Luke 2:19 And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.

Luke 2:51
He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.

Advent and the entire Christmas season from the first day of Advent through the Epiphany gives us a whole plethora of “things to keep, and reflect on them in our hearts.” Leading up to Christmas we have two major Holy Days—the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Then, as if the Incarnation of the Word were not enough (it is), from December 25th on there is an avalanche of feast days to reflect upon—the martyrdom of St. Stephen (my namesake), St. John the Apostle (‘the Apostle whom Jesus loved’) the feast of the Holy Family (especially important to me this year with the birth of my first grandchild), the feast day remembering the horrible tragedy of the “Holy Innocents”, St. Sylvester (who was Pope when the Nicene Creed was written and adopted), the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, and the feast of The Holy Name of Jesus. Whew! I'd be exhausted, if I weren't so filled with Joy and Awe!

Today is New Year’s Day. If you do any shopping at all, you’ll find two things featured; diet books and exercise equipment. This is because advertisers know that most of us will feel guilty about letting our bodies go to pot during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Too few of us, though, appear to feel guilty about letting our spiritual selves go all year long. So my New Year’s resolution is to pay more attention daily to following God’s commandments and the Saints’ examples first, and get my physical health back in shape as well. Shouldn’t be too hard. Right. I’m sweating just thinking about it. Compared to following the Saints’ examples, losing 80 lbs should be a piece of cake.

I heard something profound on Catholic radio the other day. “ The only thing God can’t do is change the past. The only thing man can do is change the future.” I’ve been thinking about this for days. I came to the conclusion that this is a true statement. We can learn lessons from the past, but we can’t change it—no one can. What we can do is strive to look harder for our Lord in our daily lives and let Him be our GPS to Heaven.

Happy New Year!!!!