One of the major tasks of young adults is to discover God’s call. It is a process we all go through in one way or another.
Each of us has a unique call — one only we can answer. Discovering our call isn’t as easy as picking up the phone or texting a message to God or our pastor. It takes hard work to find out how God wants us to live our lives. We must take time for prayer and reflection that includes serious discernment.
In thinking about Christmas, children are immediately brought to mind. So many children in the missions tragically live with immense suffering and violence, even war and all that comes with it. Other children in the developing world face extraordinary poverty and its related challenges.
But thanks to the work and witness of religious Sisters, these mission children also come to experience what sustains us — the message of God’s great love for us, the “Good News” proclaimed by the angels that first Christmas.
On Christmas day in 1864, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow listened to Christmas bells ring out the good news of peace on earth. But he lacked the Christmas spirit of peace.
He was still suffering from the tragic death of his wife Fanny in 1861. And Charles, his son, had been wounded in our country’s bloody civil war, which he feared would kill or wound many more Americans.
The economic crisis our country is experiencing provides us with a wonderful opportunity to focus more on the true meaning of Christmas, rather than on the materialistic spirit that often permeates our Western culture.
Since so many people are unemployed or under employed and many family incomes are shrinking, a number of people will have to limit the type of gifts they give.
I spent 20 Christmas Eves in jail. My first such Christmas Eve was in 1971. The Rock County Jail Chaplaincy Committee invited me to help to plan and participate in an ecumenical service at the jail in Janesville. I accepted.
But I waited nervously for Christmas Eve because I had no previous experience with prisoners.
Christmas Eve finally came and I drove anxiously to the Rock County Jail. The beautiful Christmas snowflakes that danced gracefully across my car’s windshield failed to calm the nervous butterflies in my stomach.
“On Christmas Eve we always . . .”
Think about all of the ways you might have finished that sentence at various stages in your life.
Although I have always cherished traditions, I couldn’t help thinking recently about how many times I have had to “break with tradition” in every stage of my life.
Dan Henninger, whose Wall Street Journal column is aptly titled “Wonder Land,” put it best: “The only good news about the Fort Hood massacre is that U.S. electronic surveillance technology was able to pick up Major Hasan’s phone calls to an al Qaeda-loving imam in Yemen. The bad news is that the people and agencies listening to Hasan didn’t know what to do about it. Other than nothing.”
Most people fear the process of dying, which involves radical dependency, a sense of powerlessness, and sometimes significant pain as well.
During October 1863, Fr. Samuel Mazzuchelli received a vision of Mary as he rode to Shullsburg with three Dominican Sisters for the sacrament of Confirmation.
He told Fr. John Kinsella, his confessor, “I have always been an admirer of beauty. But never have I seen anything that compared with the beauty of God’s mother.”
Editor’s note: Following is a response to George Weigel’s column, “Benedict and the truth about charity,” published in the September 17 issue of the Catholic Herald. Portions of this article have been edited.
For those of us who have read Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical Caritas in Veritate, George Weigel’s recent commentaries may seem off the mark. Did he really read the same encyclical as the rest of us?
Caritas in Veritate is a very lengthy discussion of how our works of charity must proceed from the essential truth we find in Christ. If not, then such works reflect a kind of momentary whim or sentimentality.
