Category: Parish News & Events

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On the Sixth Day within the Octave of Christmas, we are still – liturgically – celebrating Christmas Day! We sing the Gloria at each Mass during these eight days, and the prayers for the Nativity from the Liturgy of the Hours are repeated each morning as if it were still Christmas Day. In the Church, we celebrate the major feast days for weeks, not hours, so continue to spread the Christmas cheer, all the way to Epiphany!

In today’s Gospel, we glimpse the “hidden life” of the Holy Family in Nazareth. After the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, where the prayerful, faithful, 84-year-old temple-dwelling widow, Anna, recognized the Messiah in the arms of Mary and Joseph and gave thanks to God, the family returned to Nazareth. By all outward appearances, this was a family like every other family, and the child was a child like every other child, who “grew and became strong.” Like most children do. Right?

We are given a hint that there is a bit more than this at the end of the reading: the child was “filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” What did this look like within this particular family? There are things we can know and things we can only wonder about.

We know that they were faithful to the prescriptions of the Jewish law. We know that they prayed at the specified hours, that they prayed the Psalms, that they fasted, and observed the feasts prescribed by the law. We know that they had to work, to eat, to serve, and celebrate with their neighbors. And as faithful Jews, we know that they recited (several times a day) the Shema, acknowledging God as one, Whom they love with all their heart, soul, and mind. This is how they lived: in loving obedience to the one God of all, in constant obedience to the Father.

We don’t know many details about these years, but our hearts can lead us to ask some questions about them. What was it like to be the parents of the God-Man, to teach the law to the One Who gave it to His people? Did their neighbors discern anything special about this little family, in their demeanor or their generosity? Did their dinner conversations ever reach to the future, to the Mission of the Christ? We are free to wonder, and even to ask Jesus, His Mother, and St. Joseph to help us understand this mystery. And we certainly can – and should – ask them for the grace to live each moment with the same love and obedience to the Father.

May that be part of our New Year’s resolutions: to strive to walk with the Holy Family, and let them lead us to understand that we are loved intensely and infinitely by God. I pray that you and all those you love are being showered with many Christmas graces, and are blessed with a peace-filled New Year!

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Kathryn Mulderink, MA, is married to Robert, Station Manager for Holy Family Radio. Together they have seven children (including newly ordained Father Rob and seminarian Luke ;-), and two grandchildren. She is a Secular Discalced Carmelite and has published five books and many articles. Over the last 25 years, she has worked as a teacher, headmistress, catechist, Pastoral Associate, and DRE. Currently, she serves the Church as a writer and voice talent for Catholic Radio, by publishing and speaking, and by collaborating with the diocesan Office of Catechesis, various parishes, and other ministries to lead others to encounter Christ and engage their faith. Her website is https://www.kathryntherese.com/.

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“O Angel of God, my guardian, dear.” I think most of us probably learned this prayer as we were kids. I can remember praying this all together, sitting around the fire at night before bed. I think this is a beautiful tradition that families should start, but it also can lead to some thoughts about angels that may not be accurate. Because angels are frequently talked about and depicted in children’s prayers and books, we tend to think of the angelic as childish or almost make believe to help children with bad dreams. 

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that angels are God’s messengers and protectors. All throughout scripture, we see angels intervening and interceding for us here on earth. This makes sense if we think about it. Angels were created by God and are happy with him in heaven, so why not ask for and believe in their help. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes this idea further. The Church, in her wisdom, states, “From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. ‘Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.’ Already here on earth, the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.” 

This should be far more exciting to us than what we perhaps believed as kids, that angels were similar to Santa or the Easter Bunny. If we believe in demons, fallen angels, then we must believe that there are angels who are not fallen who are willing to fight on our behalf. We need this. We need as much help as we can get in this world, and God knew it. 

In today’s gospel, the holy family is told to flee to Egypt to escape certain death. Do we believe in the power of God and in his wisdom to protect us through his angels? Do we believe they can actually help us in our day to day and do we ask for their help, or do we believe they are nice things we heard and read about long ago? 

During this celebration of Christmas, let’s try to grow closer to our guardian angels and ask for their help and protection. “O Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule and guide.”

Amen.

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Tommy Shultz is a Solutions Evangelist for Diocesan. In that role, he is committed to coaching parishes and dioceses on authentic and effective Catholic communication. Tommy has a heart and a flair for inspiring people to live their faith every day. He has worked in various youth ministry, adult ministry, and diocesan roles. He has been a featured speaker at retreats and events across the country. His mission and drive have been especially inspired by St. John Paul II’s teachings. Tommy is blessed to be able to learn from the numerous parishes he visits and pass that experience on in his presentations. Contact him at tshultz@diocesan.com.

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It hasn’t been a very good year, has it? No matter what one believes politically, there is no Catholic who can feel good about children separated from their parents, put into cages, dying of neglect—or worse. I live in a country that allows this to happen. I am a citizen of a country that considers this an acceptable solution to a problem.

It’s not a comfortable thought.

I want my country to be more compassionate. I want my world to be more compassionate. So I turn to prayer. I ask God why; I ask him where he is when these terrible things are happening. Where is he when families are torn apart, when children are crying in the night?

And I hear his answer. He is here. He is in the camps at the border. He is with them, every day, every moment. He meets them in their pain and suffering. Where is he? He is sitting with the immigrants in their cages. He is holding the solitary frightened  toddler as she cries. He closes the eyes of the young boy who just died.

But, I say to him, it’s not fair! How can you allow this to happen?

And he points me to today’s Gospel, difficult to read at the best of times, excruciating to read here and now in the Year of Our Lord 2019. If the birth of the Christ-Child in Bethlehem that we just celebrated could be considered the roses, then today’s reading surely points to the thorns surrounding them.

A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.

The two themes of today’s Gospel reading have woven together this year in a most terrible way. First, we have a young family coming to the horrifying realization that they won’t be going home with their newborn, after all. That they cannot go home. That home is unsafe. That home means death.

They must leave the only place they’ve ever known, with nothing but the clothes they wear and the baby in their arms, and walk. For days stretching into weeks, they walk until they can enter another country, another culture, one they did not choose but have to embrace… and, somehow, survive there. It’s probable—in view of human nature as we see it around us—that Joseph and Mary, these refugees from Judea, were despised by the citizens of that new country. Viewed as Other. Viewed as Not Quite As Good As Us. Viewed as Them.

The Holy Family didn’t choose to be migrants, any more than many of the people at our borders want to be there. They are escaping—violence, death, starvation. They are there for the same reason the Holy Family was in Egypt: because it was the only option they had.

And then comes the massacre. The three wise men alert Herod—aging, feeling his power slipping from him, paranoid from the palace intrigue raging around him—to the birth of a new king in Bethlehem. Bethlehem at the time doesn’t actually amount to much; it’s a village of about 1,500 residents. Some interesting studies have shown there were probably no more than two dozen babies two years old and under—half of them female.

That’s still twelve to fifteen children murdered. Not enough to register in the mind of Josephus, our primary external source of the time; but enough. Enough for their parents. Enough for their communities. Every child is sacred. Every life is meaningful.

And it’s a number that’s getting dangerously close to the deaths suffered by children in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.

We celebrate Stephen as the first Christian martyr, but I wonder if we ought not think of those babies in Bethlehem as the first martyrs to Christianity. Innocent. Helpless. Just learning their first words, taking their first tentative steps. Dimples and gurgling and asking for just one more drink of water before they go to sleep. Gone.

And the other Baby, the newborn, living in poverty in Egypt, his family constantly on the move—we have sources for this, how they never stayed more than six months in one place, which can only point to the residents’ treatment of them—survived. God was with his Son, even as he is with all the children of migrants, the castaways, the Other.

It wasn’t a particularly auspicious beginning, was it? Rags and begging and just managing to get through the day. Surely God’s Son deserved better?

Surely everyone does.

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Jeannette de Beauvoir is a writer and editor with the digital department of Pauline Books & Media, working on projects as disparate as newsletters, book clubs, ebooks, and retreats that support the apostolate of the Daughters of St. Paul at http://www.pauline.org.