Thursday, December 27, 2012

That says it all

Today is the feast day of St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist.  You might wonder why his special day comes just two days after Christmas;  you might think the Church should have waited until after the Christmas season so we could concentrate on the Infant Jesus in the manger. 

But it was Saint John who tells us that Jesus is the Father’s Word and the Word became flesh and dwells among us! (Jn 1:14)  Why did Jesus come as a tiny baby?  Because He wanted to show us how much God loves us.  And it was St. John who wrote that “God is love”. 
In the book of meditations Divine Intimacy, Volume I * we read today that “When creating us, God loved us so much that he made us to his own image and likeness; when redeeming us, he loved us  so much that he made himself to our image. The Son of God, ‘born of the Virgin Mary…has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.’” (From the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes]. 
The writer of Divine Intimacy continues: “Christmas is preeminently the feast of love – the love that is revealed, not in the sufferings of the cross, but in the lovableness of a little child, our God, stretching out his arms to make us understand that he loves us…  To run in the path of God’s commandments, we must be thoroughly convinced of God’s infinite love for us; and precisely in order to reach this conviction, we must immerse ourselves in contemplation of the mystery of the Nativity.” 
When St. John was an old man and was helped into the Church by two of his disciples, he would stand and say:  “My beloved children, love one another.” Then he would sit down.  His disciples got a little tired of this and asked him why he kept sharing this same thought.  St. John answered that there was nothing more to say. 
Do you struggle with the truth that God loves you?  Make your way to the manger and gaze on the tiny face before you.  St. John tells us in his first letter that he saw Jesus with his own eyes, that he touched him, heard him speak. He knew indeed that the Word had become flesh.   http://catholic.org/clife/advent/story.php?id=49081  Ask St. John today to help you experience the love of Jesus.  His love is real.   There is nothing more to say!
[* published by Ignatius Press]

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