Eternal Father, Source of Life, open our hearts to see and desire the beauty of Your plan for life and love. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit so that our love will be generous and self-giving and we may be blessed with joy.

Grant us great trust in Your mercy. Forgive us for not receiving your gift of life and heal us from the effects of the culture of death. Instill in us and in all people a sense of the sacredness of every human life.  Inspire our efforts to protect and care for the most vulnerable, especially women who are pregnant and their unborn children, the sick and the elderly.

Strengthen us in the hope that with You nothing is impossible. We ask this in the Name of Jesus who by His Cross makes all things new. Amen.

From the Sisters of Life

Presence of God:

I beg the Blessed Virgin Mary to allow me to enter in spirit the humble home at Nazareth, to contemplate Jesus’ most admirable life there.

Meditation:

1. On this day for the last time in the cycle of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to contemplate the mystery of Jesus’ humble, hidden life. A feeling of close intimacy and tenderness characterizes this Feast and is expressed in the liturgy of the day: “ . . . it is good for us to recall the little home at Nazareth and the humble life of those who lived there . . . . In it, Jesus learned Joseph’s humble trade, and grew in age, and was happy sharing the work of a carpenter…

Today’s liturgy particularly emphasizes one typical aspect of the humble life of this hidden God: obedience. “ Although He was the Son of God . . . He learned to obey; He humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death”. From Bethlehem to Calvary obedience was His companion. The Gospel (Lk 2, 42-52) stresses this obedience of Jesus at Nazareth in words which carry for all time the strength of their first utterance, “He was subject to them.” Let us ask ourselves with St. Bernard, “Who obeyed? Whom did He obey?” The Saint replies, “God obeyed man! Yes, the God to whom the angels are subject . . . was subject to Mary, and not only to Mary, but also to Joseph. For God to obey a woman is humility without parallel…Learn then, man, to obey; learn, O earth, to be submissive. God subjected Himself to men; and do you, desiring to rule others, place yourself above your Creator?”

2. “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Jesus, who was so humble and submissive, did not hesitate to make this reply to Mary when she gently questioned Him about having remained behind in the Temple without her or Joseph’s knowledge, while they in anguish had been seeking Him for three days.  These are the first words of Jesus which we find recorded in the Gospel. He spoke them in order to declare his mission and to affirm the primacy of the rights of God. When hardly an adolescent, Jesus taught us that God and the things of God must always come first. He must hold the first place in our lives, and we must obey Him regardless of all other considerations, even if it means sacrificing the rights of nature and of blood. Yielding to relatives and friends is no longer a virtue—and may even be sinful—if it leads us away from the will of God or hinders its fulfillment.

Giving precedence to the rights of God does not imply that we neglect our duties toward our neighbor. Today’s Feast calls our attention to these obligations, and especially to those concerning our family, natural or religious, inviting us to follow the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth. To this end, the Epistle (Col 3 ,12-17) shows us the virtues we should practice: “Clothe yourself . . . with mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.”

Colloquy:

O Jesus, how I love to contemplate You as a Child, in the poor house at Nazareth, with Mary and Joseph! Your simple, humble life was just like that of any other child of Your age. You, the splendor of the Father, did not wish anything to distinguish You from the children of men; You, uncreated wisdom, wished to learn from Mary and Joseph, Your creatures, the ordinary little details of life.  Joseph showed You how to handle his tools and You watched Him attentively, You learned and You obeyed. Mary taught You holy hymns and recounted tales from the Sacred Scriptures; You listened to her like a humble disciple, You who are the one true Teacher, You who are Truth itself. No one, neither Your relatives nor Your fellow townspeople, knew who You really were. Everyone believed You to be the carpenter’s son and paid no more attention to You than they would have paid to an ordinary apprentice.

Only Mary and Joseph knew; they knew by divine revelation that You were the Son of the Most High, the Savior of the world, and yet they knew it more by faith than by experience. Your ordinary way of life concealed Your majesty and divinity from them so completely that when, without their knowledge, You remained among the doctors in the Temple, they could not understand the reason for Your unusual behavior. That incident, however, was an isolated one; immediately afterward, You wished to return to the hiddenness of Your most humble life. You went back with them, and were subject to them. And this, day by day, until You were thirty years old.

O most sweet Jesus, grant that I may imitate, at least to some degree, Your infinite humility! You, the Creator, were obedient to Your creatures. Teach me to bow my proud head and willingly obey my superiors. You came down from heaven to earth. Give me the grace to humble myself, to come down, once and for all, from the pedestal of my pride! How can I bear the sight of Your humility and self-effacement,O my God and my Creator, when I, who am nothingness and sin, use the gifts I have received to set myself above others, to prefer myself even to my superiors?

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene? (Divine Intimacy)

“We await the blessed hope: the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” (Tim 2:13)

The Child is born!  The secret was shared first to humble shepherds who had been told the news by the light of glory of the Angels. They were the first to adore HIM: the shepherds coming to see the Good Shepherd in His newborn state.

There had been difficulties and hardships before the birth, and at the time of the birth, and more to come after the birth.  But The Child had been born and the world would never be the same. 

Every child is made in the image and likeness of God.  For every child conceived, there is a plan. And every child, in some way, changes the world around them.  Let us all do everything we can to give them the chance.

The Catekids #5 – On Purity of Soul ( 15min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

The Catekids do it again.  With their latest video they take on the difficult subject of purity of soul and living a chaste life that is pleasing to God.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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Speaking about Captain von Trapp: ” An almost personal friendship bound him with Our Lady “ – Maria von Trapp

On his sickbed: “We should tell everybody about the scapular; it is such a consolation.” – Captain von Trapp

-Maria Augusta Trapp

PRAYER TO ST. JOACHIM AND ST. ANNE:

Great and glorious patriarch, St. Joachim, and good St. Anne, what joy is mine when I consider that you were chosen among all God’s holy ones to assist in the fulfillment of the mysteries of God, and to enrich our earth with the great Mother of God, Mary most holy. By this singular privilege, you have become most powerful with both the Mother and her Son, so as to be able to obtain for us the graces that are needful to us.

With great confidence I have recourse to your mighty protection, and I commend to you all my needs, both spiritual and temporal, and those of my family. Especially do I entrust to your keeping the particular favor that I desire and look for from your intercession.

And since you were a perfect pattern of the interior life, obtain for me the grace to pray earnestly, and never to set m heart on the passing goods of this life. Give me a lively and enduring love for Jesus and Mary. Obtain for me also a sincere devotion and obedience to Holy church and the sovereign pontiff who rules over her, in order that I may live and die in faith and hope and perfect charity. Let me ever invoke the holy Names of Jesus and Mary. And may I thus be saved. Amen.

Variety #133 – Samoan hymn to Our Lady ( 3 min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

A Samoan family in Sydney, Australia sings a hymn to Our Lady.

Audio (MP3)

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God’s plan for the infant Christ was not our Lady’s plan for Him. What good and lovely things she had to give up in order that His will should be done in her, not hers in Him, in order that what she gave to Him should be herself.

She had made the home in Nazareth ready for Him. In her mind for the nine longing months of Advent it had been His home. Joseph had made the wooden cradle and had arranged sufficient work for the lovely months ahead. Mary had woven the blankets for the cradle and clothes for the Child. The lamp that was to bum in the darkness to light the Light of the World was set in its place.  Everything in the plan was good and must surely be pleasing to God.

Yet God altered everything! They were not to go back to Nazareth until the Child had outgrown His cradle and His first clothes. They were not to enjoy the privacy of four walls of their own; they were not to be restricted to the society of the few neighbors in the hamlet; they were not to have the security of Joseph’s steady trade. From the stable in Bethlehem they were to fly into the desert and into Egypt, there to live as foreigners and exiles among a people who were strange to them and to whom they were strange.

This happens so often, too, to those who foster the infant Christ in their souls. We like to plan the life that we shall offer to God in just the way that seems good and aesthetically right to us, to achieve holiness between four walls, with every modem convenience, undisturbed sessions of solitude, work, and prayer, and a selected number of friends on whom to exercise our charity and with whom to live, reasonably, easily, at peace.

It is difficult to imagine that a plan like this – so full of sweet order, prudence, and common sense, so harmless­ – could not be pleasing to God.  Yet God changes everything.

He sends us to where He wants to be, among those whom He wishes to be among, to do that which He wishes to do in our lives. He brings to the Bethlehem of our lives those people to whom He wishes to show the infant Christ in us, those who are to give us something for Him, just as He brought whom He would to Bethlehem: animals, angels, shepherds, and kings – unlikely people, which proves that, although there are distinctions between different kinds of men in the world, when they come into Christ’s presence there is to be no distinction, no selection. The rich and the poor, the ignorant and the learned, the laborer and the king must kneel together before the infant Christ.

With all the ingenuity and all the sincerity in the world we cannot arrange our lives as God can to ensure that we give the infant Jesus His necessity in us, not our goods or our thoughts of Him, but ourselves. Our humanity is to clothe Him, our love is to be the four walls that shelter Him, our life is to sustain Him. Our prayer must be our Lady’s prayer: “Be it done to me according to Thy word!”

He took her at her word, and they fled into the desert. She herself was His food, His warmth, His shade, His home, His cradle, and His rest.

Caryll Houselander (Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross)

“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.”

Blessed Mother Teresa