We will be expecting the 16th grandbaby of my parents tomorrow (hopefully!) sometime so pray for my sister and niece/nephew to come through the delivery safely! I hope for her sake it is relatively pain-free (hey, a girl can dream!) and without complications. Please, please, praypraypray! Also, if you have time, her 4 year old Gabby is sick with the croupy cough thingy and pray that they will all be healthy for the new baby to come home?
Here is an amazingly beautiful excerpt from the Holy Father's Christmas homily that I find appropriate for our week. He almost sounds as if he's had a baby himself or as if he COULD! What I mean to say is that it is easy to see his profound love for Christ in the words he chooses. It sounds so tender and sweet...check it out!:
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. The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God’s new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: "God made his Word short, he abbreviated it" (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28). The Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos; the eternal Word became small – small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this night that the brightness of God’s love may enfold all these children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind needs so much more than the material necessities of life.
Guardian Angels,
Pray for us.
St. Gerard,
Pray for us.
Mary, Queen of Heaven,
Pray for us.
All you bloggers out there (especially you saintly mothers!)
Pray for HER!
Thank you!
