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I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.
- Taylor Caldwell
(God is with you, loving you now.)
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1 JN 1:1-4; PS 97:1-2, 5-6, 11-12
JN 20:1A AND 2-8
On the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we do not know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture
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"He saw and believed." —John 20:8
Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. John the Evangelist. John is the author of the fourth Gospel, three letters in the New Testament, and the Book of Revelation. He is one of the twelve apostles and remained with Jesus at the foot of the cross as He was crucified. God blessed St. John with a special gift—a heavenly perspective on the plan of salvation. His Gospel especially emphasizes the divinity of Christ.
I find the following image helpful when explaining the divine viewpoint of St. John's Gospel. Picture Jesus standing in the center of a room with three doors. He is facing one door, and there are doors to His right and His left. Imagine St. Matthew standing in the door to Jesus' left, St. Mark in the doorway facing Jesus, and St. Luke in the doorway to His right. Each of these three evangelists faithfully portray
Jesus from their particular vantage point. They each see a unique perspective of Jesus, and describe Jesus a bit differently from the other evangelists. Picture St. John, however, gazing down upon the Lord from a skylight in the roof. John has the divine perspective in mind throughout His Gospel.
All four evangelists are describing the same Jesus, but from a different perspective. Thus, different aspects of Jesus emerge in each Gospel. St. John looks at Jesus from the heavenly perspective of the Father. Much of John's Gospel describes Jesus' relationship with His Father. He was sent from the Father (Jn 5:36) and lives in the Father (Jn 10:38). I challenge you to read the Gospel of John during the Christmas
season. Keep St. John's heavenly perspective in mind. Believe that Jesus and the Father are one (Jn 10:30).
Prayer: "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20:28)
Promise: "We speak of the Word of Life." —1 Jn 1:1
Praise: "I have written this to you to make you realize that you possess eternal life—you who believe in the name of the Son of God" (1 Jn 5:13). Thank you, Lord, for the ministry of St. John the Evangelist.
Presentation Ministries
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Abandonment to Divine Providence
- by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
BOOK II,
CHAPTER II. THE DUTIES OF THOSE SOULS CALLED BY GOD TO THE STATE OF ABANDONMENT
SECTION I. Sacrifice, the Foundation of Sanctity. The first great duty of souls called by God to this state is the absolute and entire surrender of themselves to Him.
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“Sacrificate sacrificium, et sperate in Domino.” That is to say that the great and solid foundation of the spiritual life is the sacrifice of oneself to God, subjecting oneself to His good pleasure in all things, both interior and exterior, and becoming so completely forgetful of self thereafter as to regard oneself as a chattel, sold and delivered, to which one no longer has any right. In this way the
good pleasure of God forms one's whole felicity; and His happiness, glory and existence ones sole good. This foundation laid, the soul has nothing else to do but to rejoice that God is God, and to abandon itself so entirely to His good pleasure that it feels an equal satisfaction in whatever it does, nor ever reflects on the uses to which it is applied by the arrangements of this good pleasure. To abandon oneself, therefore, is the principal duty to be fulfilled, involving, as it does, the
faithful discharge of all the obligations of ones state. The perfection with which these duties are accomplished will be the measure of the sanctity of each individual soul. A saintly soul is a soul freely submissive, with the help of grace, to the divine will. All that follows on this free consent is the work of God, and not of man. The soul should blindly abandon itself and be indifferent about everything. This is all that God requires of it, and as to the rest He determines and chooses
according to His own plans, as an architect selects and arranges the stones for the building he is about to construct.
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