaps we can utilize the lesson taught by his legendary charity, look deeper at our approach to material goods in the Christmas season, and seek ways to extend our sharing to those in real need.
Saint Nicholas is a Patron Saint of:
Bakers Brides and Grooms Children Greece Pawnbrokers Travelers
“Faith in Jesus Christ has allowed us to truly become children of God and also His heirs. We Christians often take for granted this reality of being God’s children. Instead, it is good to remember with gratitude the moment in which we became such, the moment of our baptism, so as to live the great gift we received with greater awareness. If I were to ask you today, “which of you knows the exact date of your baptism?” I do not think there would be too many hands raised…. Yet, it is the day on which we were saved, it is the day on which we became children of God.” Pope Francis
When you hold a child, you hold the future. When you teach a child, you shape who they will become. And when you give a child the gift of strong morals and deep faith… you are doing something so powerful it could change the whole world.
Today, Allen reflects on Jesus’ beautiful love for children, his call to honor the children in our lives, and the world-changing power we unlock when we help them become the best-version-of-themselves.
We care for our children because we love them. We care for our children because in our love for them, we realize that they are unique, amazing creatures— even our identical twin daughters, who had different personalities right from the start. We care for our children because in the eyes of our love, they are beautiful, inside and out. We care for our children because in our love for them, we wonder at the people they are, and we hope for the people they are becoming. We care for our children even though they may break our heart—and in each breaking, our heart grows larger and more capable of care. Our love creates and preserves the best in them and the best in us.
Pope Francis offers a pointed reflection on a common attitude toward health care when he imagines the conversation: “How is your health, you who are a good Christian?”
“Good, thank God; but also, when I need to, I immediately go to the hospital and, since I belong to the public health system, they see me right away and give me the necessary medicines.”
“It’s a good thing, thank the Lord. But tell me, have you thought about those who don’t have this relationship with the hospital and when they arrive, they have to wait six, seven, eight hours?”
He goes on to say, “I think of all the people who live this way here in Rome: children and the elderly who do not have the possibility to be seen by a doctor. And Lent is the season to think about them and how we can help these people. We should be concerned about people in difficulty and ask ourselves: What are you doing for those people?”
We can recognize all too easily our tendency to settle for having our own needs met without thinking about the needs of those who lack our access to the best in health care and medicine, whether in developing countries or in our own cities and rural areas.
Anytime we thank God (or our employers) for our health coverage, we should also give thought to those who don’t have these basic needs met in any substantial way. At the very least, we can resist the temptation to criticize the poor for what we might perceive as some “entitlement” because they qualify for Medicaid. But we can do better than that by working through the complex and often vexing issue of reforming our own health care system. While no government program is going to be without its flaws, we have an obligation as Christians to make sure we don’t settle for having merely our own needs met.
Before my oldest daughter, Maddie, was born, I remember spending what seemed like hours washing, folding, and refolding her little outfits before placing them in her tiny laundry basket. I remember holding them close to my face, breathing in their baby-powdered scent. I would then carefully place each of them neatly in her dresser drawer, anxiously awaiting her arrival.
After she was born, I remember diligently working to get the spit-up and then baby-food stains out of those same outfits. As she got older, the source of the stains changed—food, mud, blood—but the process did not: wash, fold, place in her laundry basket, repeat. Late-night washes of bedsheets morphed into last-minute washes of school uniforms, which transitioned into my husband, Mark, asking, “Is this yours or Maddie’s?”
So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was a laundry basket that undid me when Maddie recently moved out. No, it wasn’t her bed missing. It wasn’t the bare room that just a few days ago had been filled with all of her stuff. No, it was a white, plastic laundry basket with her name written on the handle in red marker that reduced me to tears.
I should have known it would be something so nondescript that would bring the reality home. I quickly learned after my mom died that it was always the little things in life—not the big, predictable moments—that seem to hit closest to home and evoke the most emotion. In fact, this would have been a good time to have her around.
Reality Check
It was just an average day when it happened. I was downstairs in our laundry room helping my youngest daughter, Kacey, look for her gym clothes. As I reached for Kacey’s basket, I looked at the shelves where our family’s laundry baskets are kept, and I froze. Suddenly, I was face-to-face with the empty space where Maddie’s basket had, until just recently, resided. Five laundry baskets sat on the shelves where just a few days ago there had been six. An overwhelming rush of emotion came over me.
Really? I thought. It wasn’t as if I didn’t realize it was gone. After all, I had helped her do the last loads of laundry before she left and piled her basket high with clothes for the move. In fact, I think I might have even carried it into her new apartment. But now, seeing that empty space made the reality of her absence crystal clear.
And it wasn’t as if her moving out came as a complete surprise. You see, Maddie is fiercely independent. She has been ever since she was little. She had made it very clear to Mark and me that she planned to head out on her own as soon as she was able. Apparently, that time was now.
And so we packed up her car with her belongings and helped her take that next step into adulthood. After all, that’s what we’re supposed to do as parents, isn’t it? It is the moment we work toward from the time we fold and refold those baby clothes to the time they take one more step away from us and into their own lives. We hold their hands, teach them, support them, and then, at some point, we help them pack up and move on—unfortunately, with their laundry basket in hand.
