DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS FOR DECEMBER  2009

+Let us contemplate this month the Incarnation of our Divine Redeemer+

High Mass of Christmass Day has been majestic worship, a festival ceremonial, a full acknowledgement that He Who is born is King of kings. Now the worship is ended. The ministers depart. The incense dissolves in the winter air. Ite Missa est. But the worshippers have a voluntary act yet to perform before they leave the church. Instinctively they make their way to the Crib and, one by one, kneel before the manger. Here are Saint Joseph and Our Lady and the Child and the adoring shepherds and the cattle. Beyond is the blue night sky and the twinkling stars. We have come from the magnificence of the Sacramental Christ, from the splendour of homage which the Church offers to her Everlasting Lord. We are still saturated with the great light which flowed in upon our souls – and now, of a sudden, the Catholic Religion brings us down to the crude externals of little Bethlehem. So, the King Whom we have worshipped is only a human baby, lying in the roughest of cradles and surrounded by beasts. Our Lady, whom we have greeted as Queen of Angels, is an outcast Jewish maiden whom the inn-keeper does not even trouble to accommodate!  The Crib intensifies the contrast.  Now in the cold silence of the fast-emptying church, at best it is but a meagre tableau.  Is this what we have chanted?  Is this the reality which we went at midnight to worship? It is a hard test, a test which must have faced the Magi, if not the shepherds, as something of an anti-climax. It is the eternal test upon which the Catholic Church insists: the Incarnation of the mysteries of God in the humblest and most ordinary of outward forms.
(The Romance of Christmass by Kenneth Ingram)
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Bishop Anthony writes: Our God is a God of surprises. The promised Messiah born in a stable when He was surely intended to come in glory to save Israel! “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” It was not, of course, the saving of the Hebrew people that God ever intended, but the salvation of the whole world! God’s chosen people had disobeyed, as had people of all races and nations, though they were in utter ignorance of God. The priest, when donning his stole before Mass, prays: “Lord, by the disobedience of our first parent we lost Thy friendship; yet by the Blood of Christ are we reconciled unto Thee: grant that unworthy as I am to approach Thy most Holy Eucharist, yet may I through Thy grace win everlasting joy.” The Blood of Christ had to be shed in a sacrifice of agony, a sacrifice to wipe out for ever all other pointless Jewish blood sacrifices; and so JESUS, in His Compact with the Father, came into the world in obscurity and poverty. If you think and meditate about it, only JESUS, the suffering God made man can suffice! He came to share what He had created: something people of other beliefs cannot comprehend. Pray for them, dear brethren, specially at Christmass, that the Holy Ghost will touch their hearts and allow them to know and accept the Redeemer of the world.  He came to share the troubles, toils and sorrows of ordinary people – how otherwise would He be the Living God? The Nativity points to Calvary and Calvary to Easter. He came in water and blood and He died for us in water and blood.
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Let us pray: Grant to us, we beseech Thee, almighty God: that as Thou dost pour forth on us the new light of Thine Incarnate Word, so He Who doth illuminate our minds by faith, may likewise in our works shew forth His brightness.  Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. +Amen+
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And a Passing Thought

There is no holiness without the grace of God. And this grace can be obtained only by our prayer.
(Pope Saint Pius X)
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JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!  ALL HAIL UNTO THEE, MOST HOLY FAMILY!
THOU ART ALL FAIR O HOLY MOTHER OF GOD: AND THE STAIN OF SIN IS NOT IN THEE!
JESU! REDEEMER OF THE WORLD, HIDDEN THOU LAYEST IN A VIRGIN’S WOMB!
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But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God. (St. John. Ch.1)