Christmas Has Become A Season Of Material Excess, For Children And Adults

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God Comes As A Baby - Defenseless And In Need Of Our Help

God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him. - Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Only The Humble Find God

Only two classes of people found the Babe; the shepherds and the Wise Men; the simple and the learned; those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything. He is never seen by the man of one book; never by the man who thinks he knows. Not even God can tell the proud anything! Only the humble can find God! - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

All Moved Interiorly by Grace Hasten to Adore Him

Jesus calls the poor and simple shepherds by means of angels to manifest Himself to them. He calls the learned men by means of their science. And all of them moved interiorly by grace hasten to adore Him. He calls all of us with divine inspirations and He communicates Himself to us with his grace. How many times has He not lovingly invited us also? And with what promptitude have we replied? - Saint Padre Pio

Holy Family of Nazareth - True Model of a Christian Home

God our Father, in the Holy Family of Nazareth You have given us the true model of a Christian home. Grant that by following Jesus, Mary and Joseph in their love for each other and in the example of their family life, we may come to Your home of peace and joy. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Live Joyfully and Courageously

Live joyfully and courageously, at least in the upper part of the soul, amidst the trials in which the Lord places you. Live joyfully and courageously, I repeat, because the Angel who foretells the birth of our little Saviour and Lord, announces singing, and sings announcing that he brings tidings of joy, peace and happiness to men of good will. So that there is nobody who does not know that in order to receive this Child it is sufficient to be of good will. - Saint Padre Pio

He Has Become One of us, in Order to Draw All of us to Himself

The infinite distance between God and man is overcome. God has not only bent down, as we read in the Psalms; he has truly “come down”, he has come into the world, he has become one of us, in order to draw all of us to himself. This child is truly Emmanuel – God-with-us. - Pope Benedict XVI

Jesus Guides You Through The Desert

The Baby Jesus is the Star that guides you through the desert of this present life. - Saint Padre Pio

The Habitual Happiness of the Christian

Let us try to get ready for the Holy Season by encouraging an atmosphere of Christian peace where we live and work, and by doing all we can in small ways to bring pleasure and affection to those around us. People need to be convinced that Christ has really been born in Bethlehem, and few things are more convincing than the habitual happiness of the Christian, even in the midst of pain and contradictions. - Passionist Nuns of Erlanger