Christmas = LOVE

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another decorator.


If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at
mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another cook.


If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home and give all that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.


If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir's cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.


Love stops the cooking to hug the child.


Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse.


Love is kind, though harried and tired.


Love doesn't envy another's home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.
Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way.


Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give in return but rejoices in giving to those who can't.


Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.


Love never fails. Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, but giving the gift of LOVE will endure.


-Author Unknown

J.C

Humor around old age

You know you’re getting old when….
When you say something to your kids that your mother said to you and you always hated it.
You and your teeth don't sleep together.
When happy hour is a nap.
When you're on vacation and your energy runs out before your money does.
When all you want for your birthday is to not be reminded of your age.
It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.
Your memory is shorter and your complaining lasts longer.
The pharmacist has become your new best friend.
When you step off a curb and look down one more time to make sure the street is still there.
Getting "lucky" means you found your car in the parking lot.
You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore.
* * * * * * * * * *

I am a senior citizen...
- I'm very good at opening childproof caps with a hammer.
- I'm usually interested in going home before I get to where I'm going.
- I'm the first one to find the bathroom wherever I go.
- I'm smiling all the time because I can't hear a word you're saying.
- I'm very good at telling stories...over and over and over and over.
- I'm so cared for: long-term care, eye care, private care, dental care.
- I'm having trouble remembering simple words like... uh...
- I'm anti-everything now: anti-fat, anti-smoke, anti-noise, anti-inflammatory.
* * * * * * * * * *
Behind the wheel
As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his cell phone rang. Picking up, he heard his wife, her voice high with anxiety, warn him, "Henry, I just saw on the news that there's a car driving the wrong way on Highway. Please be careful!" - "One?" replied Henry, "You've got to be kidding me. I see at least a hundred!"
* * * * * * * * * *
The rectal thermometer
A bank teller watched an elderly physician write a check at the local bank. He had a very perplexed and confused look on his face. When asked what was wrong, the physician looked down at his hand which contained a rectal thermometer and said, I was just trying to remember where I left my pen.
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Daughters of Charity offer Christmas gift opportunities

Double the joy of giving this year through the gift of health care, education, water and nutrition to some of the poorest of the poor served by the Daughters.

Gallup’s October forecast indicated that Americans, on average, are planning to spend $740 on gifts for the 2009 giving season.

This Christmas, why not GIVE the GIFT of Health Care & Hygiene, or Education or
Water & Nutrition to Help Some of the Poorest of the Poor, Worldwide.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast 12 December
• In 1487 in a single four days long ceremony for the dedication of a new an Aztec temple in Tenochtitlan, some 80,000 captives were killed in human sacrifice. The same practice included the cannibalism of the victims’ limbs.
• In 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the Americas and named it San Salvador.
• In 1521 the Spanish Conquest of Tenochtitlan. Two-hundred and forty thousand Aztecs are estimated to have died during the siege, which lasted eighty days
• In 1531 a "Lady from Heaven" appeared to a humble Native American at Tepeyac, a hill northwest of what is now Mexico City.
• The Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, an Indian of ordinary standing, and addressed him in his native Indian Language.
• “Know and understand well, you the most humble of my son, that I am the ever virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the True God for whom we live, of the Creator of all things, Lord of heaven and the earth.”
• Mary directed Juan Diego to visit the archbishop of Mexico and to inform him of her desire to have a church built in her honor on Tepeyac.
• Mary miraculously provided her messenger colorful roses in the winter, in a spot where normally only desert plants would grow.
• Juan Diego gathered the roses into his tilma, and was told by the Virgin Mother to present the roses and tilma to the Franciscan Bishop-elect, Juan Zumarraga.
• When St. Juan Diego unfolded his tilma before the Bishop, the roses cascaded to the floor and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed to the cloth.
• The Image of Our Lady that appeared on the tilma, which can still be seen in Mexico City today, is truly miraculous and has been the wonder of scientists for hundreds of years. All, after exhaustive investigation with sophisticated analytic detectors, have concluded that the work is beyond the power of men to produce.
• This is a photograph of an actual artifact of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You can go and see it with your own eyes.
• It is on a tilma made of cactus that last less than 10 years, yet you are looking at an image that is 477 years old.
• In 1541 Franciscan priest writes that some nine million Aztecs Indians had become Christians.
• An almost universal symbol of the Aztec religion was the serpent. The temples were richly decorated with snakes. Certainly, in this case She crushed the serpent.
• An incredible list of miracles, cures and interventions are attributed to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
• Between 18 - 20 million pilgrims visit the Basilica each year, making it Christianity's most visited sanctuary.
• Altogether 25 popes have officially honored Our Lady of Guadalupe.
• Today approximately 70% of all Hispanics are Catholic
• For more information on Our Lady of Guadeloupe please visit. http://www.sancta.org/intro.html
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Prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe
(used in the provincial house)

Our Lady of Guadalupe, mystical rose,
make intercession for us, the holy Church;
help all those who ivoke you in their need.
Since you are the mother of the true God,
obtain fro us from your most holy Son Jesus,
The grace of keeping our faith,
unfailing hope in the mids of the difficulties of life,
burning charity,
and the precious gift of final perseverance.
Our Lady of Guadalupe,
patroness of the Americas and our province,
pray for us!

* * * * * * * * * *

December 2009 - 37

Advent, it remains

Chinese Christians can celebrate New Year’s three times: at the start of the new church year, New Year according to the Western calendar and their own Chinese New Year. In China, the latter will be celebrated the most, and because of globalisation, they are bound to celebrate 1 January, as well.

However, if they truly wish to live as Christians, they should not let the first Sunday of Advent pass by unnoticed. For each time it constitutes the start of something new.

The fact that Christians keep to their own New Year’s – as do the Chinese – and will never abandon this tradition, says something about what the year is grafted onto for them. For Christians, this means something more than the position of the sun or the course of the stars. It is about a man who entered our history, it is about God who wanted to be more than our Creator; he wanted to be our destination and for that reason he wanted to deify our human nature. It is the turning point in human history, the moment in which everything gained a new perspective. It was the long-awaited moment, anticipated by generations without knowing what it would be like. It was the explosion of the divine like no one could have imagined. As of that moment, nothing or no one was still the same. The Creation was re-created; it was the moment in the beginning of time when nothing became something and now amalgamated with its origin. From now on, Creator and creature were united once more, not returning to the origin but living forward toward a destination.

The incarnation correlates with the essence of our Christianity, and every man shares in this deification of humanity. What happened once in history is continued throughout the ages and has changed the face of man, of all men of all times. Even those who do not believe in the incarnation, who do not believe in Christ, are the bearers of this divine essence in their lives. It enriched everyone’s life because the face of Jesus himself illuminates everyone’s face. Advent, which constitutes the beginning of the church year, is much more than a purely liturgical commemoration of that which would lead to the birth of Jesus Christ: the Angel’s message and Mary’s ‘yes’, Joseph’s encouragement as he is confronted with a mystery, John’s proclamation of the Messiah’s coming and the prophetic signs indicating that salvation is upon us.

Liturgy helps us contemplate that wondrous correlation between God and man; God who asks for man’s assistance in order to make the Birth of Christ possible. In his absolute greatness, God could have considered other possibilities to save man from his dead-end existence. But it was probably because of that absolute greatness that He wanted to keep human freedom intact and continue to have respect for it. He asks Mary, a child of man, if she wants to join in, and by doing so, He places the realisation of salvation in the hands of man. Such humility of God to act this way, and such promotion of man to earn such great respect from God. The breathtaking moment of the Annunciation is constantly repeated in our lives, for it is the prototype of the way in which God treats man, all of us in fact.

God always is the invitation, a loving encouragement; He does not command us, as we tend to portray Him. He invites us with infinite patience and hopes that by saying ‘yes’ we can enter his love and find true happiness. Love and happiness cannot be imposed or claimed, not even between people; it is the result, the gift of giving and accepting freely.

Because of Mary’s freely saying ‘yes’, God’s presence and love within man can fully and perpetually break through.

Mary has pronounced her ‘yes’ in the name of humanity, as it were. That is why God’s presence perpetuated in every man and throughout the ages.

But just like Mary’s ‘yes’ was needed to bring Jesus to life within her, our ‘yes’ is needed to bring Jesus into our life, which in turn becomes life-giving in itself. There are many words for this: God’s word, God’s grace, God’s love. It is always about God who becomes active within us with his loving grace and changes our life. It involves a double mutation; a passive one and an active one.

With all men, we passively share in the mutation of salvation: by taking human form, Jesus gave humanity a divine destination; we are predestined to perpetually lose ourselves in God. That is the deification of humanity, which is beautifully put forward during the Preparation of the Altar and the Gifts in the Eucharist: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Many people go no further than this passive mutation, and some even deny this reality and disregard it. By doing so, they deny their true identity.

However, there is a more active mutation to which we are invited by God. We are getting closer to Mary who received a special invitation requesting her to become the mother of God. She alone had the privilege of experiencing the physical motherhood of God but she shares the opportunity of spiritual motherhood with every man. This is that transforming mutation; Christ’s becoming alive within us and leading us to conversion. The incarnation occurs once again and awaits our ‘yes’ so that it may convert us into different, new men. It is the start of our spiritual adventure, a spiritual life, which is grafted onto Jesus from now on, and transformed by God’s grace. Mutation takes place within us, dependent on a simple ‘yes’ from us, just like Mary who spoke but one word and changed the face of the world. But her ‘yes’ was necessary, essential; it was the key to salvation.

When we celebrate the new church year, it involves this ‘yes’ and we commemorate the word of Mary as well as our ‘yes’ and we repeat this word with even more conviction so that may now live that divine life to which we will once fully belong with God’s working grace and his healing and life-giving love.

Bro. René Stockman, f.c.

* * * * * * * * * *
Prayer for Systemic Change
We praise and thank you, O God, Creator of the Universe.
You have made all things good and have given us the earth to cultivate.

Grant that we may always use created things gratefully,
and share them generously with those in need.
Give us creativity in helping the poor meet their basic human needs.

Open our minds and hearts so that we might stand at their side
and assist them to change whatever unjust structures keep them poor.

Enable us to be brothers and sisters to them, friends who walk with them
in their struggle for fundamental human rights.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. AMEN.