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Can you remember as a child the anticipation you felt as Christmas approached?  It was such an exciting time of year.  For some reason, adults seemed to be a little happier and less fussy than usual.  Music filled the air, packages were under the tree, secrets were being whispered from person to person.  Sometimes the excitement would build until you would think you were going to burst.  Perhaps we have since discarded that kind of anticipation as just a childish fantasy; but I hope not, for it isn’t altogether without scriptural precedent.  For   example, there is the meeting between Virgin […]

  Isiah, the advent Prophet, envisions a world free of hatred, and rivalries, and filled with the peace that only God can bring.  He pictures a real world made as people were meant to be in God’s image and likeliness.    He calls us to prepare to be part of that world by acknowledging God’s Kingdom announced by Jesus.  That kingdom grows and flourishes in our lives and in our world whenever we do the will of God. Unfortunately, we all experience a threefold alienation: from others and from ourselves.  We live in a secular world, a society organized apart from […]

Christmas exhilarates us.  It also points us in the right direction.  As we  celebrate His coming, we strain to speak about the mystery and meaning of Jesus of Nazareth.  Emmanuel – “God is with us”.  The Word became flesh.  Son of God and Son of Mary.  Ture God, true man. We use symbols to try to point to His meaning:  1)  We place evergreen trees in our homes, fresh and alive to remind us that Jesus is always alive, that He lives forever. 2)  We celebrate His birth on one of the longest nights of the year – straining to […]

 Have you ever noticed that there is a direct correlation between current events and our overall attitude toward life?  When things are going well, we are hopeful and optimistic; but when things take a turn for the worse, we lose heart. This is a tragic way to live because it places us at the mercy of events totally beyond our control.  Instead of acting upon life, we end up merely reacting to it.  Good times turn us into giddy optimists, while bad times transform us into gloomy  prophets of doom. But St. Paul’s approach in his letter to the Romans […]

Many centuries ago, a Hebrew poet wrote a psalm that begins with the line: “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God.”  He said that concerning the temple which King Solomon built in Jerusalem.  To him it was the most beautiful and the most sacred place on earth.  It was the house where God lived.  To visit the temple was to be in the very presence of the Lord. But that beautiful and sacred building is no longer there.  It was first destroyed in 586 BC by the invading armies of Babylon.  Some seventy years later, it was rebuilt.  […]