Dear Friends,
The busyness of Christmas may be slowing down for you or perhaps, with the need to meet up with all the members of the family, it may still be going on this weekend and into January. People might think that it used to be more peaceful during the Christmas season years ago, but remember the Bing Crosby song from 1950, Silver Bells? It spoke of “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas… As the shoppers rush home with their treasures hear the snow crunch, see the kids bunch this is Santa’s big day and above all this bustle you hear…”
For parents, there may be no busier time of the year than Christmas. You have that challenging task of providing Christmas for the entire family: shopping, wrapping, cooking, baking, hosting, and decorating—the desire to create lovely traditions and memories. It can be exhausting to the point that you might dread the season and have your eyes set on the day when all the stuff is put away in the totes marked “Christmas.”
Today, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. In the middle of the Church’s season of Christmas, we celebrate the family and its special role in the life of Jesus and our own life. Hopefully, after the past week of busyness you can still look at your own family with love. If I can believe all the Facebook postings, then most of you had wonder-filled family gatherings. Perhaps your own family became a bit more holy in the gathering. For your reflection on this Holy Family feast, I’d like to offer you one of my favorite poems about that original Holy Family by Luci Shaw. It is entitled Mary’s Song:
Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest …
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.
Peace,
Fr. Damian