On Christmas night I walked down in the dark from my house to the barn to give my horses more hay.

God Bowls Me Over

Unfortunately the starlight wasn’t bright enough to light the route and my left foot stumbled into a big rut.

I went flying and landed on my hands and knees on the gravel. Feeling a real idiot, I lay still for a few seconds to adjust to the pain of the scrapes on my palms and knees.

Then I rolled over onto my back. As I stared at the diamond studded heavens, it struck me that if I hadn’t taken a tumble I wouldn’t have noticed the Christmas beauty up there.
 
That awesome majesty made me smile broadly in the darkness as I recognized the Big Dipper and Orion among the million other constellations God created.

Another Christmas Fall

My mother had fallen on her back in the house on Christmas Eve. She was visiting for the holidays and is in her eighties. Amazingly she not only got up and was able to go upstairs – albeit aided – to bed, but she came down that morning without hobbling or even mentioning the incident.

Giving Thanks For Feeling Like a Turkey!

So as I lay there, looking really silly in the driveway, I was thankful for her not having broken anything, and thankful for the opportunity to lay peacefully outside regarding God’s wonders above me.

Then I got up, dusted myself off and continued with my task of feeding the horses. For a few minutes I stood outside their stalls and listened to them snorting contentedly while they munched on their hay.

All was right with my world.

Today is the last day of the year, and I wish everyone a peaceful New Year in 2012. 

Most of us were hoping for yet another miracle in yesterday’s game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. It would have silenced a lot of his critics – if not forever – then at least for a very long time, and continued the religious fervor he is creating in his fan base.

How Many Miracles Do We Need?

But Jesus said "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"* God has shown us enough miracles already: we shouldn’t need any more.

There is a danger that non-believers or lukewarm Christians are becoming ardent followers of Christ purely on the basis of Tim Tebow’s wins in football. And that’s not what Christianity is about. Tebow’s loss yesterday is an important test of the faith of those who were drawn to Christ via his sport.

The Real Deal

Christianity is about taking up our cross and following Jesus. It is not about being a fair weather believer and worshipping Christ as long as his popular disciples are doing well.

Tim Tebow's fans need to recognize that he is as faithful to his Savior in defeat as he is in victory. And I believe this is why he needed to lose against the Patriots.

I hope his fans don’t desert him (and Christianity) when the going gets tough, like Christ’s disciples fleeing when he was arrested and dragged off to be crucified.


You may be interested in reading this article on Tim Tebow:
Tebow Critics Put Their Own Bigotry on Display by Linda Chavez

Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday and our priest exhorted us to rejoice. Was this a cruel joke?

But with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Father began his sermon by asking how many of us feel joy right now at this stage of our preparations for Christmas. We looked at him with care-worn faces and hoped he understood why ‘joy’ wasn’t in our current vocabulary!

He did. He gets the fact that preparing for Christmas is enormously stressful.

Let Us Pray

But he also reminded us of St. Paul’s words in the second reading: “always give thanks to God and pray unceasingly.” Praying brings us closer to God, and we have so much to be thankful for.

He added that St. James tells us to quit complaining: no one wants to be around someone who moans all the time. One day Father wrote down every complaint he made that day, either in thought or in word. He was horrified to realize just how long his tally was. He needed to work hard at not complaining.

He pointed out how prone we are to grumbling about the one thing that’s not going right, and how we lose focus on everything that’s going well for us. We need to thank God for all the good in our lives, and offer up our difficulties to Him as a sacrifice.

Cheerful Equals Evangelical

Everyone likes a cheerful person, and people notice when a Christian, with all the reason in the world to be down in the dumps, is genuinely joyful about life. They want to know the secret of this joy. 

The ‘secret’ is that Christian’s faith.

Christmas is definitely a tough time of year for most of us. But with all those not-so-subtle ways that Christianity is being attacked, starting with being expected to say “Happy Holidays” in case we offend a non-Christian, it’s becoming more and more important to make public the wonderful benefits of believing in Christ.

Not only should we be spreading the Good News by greeting everyone with “Merry Christmas!” but we should behave as if we are having a Merry Christmas by being joyful. How else will non-believers come to know Christ?

Being cheerful involves preparing for the Lord’s birth with a smile despite the daily aggravations this brings. ‘Taint easy, and we won’t always be unsuccessful. But the important thing is that we get up and keep trying.

The Sunday before Advent our parish priest told us he'd put out a free booklet for us to pick up after Mass called “Seven Daily Habits for Faithful Catholics.” You can find them online where the author, Father John McCloskey, calls them ‘Seven Daily Habits of Holy Apostolic People.’  

I grabbed one on my exit and eagerly looked through it as soon as I got home. Our parish priest had warned us not to attempt all seven of them at once, which Father McCloskey stresses too. 

Just knowing that I wasn’t expected to become super holy within the space of one day encouraged me to see if I could begin adopting the habits.

Here they are:

1.       The Morning Offering: “Offer the day ahead for God’s glory using your own words or a memorized prayer.”

Seems pretty easy, right?  But before you do this, you have to “conquer yourself each day from the very first moment, getting up on the dot, at a set time, without granting a single moment to laziness.” This is a tad trickier! (See my post on “Heriosm and the Alarm Clock” by clicking on the keywords "Acts of Heriosm" to the right of this page.)

2.       Fifteen Minutes of Silent Prayer: Father McCloskey calls this “face time” or “quality time” with Our Lord, during which we can develop the ability to listen to Jesus and understand what He “is asking of you and what He wants to give you.” Father likens our soul to an answering machine where “Jesus can leave you profound messages even if you do not hear Him directly during your prayer time.”

3.       Receiving Holy Communion: This involves going to daily Mass and receiving Holy Communion in a state of grace – “being free from serious sin and having gone to confession.” Father McCloskey calls this “the most intimate act possible for a human being.”

4.       Fifteen Minutes of Spiritual Reading: He suggests reading the New Testament systematically and following this with a “classic book on spirituality.” Father quotes Saint Josemaria: “spiritual reading…has made many saints.”

5.       Pray the Angelus: Pause in the middle of the day and take a few minutes to “address our Blessed Mother every day…while meditating on the Incarnation and Resurrection of Our Lord.”

6.       Pray the Holy Rosary: “By repeating words of love to Mary and offering up each Rosary for our intentions, we take a short cut to Jesus by passing through the heart of His mother.”

(If you’re like me and can never remember how many mysteries there are and what comprises each one, check How to Pray the Rosary.)

7.       Examine Your Conscience: Before going to bed each night, briefly examine your conscience and “review the one particular area you have identified…which must be improved in order to become a saint.”

 
As I wrote earlier, we’re not expected to acquire all seven habits overnight. Father McCloskey writes that “growing in these daily habits ….is a gradual work in progress….Haste will invite failure and God wants you to succeed at both your pace and His.”

So How Am I Doing?

Well, I’m definitely not rushing to incorporate all the habits at once! I decided to start with what, to me, is the most important one. I have no excuse for not going to daily Mass. I have a friend who goes to her own church every morning, but comes to my place of worship twice a week when hers has no morning Mass. So twice a week I have great company in the pew with me.

Attending daily Mass means that I have to get up early every morning at the same time to feed the horses, muck out their stables, and then get presentable - and smell nice! - for 8 o’clock Mass. Because I am rising so early, I am going to bed earlier.

Immediate, Positive Results

I began the habit on the first Monday of Advent and it is already revolutionizing my life. The positive results of this are fourfold.

One:  I’m missing out on unproductive and mind-numbing hours of television at night:

Two: I find it easy to get up earlier than necessary, and now sit down to write in the wee hours of the morning before I throw on my old clothes and take care of the horses:

Three: I’m in a good mood all day because I’ve prayed first thing in the morning, spent time in the Lord’s presence and received the Holy Eucharist. This is giving me more patience with others - impatience being my big personal issue:

Four: An additional byproduct of this habit is, to paraphrase Father McCloskey, I’m not losing time out of my day, but gaining time. I get more out of every day, because I’m awake during the hours when my brain operates at its best. Evenings are a no-go time for me mentally, so it makes sense to start my day sooner and finish it sooner.

Where Do I Go from Here?

I also begin the day with a prayer and examine my conscience at night. I will gradually add the other habits to my day and let you know how I do!