“Perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn. 4:18).
Where the Question Is Born
"A novice master once responded, when asked about a life lived in Christian authenticity, that to be a Christian was not to know the answers but to begin to live in the part of the self where the question is born.… He was speaking of an attitude of listening, of awareness of presence, of an openness to mystery."
-- Wendy M. Wright, "Wreathed in Flesh and Warm", A Book of Christmas
What Does It Profit Me?
The Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God (Jan. 1) marks the Octave of Christmas. Next Sunday, we will celebrate Epiphany, and the Sunday after that, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. As we transition from the Christmas season back into Ordinary Time, as we pack up the outward signs of Christmas, we want to find some small way of keeping Christmas – its meaning and its light – with us. Has Christmas changed us? How?
An image from an Edith Stein poem is a simple way to express the change that should take place within us every year: “My heart has become your manger.”
Meister Eckhart in his own mystical way makes a similar point, and one which expresses the longevity of Christmas in the enduring power of the birth of Christ: “But if it does not happen in me, if this child is not born in me, what does it profit me? What matters is that God should be born again in me.”
Has your heart become a manger – a refuge – for him? Has he been born – in you? How will you share him with the world?
-- Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a German theologian and mystic who was a member of the Dominican Order. Eckhart was tried by the Inquisition as a heretic but has had many contemporary defenders, including John Paul II and the Dominican Order.
-- Edith Stein was a Jewish academic who converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite sister. She died at Auschwitz in 1942. Stein was canonized in 1998 and is known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She has also been honored with the title of "martyr." The quote above comes from her poem "Holy Night."
Humanity's Dream
“Humanity’s dream which began in the Garden of Eden – we want to be like God – is realized in an unexpected way, not through the greatness of man, who cannot make himself God, but through the humility of God who came down among us in His humility, raising us to the true greatness of His being."
-- Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, Jan. 4, 2012
"The Family Is...
…where we learn to live with others despite our differences and to belong to each other.”
– Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel 66
Julian illustrates the delicate line between a hug and a chokehold.