The Merriest Merry Christmas

 

Tired, I went to bed early last night, so I guess it’s not surprising I woke early.  After my morning rituals I was looking for something to do, and went over to one of my bookcases, intending to re-read some book I liked.  In the corner of the bookcase, I picked up a little booklet I hadn’t looked at for many years.  It was titled Our Lady Teaches About Prayer at Medjugorje.  I guess I bought it around 1987 when I went on a pilgrimage to that site of Marian apparitions in Yugoslavia.  The booklet had a number of dog-eared pages, which I read.  The last included these supposed words of Mary to the children she appeared to:

“One day Our Lady, in asking the seers to prepare for Christmas, said: ‘I tell you: turn off  your television sets, your radios and follow the program set by God of meditation, prayer and reading the Gospels; foster the development of faith’ (1984).  She promised such a preparation would bring them the merriest merry Christmas.”

I suppose if Mary were appearing today to those kids, she’d include turning off their phones.  The first reason I write these words is because of the number of Medjugorje references which have recently crossed my path.  I rarely think about that journey I took with my sister, even though it was a turning point in my faith life.  And I also want to note and remember the message I perceived in those above quoted words.  The culture seems to be trying to minimize things of the Christian faith, yet it hasn’t made inroads into eliminating the celebration of Christmas (yet), but it does seek to provide distractions from the true meaning of Christmas, and/or imply that saying that word may offend someone, somewhere, so it must be eliminated.  That’s like saying someone doesn’t like flying in airplanes, so they all should be grounded.  Silly.  The quoted words point to a way to eliminate distractions from the real meaning of Christmas:  turn them off.  Meditate, pray, read the Gospels, or read about the lives of saints.  Learn what God did at Christmas, and why, and how it impacted the world, and should impact us.  And in celebrating Christmas that way, we will have the merriest merry Christmas. 

I can and will do that, but it would be a wonderful idea for families, even if for only a day.  Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas; so, we should prepare for the merriest Christmas.  And that would start with knowing what Christmas is.  It is not a fairy tale.

 

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I’ve mentioned the Surrender Novena as a prayer which helps us get past our anxieties.  The Day 5 prayer seems to also apply preparing for the future events, like a Christmas celebration:

Jesus to the soul: And when I must lead you on a path different from the one you see, I will prepare you.  I will carry you in My arms; I will let you find yourself, like children who have fallen asleep in their mother’s arms, on the other bank of the river.  What troubles you and hurts you are your reason, your thoughts and worry, and your desire at all costs to deal with what afflicts you.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You.  Take care of everything!

We can look at any of the things causing anxiety in our world, and we want to reason our way through them.  We “desire at all costs to deal with what afflicts (us)”. But, if we spend more time in prayer and meditation and ask Jesus to “Take care of everything”, our thoughts of all the things which make us anxious will diminish or disappear.  And we’ll have merry times even beyond Christmas.