The Greatest Gift
Silvano Fausti SJ wrote a version of the Christmas story that is popular in Italian elementary schools. Caleb was the poorest of the shepherds near Bethlehem on that holy night. He had just two sheep. When the angel appeared to the shepherds and told them to go to town to find their Saviour in a manger inside a cave, they quickly gathered up some gifts, whatever was to hand. One brought a chicken, another some freshly baked bread and another a basket of fruit. Caleb followed them but being so poor, he had no gift to bring.
When the shepherds reached the cave they proceeded inside, each bearing their gift, kneeling before Jesus. Soon, other people arrived, each bringing some gift to honour the sacred child. Caleb remained some way off, too embarrassed to approach the scene empty-handed.
Mary and Joseph felt overwhelmed by their visitors. They found it difficult to manage the crowd and all those useful presents, especially as Mary was also holding Jesus. Noticing Caleb standing some way off, with his empty hands and sad expression, she asked him to come closer, and then she placed the baby in his arms while she arranged the gifts. Caleb’s hands were no longer empty. They were, in fact, holding the greatest gift of all.
Even if we have little or nothing to offer the Lord this Christmas, that poverty, in itself, may be enough of a gift to welcome the Son of God.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, December 2023
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Christ is born again each year in our hearts
Many people find winter difficult; with cold weather and very little sunlight, it can be a tough time. But it is during these weeks that Christians celebrate something amazing: God entering into humanity, putting on skin and living among us as a full human person in a way that we still find hard to put into words. Jesus – a Palestinian Jew who was born into a homeless family in an animal shelter in a remote part of the Roman Empire – was marginalised from the very beginning. Yet he transformed history and continues to transform our lives today.
Into all the harrowing struggles of our world, then and now, God is born. Christ is born again each year in our hearts if we can make room for him there and in our world if we look with awareness in ordinary places. As we light the white candle on the Advent wreath on Christmas morning, let us remember what it represents: the peace, unity and hope for which the world desperately longs. We are invited to rejoice with the angels and the shepherds, joining together in praise and singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace, good will among people’.
Excerpted from The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark by Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellet
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‘go now to Bethlehem’
Christmas is often described as a ‘magical’ season: festive gatherings, songs and movies, the excitement on little faces on Christmas morning, the traditions we carry with us from childhood –all of these evoke strong emotions. But there’s something that transcends all of this, and that is the familiar story of the shepherds.
Some 2,000-plus years later, our own daily routines are put on pause by the arrival of Christmas and this ‘good news of great joy’ (Luke 2:10). Like the shepherds, we are invited to step out of our everyday life with its challenges and worries, and ‘go now to Bethlehem’; to meet the child Jesus in the manger in all his newness and human vulnerability. We live in a world that can feel increasingly uncertain, dark and frightening. We cannot escape the daily news of war, famine, mass shootings, hateful attacks on minorities, worrying news about our climate and our planet. It is important to be engaged, but the barrage of bad news can leave us feeling anxious about the future and about the security of ourselves and our loved ones. This Christmas Day, we have an opportunity, like the shepherds, to step out of our routine and visit the Christmas crib. This scene still has the power to move and amaze us. We bring our worries and anxieties, and perhaps we can leave them there awhile as, like Mary, we reflect deeply and treasure this mystery of God with us. The world will still be there to return to, as it was for the shepherds, with a new perspective and renewed hope.
Excerpted from The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark by Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellett
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Communing with Nature
During this time of the year, I notice myself withdrawing from the busy pace of the world to seek quiet time for reflection. Nature is integral to my daily spiritual life. In the sacred space of the natural world, I feel a profound sense of what it means to be part of the web of life – to belong to a bigger cosmic consciousness.
For me, my intimate connection to God in nature is the Holy Spirit in action. I have long held a strong connection to all living things on the planet. My desire to live in a more sustainable, conscious way is how I respond to the call of Laudato Si’ to have an ecological conversion.
A nature-based approach to spirituality could hold the solution to our feelings of alienation and disconnection from the Church, our global community and even our role in the current global climate change crisis. As we make it our intention to restore this connection in order to overcome the current socio-ecological crises that threaten our survival as a species on the planet, we also deepen our own faith. As Thomas Berry wisely observed, ‘The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of the earth.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, December 2021
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Preparing for Advent
Just as we are never conscious of air, because God’s presence is always around us, we never notice it. The journey of faith is a gift of a loving God who takes the first step and waits patiently, silently, almost shyly for the human response. Life is a vocation, a call to seek this shy God.
Advent is a time to remind ourselves of the many contradictions at the heart of our faith. This most powerful presence chose to be manifest in powerlessness.
As we prepare to celebrate the moment the Word became flesh our faith needs deepening. Ours is a faith that sincerely accepts the darkness surrounding the search for more light. Consequently, Advent is a time of loving adoration, a true act of supernatural hope and of loving surrender to this shy God.
This shy God reminds us this Advent that life is about relationships, not about things. The greatest joy comes from good relationships –the greatest sorrow and suffering come not from loss of job or property but from broken and betrayed relationships. All relationships of love are rooted in the love this shy God has for all of us.
Excerpted from Let Advent be Advent by Vincent Sherlock
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Finding God in All Things
Today, in our diverse world, we all come to faith from different places and from different backgrounds. Faith in Christ is sort of like the great equaliser. Prayer is one of the spiritual disciplines we all have to learn. We can ask several questions about prayer: How do you say a prayer? What is a personal prayer? How can I grow my prayer life?
Finding God in all things is integral to the Ignatian worldview. ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’ (Gerard Manley Hopkins). This God is present in our lives, ‘labouring for us’ in all things; he can be discovered, through faith, in all natural and human events, in history as a whole and, most especially, in the lived experience of each individual person.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger magazine, June 2022, Sunny Jacob SJ
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Darkness and Light
Lord, awareness of your love can slip away from my heart so easily, whenever there’s a disaster I begin to doubt it. My small mind starts whirling, and I ask, ‘How could you do this to me?’ or ‘How could you let that happen to someone else?’ The dark side of things can so quickly eclipse the light. I say – excuse me for this! – ‘Where the hell are you gone?’ My demons then have a field day. Let me instead watch out for your way of going about things. At the beginning, you tell us, darkness lay over the face of the earth then, first of all your works, you created light. Why did you let darkness have its place; why not obliterate it? But light and darkness both have their place in your scheme of things. This helps me! It makes me less surprised at the darkness that is around and focuses me on the fact that the light will come back. I should not expect a world without some darkness. Because you come into the world as divine light, darkness is pushed back and can’t eclipse it. I should focus on you as light, holding the darkness at bay, dealing resourcefully with suffering and evil. In another world perpetual light will shine on us all, but for now help me to live in the light myself and to battle the darkness as you do. After all I am infinitely loved and you need me to be ‘the light of the world’. May I believe that patient endurance illuminates what is dark from the inside. So it was on Calvary and can be in my life too.
Excerpted from I Am Infinitely Loved by Brian Grogan SJ
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Responding to the Cry of the Earth
Our screens are filled with frightening images of climate change, which is increasingly called the climate crisis, or even the climate catastrophe. This crisis is not something that is happening in other parts of the world; it is something that happens in the world, and there is only one world. The planet we share is not just our ‘common home’; it is our only home. There is no Planet B.
Our future – and the future of the planet – depends on facing up to our responsibility both globally and locally. Conversion and faith, responding to the cry of the earth and the allied cry of the poor, demands significant changes in how we live, in our lifestyle. Changing our way of living merits being called a conversion, as real conversion is not only a change of practice, but requires a change of heart, a transformation from within. Change from within can only happen in a sustained way when it is nourished by the One who lives within every person. Meeting the Lord in the Word of God, in the life of the Church, and in each other is the food that transforms our lives. It is there that we discover the roots of ecological conversion.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, March 2022, Archbishop Dermot Farrell
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A Good Time to Pray
When is a good time to pray? In the Gospels, we learn that Jesus prayed in the morning and at night. He rose early in the morning to pray (Mark 1:35). Before choosing the apostles, he spent the whole night in
prayer (Luke 6:12). But as well as praying at the opening of the day and during the night, Jesus was in communion with the Father throughout the day. In other words, although he chose certain moments for formal prayer, his prayer was in fact continuous. He was bathed in a continual awareness of the Father. He was totally in tune with the Father; so much so that the Father was always speaking through him. Jesus put it this way, ‘I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak’ ( John 12:49).
It would be great if you could make it your ultimate goal to imitate Jesus and ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). You can start by imitating Jesus’ rhythm of formal prayer and making sure to pray both morning and evening.
Excerpted from The Mindful Our Father by Thomas Casey SJ
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I Am Loved
Dear Lord, recently I read of someone who felt that other people’s profiles were drawn in strong black, or in colour with magic markers, but hers was sketched only in light pencil. I sometimes feel like that woman, almost invisible, unimportant. Maybe it goes with seniority! Psychologists tell us that to be truly alive, someone else’s loving gaze is needed: otherwise we can never blossom to our full potential. I know you do your best to provide everyone with good parents, they’re a great blessing to a child, but of course this doesn’t always happen. You also send us good grandparents, relatives, friends who help us to believe we are worthwhile. They are escorts of your loving care. You want us to receive your great gift, the conviction that we are OK, that we are loved and that we matter.
May your word today convince me that I am good, worthwhile, lovable and wonderful; that I am your beloved, your unique creation, the apple of your eye. May I believe that, no matter what, you love me
infinitely, that you embrace me tenderly and live within me and that you have dreams for me that go way beyond my own. For you, I will always be important! My core identity is that I am your beloved! You are, so to speak, part of my DNA.
Excerpted from I Am Infinitely Loved by Brian Grogan SJ
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