Merry Christmas, everyone! One of my favorite passages, this time of year, is The Magnificat of Mary. I’d like you all to take the time to read it and meditate on it with first of The Joyful Mysteries. “Tis the season” for that mystery set on the daily rosary journey. Many of the daily gospels, these past few weeks have been parables of Jesus healing lame, blind, inflicted/afflicted, unclean, etc. people that he encounters, telling them it’s their faith that has healed them. It’s a message that gets repeated throughout the New Testament. We don’t have to be extremely physically bad off to ask to be healed or to accept Gods healing. The Magnificat is the Lectures report, this month.
Somehow, being a tongue-in-cheek, smarmy overweight sixty three year old guy with a bad knee, whose eyesight is failing and recently diagnosed with asthma, along with an attitude towards current politics that, at the very least, is off-color and somewhat unclean, I identified with all those healing terms. It would be too easy for me to take this month’s Lecturers article in the wrong spiritual direction, but I couldn’t resist attempting to put a smile on your faces during this joyous time of year with some humorous self-flagellation. Instead, I’d like you all to rejoice in your own imperfections, knowing that His birth is what saves us all from ourselves as much as from our enemies. We’re all sinners that are supposed to strive to sin less, because it’s not possible to be sinless. It’s the guy looking back at you when you shave that has caused the majority of your set-backs, in life. The media is doing a great job of keeping enemies visible at all times, so continue to be vigilant, spiritually during this Christmas season. Jesus is the reason for the season.