The spirit of Christmas is peace; the heart of Christmas is love. – Ada V. Hendricks Christmas presence, not presents. That was the motto of my childhood home. You could say it was down to economics, that with a large and humble family like ours, building up expectations of material wealth would be unrealistic. You…
Tag: advent
Blessed Are They
Christmas is joy, an inner joy of light and peace. – Pope Francis If there were one gift I’d have given my Mom, aside from the A-frame house she always thought would be wonderful, it would have been a chance to meet her Pope. Her pope was John Paul II, the Polish pope. Or maybe…
Silently
The joy of the Lord is my strength. – Nehemiah 8:10 So there’s Nehemiah, ringside at the Ultimate Fighting Championships. Or is that him at the Rumble in the Jungle, as the ‘Ali, Bomaye!’ chant starts up? Is that him swaggering behind Bruce Lee? What is the appearance of this strength? What is the joy…
Song of the Tiny Nun
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. – Mother Teresa Okay, Tiny Nun. What were you up to? Were you working, the whole time, not to make life better in Kolkata for the most pitiful ones, but rather, combing through them with your rakes of joy to glean enough souls…
Light Emitting: of Evangelists and LEDs
His life brought light to everyone. – John 1:4* Who is the everyone in this grand statement? Philosophers, evangelists, the faithful and apologists have driven their camels of thought through the eye of that needle for many hundreds of years, down generations, as the church’s fortunes ebb and flow, with tides of temporal influence. when…
Stable: Muzak vs. the Manger Song
So, “Christmas in the heart puts Christmas in the air.” WT Ellis* Sometimes it is just muzak. When that happens, commercialism is the heart of it. The best commercial Christmas can render is something vaguely performative, sour breathed and tiresome. A true performance connects to real need; and there is no real need for all…
A Song of Joy
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. – Psalm 118:24 This is the day that the Lord has made Let us be glad and rejoice! Let us be glad and rejoice in it, this is the day that the Lord has made. The melody rings in…
Always: Goad to Joy
“Be Joyful Always” is today’s Catholic instruction for Advent*. That’s a tough one. What about the moments, or whole days of moments, when I suspect myself of so many wrong turns? How am I to be joyful about the times I couldn’t, the times I didn’t, the times I turned one way rather than another,…
a Joyful Heart
A Joyful Heart is Good Medicine is today’s message from the Catholic Medical Mission Board. How do we support the joy in another’s heart? How do we support the joy in our own? How often do we look for the ‘catch’, for some reason to distrust joyfulness? How often do we respond to another’s joy with…
Prairiepomes 