Tagged: Prayer Intention

“This life became visible.” –1 John 1:2 St. John proclaims the Incarnation in a spectacular fashion. The God Who is outside of time and space has entered into both in order to be with us, to become flesh and make His dwelling among us (Jn 1:14). Human beings could see, touch, hear, and even eat Jesus, the Word made flesh (1 Jn 1:1-2; Jn 6:50-58). St. John never got over the marvelous truth of the Incarnation, that the majestic God of Whom he wrote could be embraced, heard, and seen. John even leaned back against Jesus and felt Jesus’ Sacred...

“How beautiful…are the feet of Him Who brings glad tidings.” –Isaiah 52:7 In the days before modern global communications, messengers ran or walked to deliver their news transmissions. They brought news from loved ones in far-off places to people who could not travel. These messengers were most welcome couriers. Today, on this Christmas Day, we celebrate a pair of tiny, beautiful feet (Is 52:7) – those of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In times past God sent His messages “in fragmentary and varied ways…through the prophets” (Heb 1:1). “In this, the final age, He has spoken to us through...

“Zechariah his father, filled with the Holy Spirit, uttered this prophecy.” –Luke 1:67 Zechariah had been unable to speak for nine months. He repented, obeyed God, and “snapped out of it,” as He was “filled with the Holy Spirit.” The Church is full of people like Zechariah. These people have prayed for years and are good people, but in some ways they are spiritually deaf, mute, blind, or paralyzed. Although they may be very active in their churches and doing a lot of good, something is holding them back from a full life in the Holy Spirit. On this Christmas...

“We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” –Hebrews 10:10 At the Christmas liturgies, in hundreds of nations, billions of people will look at statues or pictures of the body of Baby Jesus. Moreover, hundreds of millions of people always carry with them crucifixes depicting the crucified body of Jesus. There is something awesome and mysterious about the body of Jesus. When the body of Jesus was just beginning to be formed shortly after Mary conceived Him, Mary took Jesus’ body “into the hill country to a town of Judah, where she...

“…even as He promised our fathers, promised Abraham and his descendants forever.” –Luke 1:55 Mary’s response to Elizabeth in the words of the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) shows her to be a woman completely grounded in God’s Word. Mary’s lifelong relationship with the Word of God reached its fulfillment when she became pregnant with Jesus, “the Word” (Jn 1:1). The mother of the Word Incarnate was so filled with the Word that Scripture flowed from her lips effortlessly. Nearly every line of her Magnificat echoes an Old Testament passage. Mary was undoubtedly familiar with Hannah’s canticle in today’s responsorial Psalm (1...