Sweet little holy child: Came to save us

		Notes from the  Vicar General  Msgr. Paul J. Swain

Music is such an integral part of our lives all year long. Yet music at Christmas time plays an especially important role in our celebration of the birth of the Lord.

Christmas carols and concerts uplift our spirits and bring back good memories of happy Christmases past. While it is somewhat disheartening to hear carols in October and the use of them for cold commercial purposes, there are worse musical selections that could be made.

People sing out at Christmas Mass like no other time of year. We all have our favorites. It is hard not to be moved with the singing of Silent Night at the conclusion of midnight Mass or children singing Away in the Manger with such love and innocence.

We'll be more filled with God

There is a beautiful old spiritual entitled Sweet Little Jesus Boy that haunts me every Christmas season. It is a message of lament yet of hope.

Among its lyrics are: Sweet little Jesus boy, they made you be born in a manger. Sweet little holy child, didn't know who you was. Didn't know you came to save us Lord, to take our sins away. Eyes was blind. We couldn't see. We didn't know who you was.

As we encounter the annual conflicts over whether to allow crèches on public property or what we can officially call Christmas trees, this song reflects our day.

As we try to balance the expectations of others and ourselves to make this the best Christmas celebration ever for family and friends, we need the perspective knowing him brings.

As we experience the loneliness that often comes this time of year when we miss loved ones now gone who were such a central part of our lives, we need the solace that the gift of God the Father's Son offers.

When we worry about those who have fallen away from the faith or are caught up in unhealthy behaviors, we need the hope that this special child born of Mary invites. As we face all the challenges and frailties of life, we need to take time to discover, or rediscover, who He is to us, truly see the child born in Bethlehem.

If we know who He is

The Gospel of John tells us that the world did not know him, that his own people did not accept him. There are some of "his own" in our day who do not know him.

There are those Christian scholars who have such trouble accepting the truth of Scripture that they try to rewrite the script. There are those who get so caught up in the cultural celebration of Christmas that it lasts only one day, come and gone, like the gifts opened and put away.

That will not be for those who know who he is, what he came for, how he suffered and died, where he is in our midst these centuries later. When we know who he is, it will change our lives and our approach to the Christmas holiday.

Cardinal John Henry Newman suggested: May each Christmas, as it comes, find us more and more like him who at this time became a little child, for our sake; more simple-minded, more humble, more affectionate, more resigned, more happy, more filled with God.

As we join together this week in prayer, in song, in the Holy Eucharist, in time together as personal and parish family, may we be more filled with God, because we know that the sweet little Jesus boy, sweet little holy child, came, and comes, to save us.

A child of peace:
Gives hope to the suffering poor

		Propagation  of the Faith  Msgr. Delbert  Schmelzer

For the two-thirds of the world's population in the missions, Christmas Day is like any other day - filled with hunger, life-threatening illnesses, war, great suffering.

In Sudan, where the children have known nothing but war and mass-killings, thousands die every day of preventable or curable diseases or as a result of violence suffered during attacks on villages or camps.

Witness to Christ's love

Salesian Sister Teresa gives the orphaned children food, shelter, and clothing. However, her greatest gift to them is her loving service, a witness to the love that Jesus has for each child.

Sister Teresa says, "They may not have peace in their surroundings, but I want to try to give them peace in their hearts. I tell them of an infant, much like themselves, whose family was forced to flee with His parents from their hometown. I tell them that God's love overcomes all fear. Some of the little ones want to hear that story every day."

Bringing hope

In Gulu in northern Uganda, 69 percent of the deaths are connected to HIV/AIDS - three times more than the number who have perished in the fighting that has gone on for 18 years. At St. Mary's Hospital in Gulu, health care is provided for the poorest of the poor. The Sisters who run the hospital say that nearly 64 percent of the patients are children under the age of six.

In the past 15 years, the Sisters have treated 2.5 million patients. Said one Sister: "There are many patients, of course, for whom treatment is too late. All we can do is to care for them and to love them.

"We tell them that there is a God who loved them so much that He was born as a man so that He could die for their sins. Many of them are baptized and die with hope in their hearts of a better life afterwards."

Story of the Redeemer

In another part of Africa, Fr. George Mhruza of the Diocese of Tanga in Tanzania relates how catechists have brought the story of the Redeemer to the remotest areas of his diocese: "Some of our outstations are as far away as 60 kilometers from the main parish. The parish priest can celebrate Mass in these locations only once a month.

Pre-kindergarten and primary schools, open to all children regardless of faith, have become an essential tool for evangelization. The children learn about the infinite love Jesus has for them. They then go home, spreading the news to their parents.

One non-Christian family, whose child attended the school, sought out the local catechist. By bicycle, he traveled to their home almost daily and instructed them in the faith. All five members of the family received the greatest gift of all when they were baptized and received the Eucharist one Christmas morning."

Joy of newly baptized

A retired archbishop in Indonesia has also witnessed the joy of the newly baptized. "Indescribable joy and happiness was the joy and happiness on the faces of the newly baptized, but also in the hearts of the missionaries who saw their work rewarded by the strength of the Holy Spirit," said Archbishop Jacobus Duivenvoorde, of Merauke, Indonesia, speaking about the baptism of a class of Sunday school children.

"The children," he continued, "gather for catechetical instruction, but also have other needs fulfilled. They are fed, clothed, and given medical check-ups."

Archbishop Duivenvoorde stresses, "It is through the generous support of prayers and financial help from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith that we are able to reach out with the 'Good News' of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, to teach so many of his great love."

Supporting missions

This Christmas, won't you give a gift, through the Propagation of the Faith, so that Sisters in Sudan and Uganda, and catechists in Tanzania and Indonesia, and so many throughout the missions may continue to reach out with the love of Christ to young and old?

By supporting their work and witness you will be making a difference for the suffering poor of the missions, offering them the hope-filled "Good News" proclaimed by the angel that first Christmas, "a savior has been born for you."

This Christmas, too, let us join in prayer with Catholics worldwide in gratitude for the greatest of his gifts to us, his son. In prayer, we also ask the Lord to keep us always in his care and to offer his light, hope, and peace to a world so in need of him.

Thank you and may the Lord grant to you and to those you love many blessings this Christmas.

Msgr. Delbert Schmelzer is director of the Propagation of the Faith for the Diocese of Madison. Contributions may be sent to: P.O. Box 44983, Madison, WI  53744-4983.

Martyrs: Remembered at Christmas time

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

Why is the Solemnity of Christmas followed immediately by the feast of St. Stephen, the proto-martyr; then by the feast of St. John the Evangelist, who suffered the living martyrdom of exile; then by the feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs; and then by the commemoration of St. Thomas Becket, martyr?

Because martyrdom is part of the logic - the "theo-logic," if you will - of Christmas.

Something foreboding

The angelic announcement of Christmas rightly promises "peace among men" (Luke 2:14).

But old Simeon, who lived in the borderland between the Old and New Covenants, knew that something else, something foreboding, was afoot in the birth of the Holy Child:

"Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also) . . ." The "salvation . . . prepared in the presence of all peoples" would come through a sign of contradiction that lacerated a maternal heart (Luke 2:34-35, 30).

The suffering servant

With Christmas, for the world's salvation, the Son of God, the eternal Word, takes flesh, is born of the Virgin Mary - and is immediately thrust into the lists against the principalities and powers: in the first instance, Herod, who slaughters children to protect a shaky throne.

This Holy Child will become the man of sorrows, the embodiment of the suffering servant, shattered and almost unrecognizable. That was required to complete the work of salvation for which this Child was born. Christmas contains Good Friday - and, to be sure, Easter. But Good Friday first.

God's search for us

The Christmastide martyrs are a helpful reminder of this deep truth of Christian faith. Christianity is not man's search for God; Christianity is God's search for us - in history, where we live - and our learning to take the same path through that history that God takes.

That path leads to Calvary. "Calvary" can be lived in many ways: St. John's living martyrdom was different than the martyrdoms of St. Stephen and St. Thomas Becket, or the Holy Innocents. Still, the cave at Bethlehem opens, symbolically, to the north, where Calvary waits.

Heroic commitment

Over the past 26 years, Pope John Paul II has lifted up the witness of hundreds of modern martyrs, reminding us that martyrdom is not just something from the past, but is very much part of the living experience of the Church.

This past August, at his address on the day the church commemorates the martyrdom of John the Baptist, the Holy Father noted while "there may be relatively few who are called to make the supreme sacrifice," all of us "must be ready to give consistent witness each day, even at the cost of suffering and serious sacrifices."

Our commitment must be "heroic," if we are "not to give in, even in daily life, to the difficulties that urge us to compromise."

One savior

So it's not inappropriate - in fact, it's necessary - to remember our modern martyrs during this Christmas season. Throughout the world, 31 Catholics died for the faith in 2000; 33 more in 2001, as did 25 in 2002 and 14 in 2003, according to a Vatican agency that monitors these things. (The count is almost certainly higher.)

Whatever the circumstances of their deaths, their witness reminds us that the Child of Bethlehem and the crucified Jesus are one and the same savior.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.