CHRISTMAS 2019

     The story of Christmas us the greatest story ever told. 

       To fully appreciate Christmas we start with our belief that Eternal, Infinite, Divine Love has been present throughout the universe since the moment of creation 13.8 billion years ago.  The omnipresence of Divinity throughout the universe from its very beginning has a name.  It is "Christ," which means, "The Universe Anointed with Divine Presence."
  
     Jesus was the Christ, the Divinely Anointed Universe, come to earth in the form of a 1st century, male Jew.  Mary, his mother, is exalted because she is truly the Mother of Infinite, Eternal God-with-us in human form.    

     While God is the universal Basis of our faith, Jesus is the global Center of our faith.  When we focus on him here on earth, we see the timeless, universal God in human form.  In his birth and life we directly learn of God's infinite, overflowing love for us.  

     No wonder that when Jesus was born, an entire army of angels sang, "Glory to God in the Highest!"  No wonder that we venerate Mary, who birthed him forth into the world.  No wonder that St. Paul wrote that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth."  (Phil. 2:10)

     In our Catholic, all-embracing understanding, Jesus represents love for everyone on earth without exception.  St. Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is people fully alive."  Jesus showed us how to be fully alive, i.e., by imitating him and showing love for everyone.  He taught that everyone is our brother and sister in Christ.  By loving others, we help them become the fully alive persons that God intends them to be.    

     St. Paul expressed our love for everyone in Jesus, the Christ when he said that in Christ there is not Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all in all. (Col. 3:11).  

     Today we can say that while we rightly recognize the differences among us, by raising ourselves to the higher consciousness of Christ we can say there is not Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Hindu, etc., not White or Colored, not citizen or immigrant, not right or poor, nor Democrat, Republican or Independent, etc., etc., but there is one justice, peace and love for all without exception.  

      In Jesus' Christmas Love, may we be vessels of peace and good will for all, so that we may all flourish in our blessed humanity and so that his prayer, "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven" may take even a little step forward.

      In the Universal Love of Christ present with us in Jesus, I wish a very Merry Christmas to all my readers--and to the whole world.

     

      

             





  

       

        

ARE WE AIDING IN THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR AMERICAN SOUL?

   These days we are being challenged to choose the kind of world we want to live in.  We all live in various "worlds," e.g., the world that is our family, community, job, culture, church, ethnicity, political party, etc.  The problem is that we can use our various "worlds" to cut ourselves off from people who are different from us.  To the extent that we diminish our caring for all peoples and the entire earth, we diminish our humanity and our American soul.  "Catholic" means "Universal," or "Whole," so we should take a look at our American Catholic souls .   

   As Catholics we live in a world that is as big as the earth and that embraces everyone and everything on earth, without exception.  We may not like some aspects of our world.  In fact we should not like certain aspects, e.g., selfishness, greed, indifference, crime, religious disdain for "different" people, etc.  And we should agree that anything that puts the different parts of our world against one another, e.g., racism, sexism, political separation instead of compromise, suppression of the poor, etc., is not acceptable.  These negative and sometimes vicious aspects make up the "world" that Jesus said hates us Christians and hates him, and that we must avoid.  (John. 15:18)

   Our Catholic world is a world in which we accept everyone in the all-embracing love of Christ.  Even with all the world's imperfections--and we look to ourselves first to see the log in our own eye (Mt, 7:1)--we live in a world in which we must reach out to everyone.  Obviously we will disagree with some others but we must never permit our disagreements to become hostile separations.  And we must strongly disagree with all those, especially our political, economic and religious leaders, who foment separations and hostility.

   In our Catholic view, God is present throughout the world, and we recognize God's presence in the world as the universal, global Christ-Reality that Jesus was.  In sum, we see the world as the one beautiful Body of Christ.  And the Body of Christ is not to be divided by any hostility. 

   From the very beginning, God gave us dominion over the world, i.e., the responsibility to lovingly care for the earth and its creatures.  (Gen. 1:26)  Our responsibility to care for the earth and its inhabitants is a shining example of our human dignity.  Anything less than wholeness in love, any breaking up of our lives and of the earth into warring divisions corrupts and even destroys the wholeness of love and destroys our humanity and our Christianity.

   One big enemy of wholeness in love is our over-emphasis on individuality.  We must keep clearly in mind that while each of us is a unique individual, we are unique individuals in society.  We do not stand alone outside of society.  Everyone is our brother or sister.  We an only develop our individuality within society.

   Today's physicists help us understand our wholeness in love.  They tell us that the universe is made of consciousness and that we are all expressions of the one, universal consciousness.  We must never forget that we arise out of unity of consciousness and develop ourselves within unity and wholeness of consciousness.  We Catholics see unity and wholeness of consciousness as unity and wholeness in love.  The universe is made of unity and wholeness in love!  

    Sadly, our Catholic view of the wholeness of love is being attacked.  The attack includes the pressures on our family life, the collapse of our politics, the greed of corporations and their disregard for the ecology, and even our schools and universities that over-specialize and thus fail to give our children a wholistic picture of the world and of themselves.  All this leads to the disintegration of our American soul. 

    More sadly, this disintegration is being aided by some of us Catholics who have fallen into the tribal mindset of white privilege, and those who are permitting our political leaders to attack the rule of law and our Constitution.  Some of us are confusing politics with our Catholic faith! 

    In the Spirit and Love of Jesus, the global Christ, our Catholic world knows no bounds.  It is our Catholic vocation and duty to embrace the wholeness of our entire world and to work to bring the creative, healing and world transforming/evolving love of Christ to our nation and as far as possible, to the whole world.  Everyone is our neighbor to be loved and assisted, with special care for the poor, sick, vulnerable and outcast.  The whole world is sacred and to be cherished and protected.  A world that is smaller than a world of love for all the people and creatures of Earth is not acceptable to Christ and should not be acceptable to us.