As Mary and her husband Joseph kept care of the infant Jesus
in the stable at Bethlehem, it must have seemed an odd situation for the birth
of a king - the Son of God. But as bizarre as the setting must have seemed,
Mary greatly treasured all these wonderful things and reflected on them in the
depths of her heart. (Luke 2: 16-21)
But what's more important is that Mary, even after being told
that she had been chosen in the divine plan and was in good favor with God,
continued to follow the commands of the Lord and had Jesus circumcised and
presented to the Lord just as the law commanded. Mary obediently followed the
wishes of God without question.
On this last day of the Christmas Octave, I find myself sorry
I didn’t feel much like writing this last week. Fighting a cold and starting up
a new location is small potatoes, when I stopped to ponder the previous week
and what each day could have brought me spiritually, if I wasn’t thinking so
much about myself. There is a lot about
each of the feast days that the Church has wisely placed in this octave.
1
Of course there is Christmas Day, when the Second Person of
the Holy Trinity became fully man! And
for the next 33 years He emptied Himself to our Father in non-compromising
obedient fashion, even up to His death on the cross!
2
The second day of the octave is the Feast of St. Stephen the
martyr. We don’t know how soon after the
Crucifixion he was stoned to death, but the important thing to remember is that
he gave his life to God out of true love to Jesus Christ and obedience to God
through Jesus’ teaching.
3
The third day this last week we remembered St. John, “the
disciple whom Jesus loved.” Doesn’t that
sound presumptuous and somewhat conceited?
Not if you stop to realize that what John is doing is inviting us to
take his place at the events where he says this; (John 13, John 20, John 21 et
al). He wants us to be running alongside
Peter towards the empty tomb. He invites
us to place our head upon Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper. He exhorts us to recognize the man standing
on the shore of the lake as the Lord and point this out to Peter as we are
fishing after the Resurrection.
4
On the fourth day after Christmas, through remembering the
Holy Innocents, the Church reminds us that though some may not even know or be
aware of Christ, God still loves us.
While Stephen is remembered as the first martyr for the new Church, I
think it’s worth noting that these very young boys didn’t even know Christ was
among them, as Stephen did. But God
found them worthy enough to be sacrificed for His Church to come into existence
and He rewarded them by bringing them Home.
5
The fifth day of the octave is set aside for St. Thomas
Moore. Here was the king’s best friend
who is elevated to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury solely to fight the
Pope on the king’s behalf so the king can commit adultery. Well, there’s friendship—then there’s
obedience to God. St. Thomas made the
better choice, lost his earthly life, but gained eternal happiness. Not a bad trade.
6
Six days after Christmas we celebrate the Holy Family. Having a baby in a family is full of new
experiences, joys and fears. I can’t imagine
the intensity of those feelings when your child is the Son of God. How did Mary and Joseph cope? Oh, yeah!
They were FILLED with the Holy Spirit, and the graces that follow from
that!
7
On the seventh day, we celebrate a relatively obscure
(compared to the rest of the previous week) saint—St. Sylvester. But when you consider that he was one of the
main authors of the Nicene Creed wherein we state our belief that Jesus Christ
is both True God and True Man, he becomes not so obscure. His obedience to the Church and his faith in
Jesus Christ as both human and Divine helped him to persuade the Council at
Nicea that the Aryan heresy should not and could not continue.
8
On this, the eighth day after Christmas and the first day of
2012, as we reflect on the life of the Mother of God, let us reflect awhile on
our own lives. Do we follow God's wishes without question? Do we rejoice and
reflect on even the strange situations in which we find ourselves? If the
answer is no, then there is no better time than now to take the steps to get on
God's straight path which leads to life everlasting. God help us all.
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