DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS FOR DECEMBER  2008.

+A Meditation for the Month of December in which we contemplate our Saviour’s Nativity+

God is always calling to us, always beckoning. He is intended to be, He must always be, our Supreme Love. Of course He wishes us to find joy in this world, in the pure love of our fellow creatures as well, if they do not shut Him out. The old ache of emptiness and dissatisfaction gnaws at our heart and the cry breaks forth from our inmost being: It is not enough! Only show me God!   In merciful answer God came upon earth and came in human form, spoke with a human voice, had a human appearance, because He was really a man. He moved up and down in Palestine, and wherever He went He was loved, except by those who for political and other reasons were His enemies. Yet they who had seen and heard Him could not and would not believe that the Lord of heaven and earth could have come down into our world, and have dwelt here, and have hung upon the Cross until He was dead, simply through love of them. They disbelieved His love because it was so great. But that same God is in the world still. Our Lord is in the Tabernacle of every Catholic church; we cannot see His features nor His shape, but beneath the veil of bread His Sacred Body is there as truly as it was in Nazareth. He is with us wholly and entirely in His perfect Manhood, in His eternal Divinity. Now He cures souls, and when He comes, as He does at Holy Communion, He is God still.
(Father Daniel Considine, S.J.)

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Bishop Anthony writes: Christ Who is God came  in His holy Nativity; Christ Who is God comes still at every Mass offered throughout the world; Christ Who is God will come again at the Last Day and the Consummation of the world – the world which He as God created! Let us bless always this Divine Threefold Coming! As a well loved Catholic Christmass hymn says: “Of the Father’s Heart begotten, Ere the world from chaos rose; He is Alpha: from that Fountain all that is and hath been flows. He is Omega: of all things yet to come – the mystic Close. Evermore and Evermore.”
As both Father Considine and the opening verse of the hymn remind us pointedly, Christmass is not a memory of a long gone event when a baby called Jesus was born in a cave or a stable; it is the annual reliving of the Nativity in human form of GOD Himself! JESUS is GOD! The Crib leads on - through all the simplicity and humility of most of our Saviour’s earthly life – through His Ministry to Calvary: Calvary which is why God was born Man of a pure Virgin. In the Crib is the Cross! And only in that Cross is our eternal Redemption if we love JESUS as our Redeemer and our GOD.
That, my dear brethren, is what Christmass means. A +Blessing I wish everyone who will read this.
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Let us pray: Come, Thou Lord Jesus, and grant us new courage, for we trust in Thy love. By Thy Holy and Renewed Coming at Christmass and in Thy Divine Eucharist, raise us to heavenly Glory where we shall see Thee not as a lowly Infant on Thy Mother’s knee, but crowned our King to all eternity. Amen+

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And a Passing Thought

The One Who is seated on the Throne of Heaven is laid in a stable. A God Who is beyond access is touched by the hands of human beings!     [Saint John Chrysostom]

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LORD JESU, WE WELCOME THEE INTO OUR LIVES AT THIS HOLY CHRISTMASSTIDE!
JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH WE GIVE THEE OUR HEARTS AND OUR SOULS!
COME INTO OUR POOR SOULS, O HOLY GHOST: AND NEVER LEAVE US!

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