Christmas in Harlem

Catherine Doherty's Christmas in Harlem from her book Donkey Bells.

Read by Fr. Jerry at Annunciation of the Lord Parish, Ottawa.

Thanks to Maureen Ward.

Merry Christmas to all!

A Christmas Poem

by Barbara McAdorey

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the town
Traffic congested the streets up and down.
Shopping mall parking spots soon became rare
From too many shoppers; that made tempers flare.
Joy to the World at this time is forgot
As you curse at the driver who took the last spot.

The kid now starts screaming he wants this new toy
Your stress levels rise in this season of joy.
But what's one more toy when you're out on a binge
So you pull out your card and you try not to cringe.

Then there's more gifts to buy for Heaven knows who
Is this gift ok? Did they buy for me too?
Still more things to buy and cards to send out
But then panic and debt's what this season's about.

'Twas the night before Christmas, not much more you could do
Thankful there was just one more day to get through.

'Twas the night after Christmas in Heaven above
The Devil was speaking to God about love:
You have to admit that my plan is quite fine
You don't see much love in the world at this time.
They talk about Peace, Love, Hope and Joy
But their actions sure show they don't care for Your Boy.
Christmas is becoming what I want it to be
Causing those humans such anxiety.
Sure there's some fun with the candies and toys
But that is short lived for most girls and boys.
The true things that last as You, God, best know
Are no longer valued on Earth down below.
And talking of Christ has become incorrect
I've made them all feel that it shows disrespect
For others who may not worship your Son,
You must admit with this scheme I have won!
And I laugh at these humans, for my trick they all fall
For your Son is why Christmas existed at all!
If these things continue, my work's almost done
In another few years, they'll have forgotten Your Son!
When that great day comes, Your humans will buy,
Buy more and more, and not even know why!
So their stress will increase and they'll try all the more
To find some of that joy they gave up years before!

God spoke not a word and as calm as could be
He pointed to Earth for the Devil to see.
The boy with the gizmo was bored now, it's true
But the boy had a plan of what he should do.
He went to the house of a neighbourhood boy
Who was poor, had no friends, he was bringing the toy!
And he didn't just go there to give it away
He gave him the toy and he stayed there to play!

And the Devil stopped laughing, thought, Maybe I'm wrong,
Perhaps they were good deep down all along,
Maybe there is some love left, what a fright!
Well, there's always next year. I'm exhausted. Good night!
Copyright © 1998 by Barbara McAdorey

Barbara McAdorey is the author of the children's storybook, Icicles to Miracles.
This poem was first published in the December 1999 issue of Our Family magazine.

Picture from original painting by Paula E. Maloney
From the children's storybook, Icicles to Miracles

This is my body

'Cosmo' girl vs. anti-abortion advocate

By Father Frank Pavone

Here is part of Fr. Pavone's article on the recent deaths of Helen Gurley Brown (writer of Sex and The Single Girl and for 32 years the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine) and Nellie Gray, ( lawyer who walked away from a successful career to found the March for Life):

"Two women whose worldviews couldn’t have been more divergent died just days apart, each leaving a dramatically different imprint on American society. Both sought to protect women’s rights but were on opposite sides of a cultural battle that has shaped the past half-century...

...Ironically, the same four words became a rallying cry for both women. The same simple words are spoken from opposite ends of the universe, with meanings directly contrary to each other.

“This is my body” describes the pro-choice, pro-abortion rights mentality in the most succinct way possible. I own this body and all its potential. I decide whether the child occupying space in my womb lives or dies. I answer to no one but myself.

“This is My Body” meant something entirely different to Gray, and to everyone involved in the anti-abortion work and advocacy. Those were the sacrificial words spoken by Jesus Christ.

But you don’t have to be Christian to understand Jesus’ message about love and selflessness. Christ teaches the meaning of love: I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person. Abortion teaches the opposite of love: I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself. Christ gives his body away so others might live; abortion-rights supporters cling to their own bodies so others might die.

Abortion divides Americans more profoundly than any other issue. Some say it is intractable. But maybe the reason is that we’re looking at it only as a battle to be won or lost on the political front. This is a deeper spiritual battle, perhaps embodied best by the very women who gave their lives to these respective causes."

Father Frank Pavone is the national director of Priests for Life.

Holy Thursday

John 17:1-11

`Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; and, through the power over all mankind that you have given him, let him give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him. And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on earth, and finished the work that you gave me to do. Now, Father, it is time for you to glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world was.

I have made your name known to the men you took from the world to give me. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now at last they know that all you have given me comes indeed from you; for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they-have truly accepted this, that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me. I pray for them; I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you: all I have is yours and all you have is mine, and in them I am glorified. I am not in the world any longer, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us.'

Spiritual battle

In today’s Gospel in the first chapter of Mark (1:21-28), the Devil makes his first appearance. One of Satan’s followers has taken possession of a child of God and cries out in panic at Jesus’ approach:

“’What do you want with us Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy one of God’. But Jesus said sharply, ‘Be Quiet! Come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and with a loud cry went out of him. The people were so astonished that they started asking each other what it all meant. ‘Here is a teaching that is new’ they said’, with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.”

This is what John Bartunek in his book The Better Part says about evil:

“The devil is real, and he is interested in counteracting the work of grace. In one sense, accepting this fundamental truth, and keeping it always in the back of our minds, can comfort us tremendously: it helps us make sense of all the unpleasant influences at work in and around us...we are engaged in a spiritual battle. If we believe in Jesus Christ, we also believe in the devil - doomed as he is, he would love to take as many souls as he can along with him...how many souls are enslaved to sin unknowingly under Satan’s evil spell - confused, depressed, headed for destruction?”

Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

This year I gave away my tiny little Nativity scene that I kept in my office. I had bought it at the dollar store a couple of years ago, and every year I would place it on my desk at Christmas, because, as everyone knows, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ.

Since I didn't have it anymore I knew I'd have to get another one. So off I went back to the same dollar store. They didn’t have any. There were lots of bells and Santa Claus, ribbons and angels and other things we have come to associate with Christmas. But no Nativity scenes.

I then proceeded to go to gift shops, card shops, one department store, and saw lots more bells, Santa Claus, ribbons and bows, and tree ornaments. Nothing even remotely resembled a Nativity scene. I did actually find one porcelain Nativity scene--for $85. That seemed a bit rich, considering Jesus was born in, you know, a stable; with the sheep and the hay and the cows.

I even found a s'more in a manger. This is not a joke. This is for real. This would be a marshmallow in a manger. You know, like spun sugar and gelatin in a manger sitting on top of a graham cracker. Apart from the fact that I was offended, it was really rather pathetic. Move on, I thought, don't let it get you down. Don't lose sight of what you're looking for, a Nativity scene with Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Finally I found it in another dollar store. Three figurines: a baby Jesus lying in a manger with a little baby sheep beside him, Mary too, and a man with a staff. I think the man figurine was actually a shepherd, but he looked close enough to Joseph that I grabbed him. When I asked my sister who she thought he was, she that yes, he was probably a shepherd and not Joseph, since Joseph usually knelt beside baby Jesus.

That was fine. At least, I said, my Joseph is not a marshmallow.

My Nativity scene is complete. I am ready for Christmas.

All kinds of leaders

We have pro-life leaders and we have pro-choice leaders.

We have political leaders and we have spiritual leaders.

Some leaders are good leaders. Some leaders are not so good.

Some leaders use hate to lead. Some leaders use love.

Some leaders tell lies. Some leaders tell the truth.

Some leaders let the power of leadership go to their heads. Some leaders are able to resist that power and remain humble.

John Bartunek, in his book The Better Part, says this about leadership:

"The power and esteem that goes with leadership can be intoxicating. It can lead to a reversal of values: instead of using one's influence strictly for the good of others, you begin to care more about simply staying in power. Then the truth — and the true good — inevitably takes a backseat to expediency. And the worst aspect of all is that it's almost irreversible. The Pharisees had completely lost touch with what was right, because they were completely fixated on what was useful to themselves. Every leader, including the leaders of Christ's Church, must be on their guard "against the leaven of the Pharisees," because in the end the truth will come out.

Wise words, don't you think?

Is there a beam in your eye?

Open letter to Canadian Members of Parliament

Dear political leaders,

Next week you go will back to work. You will lead. But before you can lead, you must see. And before you can see, you must ask yourself the following question: Is there a beam in your eye? The beam of prejudice. Against the unborn.

May I suggest you set aside 25 minutes and listen to Father Frank Pavone's recent sermon on leadership? It's well worth the listen.

Fr. Pavone's sermon is based on Luke 6:39-42. Don't worry if you aren't a Christian, that's okay. Jesus is pretty easy to understand:

JESUS TOLD HIS DISCIPLES A PARABLE: Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,' when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother's eye.

Fr. Pavone starts his story by telling us about a particular leader, Saint Peter Claver, a Jesuit priest.

Fr. Claver ministered to the slaves as they arrived in the slave ships in Cartagena, Colombia during the slave trade. Fr. Pavone tells us that some people criticized Father Claver and what he was doing. They said to him:

"they are just slaves, why are you getting so worked up about slaves?"

Fr. Pavone answers the question:

"...leadership means you must take the beam out of your eye first before you can see. The blind can't lead the blind. See first, then lead. We have beams in our eyes. We have to take them out. One of those beams is the beam of racial hatred. Racial hatred is just one category of hatred in general...we judge entire groups of people...we put them lower than other groups of people. This is a persistent mistake in human history and in the human heart."

So why are people so blind to it--that beam in their eye called prejudice? Because:

"It's so powerful, it's so subtle, it's so persistent, we are blinded by it. We try to be politically correct: Some will pride themselves and say oh yea, we got to be against racism...I hate racism, we got to eradicate it... and meanwhile they think about the unborn children and they say--oh it's only a fetus..."

This is what Fr. Pavone thinks about these politically correct people:

"You hypocrite...can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? Equality! Social justice! Freedom for all! Legal abortion! You hypocrite. You blind guide. You fool. How and why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, and do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? Prejudice."

Are we hypocrites? Is Father Pavone right? Do we say we stand for equal rights for all--except the unborn? Are we leaders? How big is that beam in our eye? Can we lead with the beam intact?

I really hope you listen to it. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Patricia Maloney

Merry Christmas

May you experience the love of Jesus Christ in your heart and in your soul, today and tomorrow and until forever.

Christmas in a nutshell

Every human being is a unique expression of God' love

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa's Christmas message says in part:

"...sadly the sanctity of human life is not always recognized or protected in our world. Conditions exist that make it difficult for people to receive and treasure human life. Poverty, brokenness in relationships, mental and physical illness, even selfishness, all discourage, the joyful welcome-ness of the gift of human life. Our whole world can become jaded. We can forget that each human life is a miraculous gift from God. We can lose sight of the fact that from the first moment of conception, we are much more than the mere collection of cells. From the moment of his or her conception, every human being is a unique expression of God' love and ongoing creation in the world..."

I have decided that over the Christmas season I will not post any comments that do not promote life from the moment of conception and beyond.

A poached egg

C. S Lewis on Jesus Christ from his book Mere Christianity:
"...I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God'. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell, You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human being. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

"I chose to be blind"

This audio file from Father Benedict Groeschel is from the third section on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, from the Living in Christ series. This series looks at the commandments, at morality, and ethics and at what God demands of us. I have transcribed most of it below:

28. Our Call to Seek God 9430.mp3

"We live in a time that has forgotten the revelation of God. For centuries most of European civilization was based on the Bible. This was the foundation of that society.

About four hundred years ago, these foundations began to crumble. There was the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Some people like Machiavelli, etc., began to undermine purposefully in the name of humanism the religious and spiritual foundations of society. As time went on, a whole group of people called the rationalists began to throw out things they had accepted from the traditions of Europe. This is terribly important to know. Gradually by using their own mind, they began to reject scripture, the Old Testament, then the New Testament, then the Divinity of Christ, then the miracles of Christ, so Christ emerged to some very important people of democracy, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, etc.--Christ emerged as a moral philosopher. Now quite honestly if you read the New Testament, you can't see him as moral philosopher. He doesn't sound like Plato or Socrates. He works miracles. He heals the sick. Well they decided they didn't believe that the miracles had happened. He speaks about the last Judgement frequently in his parables. They decided there was no last Judgement. He promised eternal life. Well they didn't think there was any eternal life. None the less, they held on to an image of Christ.

About a hundred years ago a very very strange man, a man who ended his life in a psychiatric facility, a brilliant philosopher, told them all in Europe they were all being very very unrealistic. That if they had taken away the foundations of faith, if they had taken away the old testament, and the new testament, if they had taken away Moses and the prophets, John the Baptist and Paul, and most of all if they had taken away Jesus Christ, then Europe would change. Its civilization would be very different. This man's name--he was an enemy of religion, he was one of those enemies who told what it would be like without faith--was Friedrich Nietzsche. He was the favourite philosopher of among other people, Adolf Hitler. I don't blame Nietzsche for what Adolf Hitler did.

Nietzsche announced that God is dead. Ring the bells, light the candles, get the altar boys, we're going to have a funeral. God is dead and he warned European civilization that it had little or no idea what it would be like without God. They had given up God, but they held on to the moral system which belief in God had made possible. Monsignor Romano Guardini, a distinguished theologian in Germany, in his book, the End of the Modern World, published in the late 40's, was a great book, a brief book. He had worked on it during house arrest, during the Second World War. He said that Nietzsche alone had warned Europe, what it would be like when God was dead. When people would no longer be persons because they were not real to God, because there was no God, when people would be the chattel, the pawns of the state. When certain people would decide what was good for everybody else, and if anybody got in the way, they would kill them.

And Hitler and Stalin and Mao Tse-tung all did. They did this on the basis of a materialistic philosophy, a conviction that the human being is nothing more than chemicals, a creature like a white rat, or a pigeon and that they can be deprived of life simply at the will of the state if they are expendable. If they are not convenient. And all three of these men with their henchmen…like Khrushchev in Russia who had much blood on his hands, ran the Ukrainian holocaust of 1938 when 11 million people were starved to death, Mao Tse-Tung and his terrible purges, Hitler and his Holocaust, and all of his buddies--all of these people had a philosophy, they have a moral system. We're all going to make the perfect world, and if anybody gets in the way, or if anybody disagrees with us--we crush, we kill them. But that's not nice. Hitler used an expression, an ominous terrible expression, the final solution.

Nietzsche had warned people what a world without God, without commandments, would be like. And that's where we begin our discussion.

This network is on the air and is visible or hearable to you but it competes with a gigantic media which is absolutely anti-human. It wouldn't admit that. But it celebrates murder, death, it militantly teaches, abortion, euthanasia. It drags the most sacred parts of human existence through the mud in forms of cheap and revolting forms of entertainment. Sexuality, family life--it undercuts it all. Believe me--in most of the media of the United States, God is dead. The true God is not dead. But the image of God that the creature ought to have, that a human being ought to have, by reason of the fact that he is made in the image and likeness of God. By reason of the fact that every man, woman and child in the world is called to a destiny with God after this life, that is forgotten...

In the face of all this, religion in general, the Judeo Christian religion, founded on Sacred Scripture, the Christian denominations, and the Catholic church which is the largest of all of them, should be in awe to some degree, endeavouring to remind human beings that we are not badly behaved apes...Brother Felix said an animal cannot do wrong...but we can do much wrong. On the other side is something marvellous. There is the hope of everlasting life. This hope is in the human race. Some people will say that's some Christian thing. Cut it out. That's full of baloney. That it's only a Christian idea that the Christians invented life after death. The oldest ruins on the face of the Earth are tombs. They are 15 thousand years old. and you can see then in Burren in County Clare Ireland. They are made with prodigious expenditure of energy without any machinery, great stone lifted into primitive arches, to give a home for the dead. The largest and intact buildings on the face of the Earth are magnificent tributes to the human hope and expectation that this life is not the end. Those buildings of course are called the pyramids in Egypt. Incredible monuments soaring into the sky, the hope of human beings that they pass from this world to a better world where their real hopes and expectations will be fulfilled by the God who made them.

I've had people tell me that in the old testament there is no witness of eternal life. What do they mean when they say "and he was gathered to his father"--the Father of Abraham, Isaac and, Jacob they were dead. As Jesus said to the Sadducees "It's not the God of the dead it's the God of the living."

(Father Groeschel then goes through some examples of eternal life:Daniel Chapter 12, Maccabees 7, and John 14 1:4 "Let not your heart be troubled or be afraid")

If you're listening to this program and you don't know what's coming, if you don't know what life is all about, keep this in mind because everyone hopes that by obeying the commandments of God, they may have eternal life.

Unfortunately we live in a sad and sorrowful time when our public leaders, the leaders of the 20th century, politicians, they do not ask the question, what is right or wrong, but what is expedient. Or what will sell. Sometimes they refuse to see the most obvious fact in the world.

The commandment says: Thou shalt not kill. I am going to get around to all the commandments, of the natural law of revealed religions of the bible, the commandments of Christ. But just this one commandment, thou shalt not kill--have religious people killed? Of course they have. Have religious people betrayed God? Certainly.

The fact is, it is objectively wrong to kill. There may be an excuse to stop someone whose trying to kill you or an innocent person but otherwise the commandment is there: Thou shalt not kill. The commandment of justice. Unfortunately the leaders of nations in the 20th century, even the better ones, have been very expedient, about killing people. We like to think that our side, the allies, in the war didn't kill people unnecessarily but we most certainly did. Those commandments were broken. And what about those who did hideous things? What about Albert Speer, the devil's architect, Hitler's architect? He pleaded at Nuremberg when he was tried on the natural law of philosophy and theology. And he pleaded, "I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know we had slave labourers, I didn't know we were killing people arbitrarily." He got away with it. He got 20 years. When Speer was dying in a recent biography, Speer said, "I chose to be blind". What terrible terrifying words. I'm sorry to tell you this brothers and sisters, but as we begin to discuss in these 13 segments, the Law of God, I'm sorry to tell you, that religion in the United States is nothing to write home to St. Paul about.

I tell you this very sadly. But recently we had a hideous thing in public life. A partial birth abortion. A partial birth abortion! That's not abortion, that's murder. And I am horrified to tell you, that a professor at George Town University, and a member of an organization that vows to defend the teachings of the Church, a Jesuit, in the New York Times, supported the veto of the Legislation outlawing that horrible procedure.

Brothers and Sisters don't be part of the confusion of this time. Don't be part of it. In the new Catechism we have a wonderful teaching, a marvellous teaching on morality. The Catechism calls it a Catechisis. That's a religious teaching. The Holy Spirit who is the interior master of our lives according to Jesus, and the teaching about grace and how you and I can get the help, that despite our weakness, to do God's will and I can tell you in this series of people who have overcome incredible weakness. People in the 12 step program. The teaching on the Beatitudes. of blessed peace in this life. Of the Catechis of sin and forgiveness. Of virtue. Of human virtue and the great virtues that come from God alone: Faith Hope and Charity. The Catechisis of the Commandments. That prepares us to live the way Christ taught in Mathew 25. "I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me."

Don't let anybody tell you that that is not about judgement. That is Christ's description of the Last Judgement. St Augustine tells us, "If they came to you with open hands, hungry and naked and in need and you responded you gave to Christ. And if you didn't, you call upon yourself a judgement."

This series may not be what a lot of people would like to call the Good News. It's about the moral teaching of the natural law of Sacred Scripture, of Jesus Christ, and the teacher that he left to the world, when he said to the Apostles, "he who hears you, hears me". The teaching of the Church. It may not be pleasant for a lot of people to hear it. But it is absolutely necessary if we are going to make something beautiful out of our lives. Our lives are a transition to a fuller more perfect life. Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commandments."