The CatholiCity Message
Volume XX, Number 13 – December 22, 2016
Christmas Story Cousin
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
Holy Holy Christmas greetings! I've got Christmas music playing as I type. God bless every home and store and street where we hear it!
An odd sensation occurred while I was preparing to write today's message: I went back to the one I wrote just before Christmas last year and noticed two things. First, I did not remember anything I wrote. Second: it was really good. (And maybe Santa will put a smaller ego in my stocking this year!) It made me wonder if a similarly vaguely deja vu-ish thing might happen to you if I adapted last year's Christmas message for this year. So I did. Let me know your own reaction. Did you remember it from last year? Did you like it?
Your Last Chance to Save Our (Christmas) Bacon!
Unfortunately our annual Christmas Appeal to keep our doors open in 2017 is falling behind last year. The good news is we are almost halfway to our goal. Many of your fellow CatholiCity citizens have already contributed generously; we are truly grateful. Surely some of you have mailed in a gift that has yet to arrive.
Your participation, even if all you can afford to offer is prayer, matters more than any amount. We exist because devout Catholics like you care about souls. This has been my zero-gimmick theme for every appeal, every year. Am I right, longtime CatholiCity citizens?
Finally, I'm pretty sure we're behind because many of you missed my email announcement or sincerely meant to take part but it fell through the cracks during the bustle of the season. This is my final email reminder, so please join in and enjoy our lovely Fatima Anniversary magnet, art print, and/or medal as our Thank You gift). It takes just a few minutes to donate online:
Hey, That Guy, Yeah Him, John
I already announced that our big initiative in 2017 will be the release of a series of short, raw conversion autobiographies (I've been working on amazing one this week: a lifelong sex-and-drug-party-divorced-dude who converts in his 50s and then becomes the most unlikely Catholic priest ever!). These books will bring God's healing grace to countless people--inspired, I am convinced, by the Holy Spirit and St. John the Baptist. For over a year I have been praying to John and have become transfixed by how he is involved in the mysteries of the Rosary in addition to what we've been hearing about him all Advent. (John was a piece of work! I love how he sends his crew out to Jesus to ask if He was the Messiah--as if John had not been hanging out with his cousin since they were both in the womb. That's John: lots of personality and little tact. Jesus played it straight but must have been bemused, if not laughing, interiorly.)
Sunday's Gospel recounted how he leapt in the womb of St. Elizabeth toward Jesus in the womb of Mary. Consider the other Joyful Mysteries: just a few months before the Annunciation, St. Elizabeth, who was barren, experienced the miracle of conceiving John. Born just before Jesus, John also escaped Herod's bloody murder spree of newborn sons. Was his father Zachariah also given a warning dream—or did Joseph get word to him—and did he hide his bride and baby John deeper into the "hill country" where Mary had traveled for her famous visit?
Likewise, the presentation of Jesus at the Temple was surely followed by a party—and it is a safe bet that Joseph and Mary had recently attended John's presentation and after party, and vice-versa for Zachariah and Elizabeth for Jesus' presentation. The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple? Back then extended families typically traveled together. Crouching beside a wagon of the caravan, whispering, did Jesus consult with his best friend John before heading off to the temple? Did John cover for his cousin after Jesus slipped away, as young boys tend to do? "Dunno, Aunt Mary, he was, uh, just here."
John is obviously in the Luminous Mysteries at the Baptism in the Jordan, yet as a first cousin, John also likely attended the wedding at Cana and drank the wine that flowed from Jesus' first public miracle. Did John hear the Sermon on the Mount with his own ears, the third Luminous Mystery? Did that sermon gird John to speak out against Herod's illicit marriage, which ultimately led to his beheading? John had surely been murdered before the Transfiguration, but was he there as a silent heavenly witness, alongside his Uncle Joseph, in the light of the beatific vision?
So the next time you pray a Rosary (and if you're out of the habit, we'd love to send you our free Rosary CD), keep an eye out for John the Baptist, and also consider, during our apocalyptic era, that Jesus' first cousin will, once again, be a voice or inspire voices crying out in the wilderness. Repent!
Christmas Quotations
To us Christians, the first Christmas Day is the solstice or bottleneck of history. Things got worse till then, ever since we had lost paradise; things are getting better since then, till we reach paradise once more. History is shaped like an X.
– Ronald Knox
Lacking samite and sable
Lacking silver and gold
The prince Jesus in the poor stable
Slept and was three hours old
As doves by the fair water
Mary, not touched by sin
Sat by Him, the King's daughter
All glorious within
– May Probyn
With each Holy Communion you receive Christmas and Easter.
– G.K. MacBrien
Let us therefore be happy and celebrate the day on which Mary gave birth to the Savior—she, given in marriage, to the Creator of marriage; she a virgin, to the Prince of virgins; espoused to a husband, but a mother not by her husband; a virgin before marriage, a virgin in marriage—a virgin with child, a virgin nursing her child!
– Saint Augustine
Ho, ho, but no matter. Christmas was on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolved.
– Ralphie, As Adult Narrator, A Christmas Story (Movie)
Tens of Thousands Praying a Baby Jesus Prayer
Please join me, along with tens of thousands of your fellow CatholiCity Citizens, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
Dearest Jesus, Child of Mary,
Amen, we begin, our little King, amen. Amen to your humanity. Amen to your divinity. Amen to the profound humility of both. Amen to the smiles of Mary and Joseph, who held you. Amen to your body, blood, soul and divinity. Amen to your sweet, saving, graces. Amen to our becoming like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven because you became a child to enter our world. Amen to you, always and everywhere, and in all things and in everything and in everything beyond everything beyond our wildest dreams, in our hearts, forever. Amen.
Dear friends in Jesus and Mary, next year's first message will mark the twentieth-first (!!!!) anniversary of the CatholiCity Message, the "grandaddy" of all Catholic email newsletters. I typed that first one before 90% of people even had email. Sometimes I think the "cyber prayers" we've prayed together have done more good than anything else I've ever been inspired to write for you.
I pray with all my heart for you to have a happy and holy Christmas and a grace- filled 2017, every day at Mass and with every Rosary, as always.
Thank you for participating in our Christmas appeal and for being a part of our work and our lives in 2016.
With Saint Joseph, the Real Man in the Christmas Story,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder and Executive Director
