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Death can come at any minute, in any way. We do not know what is in store tomorrow, or, whether there is a tomorrow, or even a tonight! But still, we have the golden present. Now we are alive and kicking. What should we do now? Love all, serve all. - Mystic saying
(Not a bad new year’s resolution.)
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Daily Readings
Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Galatians
4:4-7 Luke 2:16-21 The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph,
and the infant lying in the manger.
When they saw this,
they made known the message
that had been told them about
this child.
All who heard it were amazed
by what had been told them by the shepherds.
And Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.
Then the shepherds returned,
glorifying and praising God
for all they had heard and seen,
just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision,
he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel
before he was conceived in the
womb.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 2:16-21 (Honoring Mary) We honor Mary
today because she was central to God’s plan to become human by consenting to become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God. She was also the first the know and love him, and she, with Joseph, were entrusted with the responsibility to be loving parents to him, a role she treasured from the beginning. - How important an influence do you think Mary played in Jesus’ development? Try to get in touch with some aspect of their relationship with
each other.
- Spend some time giving thanks to God for Mary’s loving example to us.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ Chapter 8: How benevolence produces the praise of the divine well-beloved.
O God! my Theotimus, how
the soul ardently pressed with affection to praise her God, is touched with a dolour most delicious and a delight most dolorous, when after a thousand efforts of praise she comes so short. Alas! she would wish, this poor nightingale, to raise her accents ever higher, and perfect her melody, the better to sing the praises of her well-beloved. By how much more she praises, by so much more is she delighted in praising: and by how much greater her delight in praising is, by so much her pain is
greater that she cannot yet more praise him; still, to find what content she can in this passion, she makes all sorts of efforts, and in the midst of them faints and fails, as it happened to the most glorious S. Francis, who amidst the pleasure he had in praising God and singing his canticles of love, shed a great abundance of tears, and often let fall through feeblessness, what he might be holding in his hands: being like a sacred nightingale all outspent, and often losing respiration through
the effort of aspiration after the praises of him whom he could never praise sufficiently.
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