A Christmas Season Pause & Ponder

No matter which gospel text we take to consider the life of Jesus, we are confronted with one who consistently manifests the love to which he calls others. He breaks down all partitions that divide humans from each other; he embodies a love that is just, and a love that therefore variously exhibits judgement, affirmation, service, sharing, depending upon the context of love.  But this is the life that reveals the nature of God for us; this is the life that offers a concrete vision of the reality to which God calls us. This is the revelation of God to us for the sake of conforming us to the divine image. If we see in Jesus a revelation of God for us, then the way Jesus loves is the way God loves.

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, God, Christ, Church, pp. 97-98.

A Christmas Season Pause & Ponder

The celebration of the Word made Flesh, is also the celebration of all women and men who have incarnated the message of Jesus in their lives. We tell the stories of prophets, liberators, and martyrs of not so long ago whose lives challenge us to hold to our commitment to God and to be open to the spirit who frees us from the bondage of our addictions and fears. Remembering Jesus, we make him part of our lives. Remembering those who have followed him unites us with them.

Elizabeth Meluch, OCD, People’s Companion to the Breviary, p. 203.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Christmas celebrates more than a single event, more than just the birth of a child in a Bethlehem cave long ago: Christmas celebrates a presence that continues to this day and for all time. That presence is experienced in every moment of compassion we extend and experience, every moment of comfort and consolation we offer and receive, every moment of forgiveness we seek and give.

"Emmanuel" – "God is with us." In Christ’s birth, God touches human history: hope reigns, justice takes root, peace becomes possible. The challenge to each one of us is to take on the work of "Emmanuel" – to make God’s presence tangible by being [God’s] arms for the hurting, [God’s] hands for the fallen, [God’s] heart for the grieving.

Daily Reflections for Advent and Christmas

by Jay Cormier, p. 72.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Many persons of faith find themselves spiritually undernourished and weak as they struggle to live their lives with integrity....Today Christians are often confronted with the dichotomy between being a person of prayer and living a private type of Christian life and being committed to the struggle for justice and peace....But we cannot choose one and ignore the other... The call to contemporary Christians throughout the world is to learn how to do this: to grow simultaneously in the life of prayer and in commitment to social transformation, to walk on the two feet of love of God and the love of neighbor.

Great Mystics and Social Justice

by Susan Rakoczy, pp. 1-4.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

God, active and present throughout all ages, mindful of our every need, has chosen Mary to collaborate in the gestation of justice in the world. As "spokeswoman of the anawim" ... – the poor – Mary models in her surrender the receptivity essential for the transformation of all our spiritual and material poverty, blindness, and hunger into the fullness and joy of the risen presence of Jesus.... The Advent mother awaiting birth is one with the Easter mother awaiting and welcoming the new life of Christ’s risen presence. Together they call each of us to enter into the joyous song of exultation and praise that was Mary’s. Her song is the call to rejoice in gratitude for the ever-present, merciful God of love who offered to her, and offers to us, a timeless, pregnant convenantal intimacy, an intimacy rooted in mutual promise and surrender.

Freedom: a guide for prayer

, by Jacqueline Syrup Bergan and S. Marie Schwan, pp. 22-23.