In the Gospel account for this Sunday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we hear the following words immediately after John baptized Jesus in the Jordan:

On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. (Mark 1:10)

The symbol of the dove is very interesting, and it has been interpreted in various ways throughout the history of the Church, especially by the Church Fathers (those who wrote much closer to the time of the life of Jesus).  One summary from a modern commentary describes the symbol of the dove in this way:

The Fathers usually interpret the dove as a symbol of peace and reconciliation between God and men. It first appears in the account of the flood (Gen 8:10–11) as a sign that God’s punishment of mankind has come to an end. Its presence at the beginning of Christ’s public ministry symbolizes the peace and reconciliation he will bring.   –Saint Mark’s Gospel , The Navarre Bible (Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2005), 53–54.

Another explanation can be found in the writings of St. Bede the Venerable, who comments on the nature of the dove and how it applies to how we should live in imitation of Christ whose life we share through Baptism:

The image of a dove is placed before us by God so that we may learn the simplicity favored by him. So let us meditate on the nature of the dove, that from each one of its features of innocence we may learn the principles of a more becoming life. The dove is a stranger to malice. So may all bitterness, anger and indignation be taken away from us, together with all malice. The dove injures nothing with its mouth or talons, nor does it nourish itself or its young on tiny mice or grubs, as do almost all smaller birds. Let us see that our teeth are not weapons and arrows. -St. Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels

A final interesting interpretation concerns the numbers associated with the Greek letters for the dove.  The following summary expresses the view proposed by St. Irenaeus:

One possible reason for the use of the word ‘dove’ to describe how the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus has to do with gematria – the assignment of numerical equivalents to letters.  The letters of this word, ‘dove’ in Greek form the numerical sum of 801.  801 is also the numerical sum of the Greek letters alpha and omega.  Therefore the description of the dove could mean that the one on whom the dove descends was the Alpha and the Omega – an identification the Bible ascribes to Jesus (Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13)  -Michael S. Heiser article in Bible Study Magazine, Nov / Dec 2017, 9

Is there one absolutely correct way of understanding the symbol of the dove?  Probably not, but what they all have in common is that they all point to Christ.  As we come to the end of the Christmas Season, let us pray that when people study our lives, they will see that everything that we say and do points to Christ and reflects the gift of His life that He has given to us through the sacraments.

Father Alford     

Last week, I gave some examples of when Jesus “instituted” (started or began) the celebration of the Eucharist in the Scriptures. I mentioned that the Gospel of John does not show Jesus doing this at the last Supper, but the entirely of John Chapter 6 is devoted to Jesus’ extensive teaching on and explanation of the Eucharist. This was something that was hard for many of his followers to accept; so hard, in fact, that many of Jesus’ disciples no longer followed him and went back to their former way of life. These disciples who left Jesus seem to ask a legitimate question: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). Jesus had not yet revealed exactly what he would do at the Last Supper, although he hinted strongly when he said, “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35). 

These people who heard Jesus at Capernaum must have wrongly thought that Jesus was encouraging some sort of cannibalism in which Jesus’ body would be destroyed. However, the Eucharist is the furthest thing from cannibalism because the Eucharist is the living and glorious body of Jesus. After his Resurrection, Jesus’ body was not just the same as it was before the Crucifixion. Afterwards, Jesus could walk through walls, and now his body is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. At the same time, Jesus is present in the Eucharist at every Mass and in every Catholic tabernacle around the world. 

The Church has always firmly believed that the consecrated Bread and Wine at Mass are truly the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. There have been those who have doubted this truth from the time of Jesus until today, and it is true that many have walked away and returned to their former way of life, just as some of Jesus’ disciples did in John 6. This is a great tragedy, but one that happens frequently, sometimes because no one has ever fully explained this teaching to many Catholics! 

Last year, a widely-publicized Pew research study announced that only one out of three Catholics in the United States believe the Church’s teaching that the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. While I’m skeptical of Pew’s questioning methods (it’s hard for a non-believer to make an accurate survey about a technical religious question), I was honestly not surprised at this statistic. In the United States, only 10-20% of Catholics attend Mass on Sundays. In some other parts of the world, it’s below 5%. If 95% of a  population never or rarely attends Mass, it only makes sense that they have no idea what is going on at Mass. Why would somebody want to sit through an hour-long ceremony every week if they think nothing meaningful is happening during it? On the other hand, if somebody understands that Jesus Christ, the Creator of the Universe and Eternal Source of all Existence and Life, is physically present at every Mass around the world, how could they stay away? 

This belief that Jesus is physically present under the appearance of bread and wine is called the Real Presence. Our belief in the Real Presence is why we can say that we worship the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is God Himself. This is why we are so careful and respectful of the Eucharist at Mass after the Consecration. When a consecrated host falls to the ground (which happens not infrequently by accident), we must do all we can to ensure that any particles that may have broken off are cleaned up, because that is Jesus physically present in those particles. 

We have a lot of work to do to spread the Good News of the Eucharist to the world. We can start with ourselves! Let’s commit to occasionally visiting Jesus in the tabernacle whenever we pass by a church. One of the best ways we can share our belief in the Eucharist is by living a Eucharistic life: centering our lives of faith around Sunday Mass and prayer before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. 

Feast Day: January 7^th  

“And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” [Genesis 1:28] … and many years later, though in much the same galaxy … Jesus, “lifting up his hands he blessed them” [Luke 24:50] and said “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” [Matthew 28:19-20]

The wonderful sight of many families and children at our Masses here (both on weekends and weekdays!) shows that some of you are very clearly multiplying, and discipling.  Thank you, for fulfilling that part of God’s first command, and Jesus’ final one!  But God also speaks of “subduing”, and Jesus calls His followers to “baptize” and “teach”, and I think these tasks are much more difficult than “multiplying” and “making disciples”.  It’s one thing to home-grow disciples, but there “in the world”, it is a darker, murkier, crazier place, and people are doing their own thing and not really mindful of us, much less the Gospel we are called to preach to them.  

Furthermore, there is a general feeling these days that it is not your or my place to impose our faith on someone else.  Faith is a personal thing, not meant to be foisted on someone!  So, how do we strike that right balance, not imposing but proposing (as St. Pope John Paul II would say)?  How do we find the courage to proclaim properly the Gospel that is our source of joy (as Pope Francis so beautiful describes it in Evangelii Gaudium)?  We need the example and intercession of St. Raymond of Peñafort! 

I neglect many other facts of his life, to just say that this scholar and priest became a Dominican at the age of 47, after 2 decades teaching and writing canon law.  He could have stayed in the solid and prosperous position he held at the university, but instead he becomes a friar of the Order of Preachers.  In the middle of his life, he chose to double-down on the primary vocation we all have: become a saint, and produce other saints.  How did he engage this daunting task?

For one, he helped found the order of Mercedarians, a group of friars who would turn themselves in as captives, to replace a Christian who had been captured by the Moors and were at risk of losing their faith.  The group still exists, and still vows to “give up our lives, as Christ gave his life for us, should it be necessary, in order to save those Christians who find themselves in extreme danger of losing their faith by new forms of captivity.”

Raymond also wrote a book to train priests to be good confessors (this was not just a list of sins and suggested penances; it tied in doctrine and Church practices, distinguishing for the good of priest and penitent such things as self-defense vs. violence done for vengeance or anger.)  The book’s clarity and foundation in charity allowed generations of Christians to better know how to return, and stay, in God’s grace.

Raymond learned Hebrew and Arabic to preach the Gospel to Jews and Arabs, who formed the non-Christians of his own day.  He established priories in non-Christian strongholds.  He convinced King James of Aragon to have a respectful debate between a Moshe ben Nahman (a Jewish rabbi of Girona) and Paulus Christiani (a Jewish man of Montpellier, who had converted and became a Dominican), to speak clearly, and freely, about the identity of the Messiah. 

Oh, and he floated on his own cloak back from the island of Majorca because King James had angrily forbade any ship to take him home after the good saint had challenged the royal-sinner to dismiss his concubine.

Teaching, preaching, challenging, debating, ransoming, pardoning, pacifying … all situations were places to preach the Gospel, and Raymond did not hesitate to do so.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has only baptized two (little) people.  That’s barely addition, much less multiplication.  Of course, currently, my assignment as Bishop Paprocki’s MC, and in the Diocesan offices does not offer many opportunities to directly create disciples, and it also offers surprisingly few opportunities to preach the Gospel to those who have not already heard it.  But, this all means that I need to look more diligently, more creatively, more constantly, for ways to do just that, because God’s grace is there, and the call is there, and there are plenty of people who still need Jesus, myself most of all! 

In my homily for Christmas, I mentioned that I had recently purchased a Christmas gift for myself, a Nativity Set that I have in my personal quarters in the Cathedral Rectory.  When agonizing over which set to purchase, one of the final conditions I had was that I wanted the set to include the Magi, as they completed the scene of the birth of Jesus.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been re-reading Pope Benedict’s third volume on Jesus of Nazareth which focuses on the Infancy Narratives.  When he gets to the section on the question of who the Magi are, he offers a helpful description which I would like to share:

Just as the Church’s tradition read the Christmas story quite spontaneously in the light of Is 1:3, with the result that the ox and the ass found their way into the crib, so too the Magi story was read in conjunction with Ps 72:10 and Is 60. Hence the wise men from the East became kings, and with them camels and dromedaries were added to the crib. 

While the prophetic content of these texts expands the provenance of these figures to include the extreme west (Tarshish = Tartessos in Spain), tradition has further developed this idea of universality by conceiving them as kings from all three known continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. The black king is part and parcel of this: in the kingdom of Jesus Christ there are no distinctions of race and origin. In him and through him, humanity is united, yet without losing any of the richness of variety. 

Later, the three kings came to be associated with the phases of human life—youth, maturity, and old age. This too makes good sense, highlighting the fact that each of the various stages of human life finds its true meaning and its inner unity in companionship with Jesus. 

The key point is this: the wise men from the east are a new beginning. They represent the journeying of humanity toward Christ. They initiate a procession that continues throughout history. Not only do they represent the people who have found the way to Christ: they represent the inner aspiration of the human spirit, the dynamism of religions and human reason toward him. 

(Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth – The Infancy Narratives, p. 96-97)

These Magi serve as a beautiful reminder of what we experience when we come to Mass.  When we come to this church, we come to Bethlehem (which translated means house of bread).  We come as being one family, without distinction, while retraining our variety.  We come at every stage of our lives.  We come to encounter Christ, to encounter a new beginning in our loving Him and others more and more as He feeds us with the gift of His life in the Eucharist.

Father Alford     

As we begin this new year of blessings from the Lord, it is fitting that we turn our attention to the Holy Eucharist. As I wrote a few months ago, the Eucharist is the “best” sacrament because it is God himself! The other sacraments communicate the love of God, but only the Eucharist gives the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ himself. I always enjoy seeing the sacraments in the scriptures, and it’s a helpful place to start, so this month I’m going to start with where we find the Eucharist in scripture. 

We hear at every Mass the account of when Jesus took the bread and wine at the Last Supper and gave them to his disciples. He also commanded them to repeat that action in memory of him. We see four very clear accounts of this moment in the scriptures. The first is found in Matthew: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Matthew 26:26-28). 

A second account is found in the Gospel of Mark: “While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, ‘Take it; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.’ The Gospel of Luke describes it like this: “Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body, which will be given for you; di this in memory of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.’” 

The Gospel of John does not contain an explicit Institution Narrative, although the entirely of John 6 is devoted to Jesus’ description of the Eucharist as his true flesh and blood. The fourth narrative is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He wrote, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.” 

St. Paul was not present at the Last Supper with the Twelve Apostles. But it seems to me that this adds even more credibility to his account and the traditional Christian celebration of the Eucharist. He is clear that this story was handed on to him, and he in turn had handed it on to the Corinthians. The celebration of the Eucharistic meal was not invented by the Apostles or by Christians later in history. It has been handed on from the men who were present with Jesus at the last supper, fulfilling his command to remember him through the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Of course, this celebration is no mere remembering or empty ceremony. As Jesus himself said, the Bread and the Wine are truly his Body and Blood, which were broken and poured out for us on the cross. The Eucharist is clearly described in the scriptures as a sacrament which was instituted by Christ himself. 

Feast Day: January 6^th

January 6^th is the liturgical date of the feast of the Epiphany, concluding the highest, central part of our Christmas season, our this feast celebrating Our Lord’s revelation to the gentiles can be moved to one of the Sundays between January 2^nd-8^th if (as in our country) it is not a Holy Day of Obligation.  So, we will celebrate the Epiphany this year on Sunday, January 3^rd…  Which means I can focus this article on St. Andre Bessette because we will be celebrating his feast day this Wednesday, on January 6^th.  I get the feeling that Andre doesn’t mind often being overshadowed by Christ … I suppose most saints don’t, that’s probably why they are saints!

Andre, born Alfred, had been born 40 miles southeast of Montreal, Quebec, grew up in poverty, spent several years in Connecticut trying to work in the textile mills, and then, at the age of 25 walked up to the door of the Congregation of the Holy Cross.  His health was frail, he had struggled to hold down a job, he was trying to join an order of teachers but couldn’t read and write.  His resume was ridiculously short, but he had a note from his parish priest to the superior that said all that mattered: “I am sending you a saint.”

What was it that made him a saint?  For the next 40 years, assigned as the porter – the brother at the door – of the Congregation’s Notre Dame boy’s school, he showed us all that it came down to trust.  When he didn’t have the strength or the mind for religious life, he went anyway, trusting that God would open the way.  When he found himself assigned to menial jobs for practically his entire life, he trusted that the Lord would do His work all the same through that.  When he was called to visit the sick, amid a pandemic no less, he simply prayed with those afflicted, anointed them with oil from the chapel, and told them to pray to St. Joseph2.  And, with copious trust, they were all cured, and they began to flock to him as a healer and miracle-worker.  In the same way that Our Lord had attracted crowds 1900 years before, reams of people came with their sicknesses and broken hearts to Br. Andre, and he simply pointed them to God, and to St. Joseph.

And that is a final lesson of trust that he teaches us: in 1904, a few years after taking his vows and being assigned as porter, he asked the bishop if he could build a shrine to his favorite saint on the hill overlooking the college.  The bishop gave him permission, as long as he did not have to borrow any money.  With a whole lot of trust, Br. Andre started colleting nickels and dimes that he earned by giving haircuts to the boys, and gradually a windbreak, then a little shed, and then a small chapel arose upon the hill.  It would be 20 years before construction began on what is now a Basilica, called St. Joseph’s Oratory.  13 years later, the simple doorman died, and one million people came to his funeral.

Trust, it is the mark of every saint.  In St. Andre it was trust in the powerful intercession of St. Joseph.  As we plunge into this year of St. Joseph, in what area of your life can you practice trust?  Caution: it might mean trusting for decades, but it might also be the source of millions of miracles in your life and in the lives of those you love.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin enters and exits doors approximately 100 times each day.  If every one of those were turned into an act of trust in God, he would be as saintly as St. Andre Bessette, St. John Masias, Bl. Josep Tarrats Comaposada, or Bl. Solanas Casey, all of whom were doorkeepers at their monasteries, and became a saint because of it. 

Merry Christmas!  As you are probably aware, the Merry Christmas greeting is a victim of our predominantly secular culture.  We use this greeting for weeks leading up to Christmas, but as soon as we close our eyes at the end of our Christmas Day festivities, we all but forget about this greeting, packing it in the closet until next year.  But in the Church, the greeting of Merry Christmas is something that continues throughout the Christmas Season, which concludes this year on January 10 with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord.

During the Christmas Season, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Since Jesus chose to enter into our world in the context of the family, the Church wants to draw special attention to this family as she invites us to “imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life and in the bonds of charity.” (Roman Missal, Collect for Feast of the Holy Family).  

On this day, in the Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church provides a reflection given by Pope St. Paul VI when he visited Nazareth, the home of the Holy Family.  He describes Nazareth as “a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ’s life was like and even to understand his Gospel.”  We might hear these words a little differently this year as many of our young people have had the home serve as a school, at least virtually, due to the COVID-19 challenges that we have faced.  Hopefully those experiences have not soured us to the prospect of learning in our homes, as the home of Nazareth offers us many lessons upon which to reflect.

In his meditation on Nazareth, the Holy Father proposes three lessons, and I would like to quote the second one, which focuses on what we can learn about family life:

May Nazareth serve as a model of what the family should be. May it show us the family’s holy and enduring character and exemplify its basic function in society: a community of love and sharing, beautiful for the problems it poses and the rewards it brings, in sum, the perfect setting for rearing children – and for this there is no substitute.

Striking is a phrase he uses about family life: “beautiful for the problems it poses.”  You do not need me to tell you that family life is often difficult.  But can we see that even these problems can be beautiful?  We can if we look at them as the Holy Family did, with the eyes of faith, trusting that “all things work for good for those who love God.” (Romans 8:28).

As we conclude our month of reflections related to the Sacrament of Confirmation, we thank God for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit which are increased in the reception of this sacrament.  All of these gifts can be at the service of our families in imitating the Holy Family and seeing even the challenges as blessings.  Once again, Merry Christmas!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: December 28^th     

Parents with newborns know the sacrifice of waking up in the middle of the night to care for their children, but St. Joseph, shortly after the birth of his Son, had a very different abrupt awakening.

an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”
[Matthew 2:13]

He obeys the word from God, but before we learn of their sojourn in Egypt, or their return to Nazareth, Matthew tells us of the terrible onslaught that came upon Bethlehem with Herod’s anger and jealousy.

Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the Wise Men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the Wise Men.
[Matthew 2:16]

Some scholars claim that this event is apocryphal (not historical) because it is not mentioned by historical records of the time, but if we realize both that Herod became horrifically violent and uncontrolled especially in his final years of his reign, and that there were probably only 10 or 15 little boys in Bethlehem given the size of that village at the time of Christ, it seems that an event of this sort would not be remembered by the larger world.  

The question for us then is why do we celebrate this feast just three days after Christmas?  Obviously, these martyrs are connected in time with the infant Jesus.  They perished within two years of his own birth, and because Herod could not stand the idea of his power being usurped (by a baby?!)  Yet most saints are exemplars for us of some virtue, disposition, set of accomplishments they did following God’s will, yet these little boys did not know Christ, nor that their deaths were suffered in lieu of Him.  Their families probably did not know the rationale behind Herod’s brutality, nor did Herod really hate Christ personally, he just did not want somebody else claiming royal authority (because his was so tenuous).

Matthew assists our reflection by quoting Jeremiah 31:15:

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.””
[Matthew 2:17-18]

If we knew the Old Testament inside and out we would know that Jeremiah continues: 

“Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded, says the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, says the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.”
[Jeramiah 31:16-17]

This scriptural insight offers us a way to see this day aright.  Rachel, the wife of Jacob all the way back in Genesis 29, of course was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, but Jeremiah transposed her weeping forward to the Israelites killed during the wars and exiles of his day, and Matthew, knowing her to have been buried in Bethlehem, can see the final fulfilment of that prophecy in the children murdered in Christ’s place.  

Those Holy Innocents stand now for us as an icon of every child of God killed for jealousy, anger, misunderstanding, or hatred, or lost tragically in any other way but they also force the Christian to recall that – Christ having taken on the ramifications of sin, all the way to death – all those deaths can still be victories in the end.  The eternal life that Our Lord wants to give us is far more precious than the physical life we cherish, and though the worst of worldly evils is the callous loss of human life, it can also be the moment that Christ’s redemption is accomplished, and His promise kept: “your children shall come back to their own country.”

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has only done a handful of funerals as a priest, but knows that they are both one of the hardest things a priest gets to do, and also the most grace-filled.  Miraculously, amid grief and loss, Christ’s victory is continued.  The shadow of the cross does fall over the crèche, but so does the light of Easter.

As practicing Catholics, we (hopefully!) receive two of the sacraments regularly: Penance and the Holy Eucharist. There are some sacraments that we receive only once in life. As we continue to reflect on the sacrament of Confirmation during December, I thought it would be helpful to see what our Catechism says about sacraments that can be received only once. 

Paragraph 1304 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads, “Like Baptism which it completes, Confirmation is given only once, for it too imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the ‘character,’ which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with the seal of his Spirit by clothing him with power from on high so that he may be his witness.”

Baptism and Confirmation change a Christian forever and can only be received once. Regarding these sacraments, you might here a theologian or a priest mention the “character” of each sacrament. As the Catechism said, the character is a spiritual mark imprinted on the soul. It is hard to image a spiritual mark – spiritual things, like our souls, are invisible, so they cannot be marked in a physical way. Speaking about a mark is simply a way to help us understand the reality of what takes place when a sacrament is celebrated. I have also heard sacramental character likened to a tattoo or a seal, such as when a king would seal a letter with his insignia. The character of a sacrament claims us for Christ and permanently marks us out (invisibly) as Christians! 

The character, or invisible mark, of Baptism is a way in which the divine life is channeled to our souls from God. Any time we commit a mortal sin, we lose this grace of divine life and are separated from the love of God. This can only be restored through repentance, ordinarily expressed in the sacrament of Penance. However, throughout all of this, the character of Baptism is never erased. The same is true for Confirmation. Even if a Confirmed Catholic commits a serious sin or is not in the practice of the faith, they are still a true Catholic, even though the grace of God may not be alive in their heart. 

The Catholic Church does not believe in “re-baptizing” Christians. Baptism can only truly be received one time. In cases where it is doubtful whether Baptism was received or not, somebody may be conditionally baptized just to be sure that he or she has received this gift from God. However, even if somebody were to be “re-baptized” or “re-confirmed” in another church or religious group, we believe that nothing is taking place. It is simply a simulation of a sacrament that had already been received. 

As I’m writing this, I realize that this is a pretty technical piece of Church teaching, but this teaching has been a great source of comfort for many people over the years. Imagine somebody who was baptized and confirmed in childhood, but for the next 50 years of their life, did not practice the faith. Oftentimes nearing the end of life is a reason to turn to God and return to the faith they practiced long ago. For a person in this situation, all that is needed is the reception of the sacrament of Penance, and they are once again a Catholic in good standing, alive with God’s grace! The sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation are truly a stable and enduring gift of God’s love, offering us the chance to return to the faith no matter how many twists and turns we take in our spiritual life. 

This past week, I had the opportunity to make my annual retreat.  I had hoped to take it at two different times earlier in the year, but the circumstances demanded that I cancel.  I can see the Providence in all of this, though, as Advent can be a very special time for making a retreat, as it is a great way to prepare for Christmas.  For the first two years of my priesthood, I took my annual retreat right after Christmas, which enabled me to slow down and rest in the beauty of the season.  Having had those fruitful experiences, I had no doubt that being on retreat before Christmas would likewise be fruitful. 

Harkening back to those first two retreats, I recall vividly the location that I chose, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.  You may be more familiar with this location as the place where Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN, lived for the final several years of her life.  She had a great devotion to the Divino Niño, the Divine Child, which you could see throughout the shrine.  It was always a wonderful thing to meditate there on the littleness of the child Jesus and His desire to be near to us.  

Several years ago, I came across a little meditation that Mother Angelica composed about the Birth of Christ.  And even if you are not able to make a retreat before Christmas, maybe you can use this meditation and take some time in silence, possibly before a Nativity scene, and make your final preparations to welcome Christ more deeply into your hearts this Christmas:

The Birth of Christ
(A Meditation by Mother Angelica)

“…Suddenly the whole cave is filled with the most brilliant light:
beautiful and soft.  At the end of the cave is Mary.  She is kneeling
and she has the most lovely infant in her arms.  My heart begins
to pound with joy and I say to her, ‘May I touch him?’  She says,
‘Yes.  Don’t be afraid.  This is why He came so that you would see
your God in the flesh and never be afraid again.’  I go to grasp His
hand and instead He clasps my little finger and holds it so tight.
I realize how much God loves me – that He would come in such
tiny form to such a cold, simple place.  That He would consent to be
so dependent on His creatures: Mary and Joseph to give Him food
and drink and to care for Him.  This God who created the whole
universe is dependent upon two creatures, all out of love for me.” 

On behalf of the entire Cathedral clergy and staff, I wish all of you many blessings as you prepare to remember the Birth of our Savior on Christmas!

Father Alford