The CatholiCity Message
Volume VIII, Number 8 – December 7, 2004
Dear Catholicity Citizen,
We love Christmas.
With two candles burning into Advent, and on the Eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we greet you with a smile, and arrive in your Email In-Box bearing deadline-sensitive items, a short reflection, a quote, a rare job opening in our organization, and one achingly cute joke. First, the deadline...
1. ON YOUR DOORSTEP BEFORE CHRISTMAS
There's still time to receive Mary Foundation CDs and tapes as well as Saint Jude Media novels before Christmas if you order online now.
We'll ship these powerful Catholic stocking stuffers within hours of receiving your order. On a tight budget? Why not give your friends and relatives a rip-roaring Catholic novel along with that scarf and electric shaver?
Or the world's most popular Rosary recording? The excitement of hearing Scott Hahn's conversion story? Or the cotton-each- spring best recording ever on the subject, "The Mass Explained"?
Many, many practicing Catholics have taken the first step to conversion after receiving our free books and recordings from CatholiCity Citizens as Christmas gifts. Someone in your life needs you to click on the links below now:
TO REQUEST MARY FOUNDATION CDs and TAPES:
https://secure.catholicity.com/order.html
TO REQUEST SAINT JUDE MEDIA NOVELS:
https://secure.catholicity.com/order.html
These gifts may just be the right thing to give yourself, too, if you haven't tried them (or tried all of them!).
2. AS A TOKEN OF OUR THANKS
This year's special gift for those of you who would like to make a year-end, tax-deductible Christmas Gift to CatholiCity is quite spectacular:
If you make a one-time gift of $40 or more, we'll send you a free copy of Christopher West's riveting ten CD Seminar, "A Crash Course in the Theology of the Body." It's just right for the person in your life with a daily commute.
TO MAKE YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFT ONLINE
(and take a peek at the CD Set):
https://secure.catholicity.com/donation.html
3. FULL-TIME HELP WANTED: OPERATIONS MANAGER
Our current operations manager is getting married next summer, so we've begun our search for her replacement.
It's full-time with a good salary and full medical benefits. This is a serious, professional career position. Responsibilities include making sure the hundreds of thousands of CDs, books and tapes we distribute every year are processed and shipped to our exacting standards.
It's a challenging, rewarding job for the right person.
To this end, we have posted the very specific qualifications required for consideration, so please, do not email us. Only mail-in resumes will be accepted. See the job qualifications and contact information here:
http://www.catholicjobs.com/viewjob/1001101661/
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
"We must also take care lest to our great injury it should happen that just as there was no room for Him in the inn at Bethlehem in which to be born, so likewise now, after He has been born in the flesh, He should find no room in our hearts in which to be born spiritually."
On The Duty of Spiritual Nativity
Catechism of the Council of Trent
CUTE CHRISTMAS JOKE
On the day after Christmas, Father O'Malley was looking at the cradle in front of Saint Patrick's Church when he noticed that the baby Jesus was missing from among the figures.
He turned and saw little Jimmy Flanagan with a red wagon, and in the wagon was the figure of the Baby Jesus. So Father said to the lad, "Well, where did you get Him, Jimmy?"
The little boy replied, "I got him from the church."
"And why did you take him?"
The boy replied, "Well, about a week before Christmas I prayed to Baby Jesus and I promised him if Santa gave me a red wagon for Christmas I would give him a ride around the block."
4. THE MARVEL OF CHRISTMAS
Witness the wreaths, trees, and, if it's your custom, homes donning colored lights–and more recently, enormous inflatable lawn characters. Even the secular balloon snowmen sashaying in the wind on Mr. Smith's front yard next door are a welcome respite from election lawn signs, are they not?
Then, always, we shop for Christmas gifts. Many of us endure the stress of pitting our limited family financial resources against our boundless desire to purchase the just-right present.
Additionally, there are always those cynics among us, doubtless conjuring a certain dull reason in their argument, who hold that Christmas has become "too commercial."
We shall not enter that debate, even as we note the uplifting experience of witnessing our entire culture (Red State and Blue State, if you will) transfixed with the extraordinary tradition of giving and receiving gifts. Words of love alone do not suffice on Christmas, even for the unbeliever. No, 'tis the season of words made into delightful material mysteries carefully wrapped in colorful boxes. Two millennia later, we joyfully fail to outgive *the* Gift from our Father in heaven.
What else do we Westerners have in common these days other than this lovely mandate to put our money where our mouths are? Yes, we put money into our mouths, and miraculously, on Christmas morn, our lips give birth to the sincerest adult Thank-You's we utter all year long.
It's also the day when some of the most world-weary Mass-avoiders are most open to experiencing Catholicism while we showcase our best singing, sanctuaries blinging, organs ringing, and mayhap imagine angels teeming.
Yes, we love Christmas here, and wish you and yours the happiest, holiest Christmas ever. Let's conclude with an Advent prayer, all 60,000+ of us–a prayer short, sweet, full of promise and hope during the dark days of December. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
"O Come O Come Emmanuel!"
Amen.
With Christ,
Your Friends at CatholiCity
