The Night Before Christmas

Father Larry Rice, in a Christmas homily: "Jesus is there to acknowledge and heal whatever is within us that's broken..."

It's essential to remember that along with joy and hope, Christmas is a time for forgiveness and reconciliation. Start the forgiving with yourself.

"We cannot avoid missing the point of almost everything we do. But what of it? Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. Life itself is imperfect. All created beings begin to die as soon as they begin to live, and no one expects any one of them to become absolutely perfect, still less to stay that way. Each individual thing is only a sketch of the specific perfection planned for its kind. Why should we ask it to be anything more?"

[...]

“What we are asked to do is to love; and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy if anything can.

Indeed, that is one of the most significant things about the power of love. There is no way under the sun to make a man worthy of love except by loving him. As soon as he realizes himself loved – if he is not so weak that he can no longer bear to be loved – he will feel himself instantly becoming worthy of love. He will respond by drawing a mysterious spiritual value out of his own depths, a new identity called into being by the love that is addressed to him.”
---Thomas Merton

Have a joyful, loving Christmas.

Comments

[SJ]

I hope you had a great Christmas, Kevin.