The Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, Thursday, January 1, 2026

Luke 2, 16–21

The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

The Gospel writers wrote in a very taut style. They did not indulge in florid excesses or in rhetorical flourishes or pause to reflect on a scene in a such a way as to show off their own wisdom. They composed their Gospels not for money or out of the desire for praise but in order to convey a message. In doing so, they act as heralds in ancient times who proclaimed what had been given to them in the very words in which it had been given. St. Mark, for example, is so tight with his narrative, his breathless listing of the Lord’s miracles, that when he slips in a detail not necessary for his account — as when in 6, 36 he mentions that Jesus had the people whom he was feeding sit upon “the green grass” — it stands out in stark relief.

And so when St. Luke writes that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart”, we sit up and take notice. We ponder this detail because somehow it is key to understanding what the visit of the shepherds means. For us, it helps to consider the context of this tiny revelation. Luke has shown Mary in contrast to her relative Elizabeth: Mary speaks with the angel who comes to her while Elizabeth does not even see the angel who appeared to her husband. Mary consents while Elizabeth is passive. After conceiving, Mary goes out to aid her relative at the time when Elizabeth has withdrawn from the world. Mary proclaims the greatness of the Lord while it is the newly conceived John the Baptist who alerts Elizabeth to Mary’s new identity as the Mother of the Savior. We can also know from the Gospel that Mary is fertile while Elizabeth was barren. All taken together, we can see the model believer of the New Covenant in Mary, and the believer in the now superseded Old Covenant. 

And so when we read that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart”, she shows us how we ought to receive the news of her Son’s Birth and what it means for ourselves and the world. He is the Son of the Most High and yet he is born in a stable and must be laid in a trough. He is the King of the universe and yet the only people to recognize him and offer him obeisance are a pack of shepherds. This was not what she or her husband Joseph would have chosen, and yet this was what God did choose. Nor was this how the Jews expected their Messiah to come: “But the foolish things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the wise: and the weak things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the strong” (1 Corinthians 1, 27). And in this way God truly manifests his power and glory.

We celebrate today the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God and ask her, as we also begin a new year, to aid us in pondering the mysteries of our God coming among us so that with our faith strengthened we may adore him in heaven with her in perfect peace and joy.

Wednesday in the Octave of Christmas, December 31, 2025

John 1, 1–18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.  But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.  And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’” From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” St. John deliberately begins his Gospel with these words, modeled after the opening words of the Book of Genesis, which are usually translated from the Hebrew as “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.”   But the Hebrew is not easy to translate because of its form — it is not a simple prepositional phrase as it is found in Greek and Latin translations.  It can also mean “In the beginning — when God began to create the heavens and the earth”, or even as, “In the beginning as God was creating.” John’s choice to render it in Greek as, “In the beginning, etc.” shows the phrase not as a part of a narrative or as an explanation, but as a proclamation.  John, in fact, takes us back beyond the time of the creation into the eternity of God. He says, in effect, “Before God created the heavens and the earth, from all eternity, the Word was.” The Word is not part of creation. He is uncreated, and yet he is.

“And the Word was with God.” The Greek proposition reveals the orientation of the Word in regards to God: it is “with” and “towards” God. This means an intimacy with God as well as equality with him, and this from all eternity. “And the Word was God.” This tells us that the Divine stood before and faced the Divine. We learn from this that the Word is equal to God in power and majesty. But how can this be if we cling to the doctrine, revealed by God himself, that he is one and there is no other (Isaiah 45, 5)? The full truth comes only at the end of the Reading, when John identifies the Word as Jesus Christ.

John’s Gospel does not begin by naming Jesus. In stead, it begins by contemplating the eternal Word — his relation to God, to creation, and to humanity. only after the reader has been led through eternity, creation, revelation, and Incarnation does John finally speak the name “Jesus Christ”. This delay is not accidental. It is a literary and theological strategy. John ensures that when Jesus is named, he is already understood — not merely as a historical teacher but as the eternal Word made flesh. This Jesus — the only one who can answer the question regarding the oneness of God — declares, “The Father and I are one” (John 10, 30). That is, the one God is not solitary, he is a communion of divine Persons. The union of Father and Son is so perfect that they are one God (in the unity of the Holy Spirit, as he would later teach).

He makes his identity and the nature of God known through his Incarnation by which he could live among us: “The Word became flesh.” To look into his, then, was to look into the eyes of Almighty God through whom “all things came to be.” To hear him speak was to hear the voice of him without whom “nothing came to be.” And yet there were some — even his own people (whether this is understood of his relatives, his townsfolk, his fellow Jews, or the human race) who rejected him. This rejection reflects not ignorance, since he spoke with them face to face and showed the works of the Father, but through malice. But for those who accepted him, “he gave power to become children of God” and so heirs to eternal life.

This is the destiny open to us if we fully accept him in our lives and follow the commandments that make us resemble him in his Sonship.

Tuesday within the Octave of Christmas, December 30, 2025

Luke 2, 36-40

There was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.  When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

After the conquest of the Promised Land by Joshua, the Tribe of Asher was allotted territory in the northwest part of the country. For a few hundred years it existed peacefully, separated from the rest of Israel by a mountain range and established near the prosperous kingdom of Phoenicia, with which it traded. In the year 722 B.C. the Kingdom of Assyria defeated the northern Kingdom of Israel in a series of battles. Some Asherites fled to the southern Kingdom of Judah, but most were resettled to other lands by the Assyrians, and there they disappear from history.  It is striking that St. Luke introduces Anna as “of the Tribe of Asher”. That Anna knew her heritage speaks volumes about tribal memory, even centuries after that tribe assimilated with their neighbors centuries before. It must have been so, for there is no reason for the Evangelist to invent such a detail which would have stuck out as a glaring anachronism to Jew and Gentiles alike, destroying Luke’s claim to be a careful recorder of history. Luke, in mentioning this, may also have had a theological intent as well: he had just spoken of the aged Simeon who proclaimed that the Infant Jesus would be “a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” This message of revelation to both the Jews and the Gentiles is confirmed and reinforced by the elderly Anna, descendent of a people who lived adjacent to and and in peace with the Gentiles whose land bordered theirs.

“She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.” Her perseverance in fasting and prayer living in the Temple courtyard shows us the reason why she was able to recognize Jesus as the Savior. It is a sign to all believers ever since of the need to make God the center of their lives so that they will recognize his will for them and that they will see his grace in their lives. Her actions also reflect those of the blessed in heaven: she lived in the Temple of God while they dwell in the Temple in heaven of which served as a model for the one on earth; they feast now while she had fasted; and they pray in praise and thanksgiving while she had prayed in longing and expectation.

“When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” We see how humbly the Mother of God and her helpmate St. Joseph performed their duties according to the Law, a Law Jesus would fulfill and perfect in the future. Luke does not tell about the flight into Egypt, as St. Matthew does. Luke has the Holy Family returning to Nazareth directly after the visit to the Temple, but they must have returned to the house in which they were in Bethlehem, and it was some short time afterwards that the Angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to warn him to flee. It is not until some years later that they return to Nazareth. The Fathers speculate that either Luke had not heard of the flight into Egypt from the sources whom he consulted, or omitted it just as he could not write everything that he had learned about the life of Jesus. To this we recall with St. John, that “there are also many other things which Jesus did which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written” (John 21, 25).

Monday within the Octave of Christmas, December 29, 2025

Luke 2, 22-35

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, the parents of Jesus took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord”, and to offer the sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.  Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Lord, now let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled: my own eyes have seen the salvation which you prepared in the sight of every people, a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”  The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

St. Luke makes it quite clear in his prologue that he is writing his Gospel for the Gentile Christians.  We would expect, then, that he would emphasize those parts of the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus that would interest and appeal to this audience.  And he does so, recording some of the longer parables that Jesus told, such as that of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan — for the Greeks loved fables, puzzles, and stories that contained wisdom.  He does this in other ways, too, as in showing the Lord to be a heroic figure — one who fulfills his duty though suffering greatly.  

But St. Luke also carefully showed Jesus and those associated with him as law-abiding Jews, even going beyond the prescripts of the Jewish Law in order to serve God.  Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth “were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1, 6).  The Virgin Mary is “full of grace” (Luke 1, 28).  John the Baptist is put in prison by Herod for holding him accountable to the Law.  Jesus himself calls on the tax collectors and prostitutes to repent, and eats with them in order to spend time with them and to urge them to live righteously, though the Jewish authorities despise him for this.  The list of examples could be extended for pages.

Here, in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, Luke tells us, “The parents of Jesus took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord.”  Certainly this fact could offer little of interest to his Greek readers, and much less the quotations Luke takes from the Jewish Torah.  Yet Luke does this in order to answer a big question that First Century Gentiles asked when the Gospel was preached to them: Why should we Greeks believe in the teachings of someone who was rejected even by his own people?  Luke responds to this question by showing that it was not Christ who was a renegade from his religion, for he followed it perfectly: it was the leaders of the religion who were the renegades.  Besides this being historically true, it would also have appealed to the Greeks, who had a high regard for irony.  

Also on display here is Luke’s appreciation for the interest the Greeks had in oracles and prophetic sayings.  Since before David was king in Israel, thousands of ancient Greeks had made the pilgrimage to Delphi to hear the priestess there mutter oracles supposedly inspired by Apollo.  Kings even went there to find out whether to go to war or not.  Luke tells his audience of the appearances of the Angel Gabriel and the clear messages he has for Zechariah and Mary — in sharp contrast to the ambiguous messages of the pagan prophets.  In today’s Gospel, Simeon and Anna, two holy people, prophesy about the newborn Jesus.  Luke tells us that they were inspired, but by the Holy Spirit.

We learn from considerations of this kind that we should also adapt the way we talk about the Lord or the Faith according to the background of the folks with whom we talk, while speaking the truth accurately.  We should not give people more than they can handle, or use unfamiliar words or expressions with them that we do not explain.  We begin with what is easiest to learn first, then, when folks are ready, some deeper matters.  Most of all. We must love our God.  The more we love him, the more our love for him will show itself in natural ways of which we will be unaware but which our hearers will notice.  Luke wrote his Gospel very carefully for his audience, but what captured their hearts for Jesus was the passionate love Luke had for him and the joy that filled him because of him.

The Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday, December 28, 2025

Colossians 3, 12–21

Brothers and sisters: Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do no

The excerpt from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians used in today’s Mass is similar to the Apostle’s instructions in Ephesians 5, 21-33.  He is presenting the Church’s teaching on the relations between members of a Christian family.  We should not underestimate the necessity for him doing this because these Gentile Christians did not have Jewish tradition and culture to draw on.  That is, they did not have even the foundation for understanding how members of a Christian family should understand and act towards each other — in short, how to live as the Holy Family lived.  

He prefaces his teaching with general admonitions to the Colossians on how to live in society, particularly within their own community of believers: “Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”  We should notice that he first of all reminds them that they are “God’s chosen ones”, his “elect”, chosen before the world began.  They belong to him and now should act as he directs them.  They therefore should act with one another as he has acted with them, with compassion and patience.  “And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.”  For Paul, love was the love of Christ Crucified for us which we share with one another.  It is not a mere affection or feeling but “a bond” that makes us members of one another in the Body of Jesus Christ.  Another translation of the Greek word for “bond” is “chain”, and for believers in the Lord Jesus, our chain is not one that restricts but that liberates.

“Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them.”  The Greek word translated here as “subordinate” means something more like “make yourself subject to”, which is not quite the same thing.  To be “subordinate” has the sense of making oneself less than another in all things.  To “make oneself subject to” has the sense of a person placing him or herself at the service of another while remaining and being treated as an equal.  We see this is what follows the instruction to wives: “Husbands, love your wives.”  In understanding what Paul is saying we must refer back to how he understands “love”, a supernatural gift from God.  We can also look to a similar verse in Ephesians 5, 21: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ”, and Ephesians 5, 25: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” — keeping in mind that out of his love for the Church, his Bride, Christ died for her.

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged.”  The place of a child in the Gentile world was a matter of great uncertainty.  For example, unwanted children were left in the woods by their parents to be devoured by the beasts.  Under Roman Law, a father could kill his child up to the age of twelve and not be charged with murder.  For a certain period in Rome, if a parent was sentences to death, his wife and children were killed with him.  For the Christian, a child is a welcome sign of God’s love.  Paul teaches children to obey their parents not out of servile fear but in order to make Jesus happy, Jesus, who obeyed his parents.  Parents are also counseled not to “provoke” their children, that is, to spew their rage at them or blame them for what they have not done.  Paul repeats this counsel and adds to it in Ephesians 6, 4: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”  Teach your children who come to you from God, to serve him.

As never before in history, society is attacking and attempting to redefine the family.  That is, society is engaged in destroying that out of which it consists, for it is based on the family — and always has been — not on the individual, as it is claimed today.  It is self-destructive behavior which will lead to final disaster there is no conversion.  Let us give good example through our families of the beauty and love that are possible for anyone to have, and which will lead them to the model of all families, that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

The Feast of St. John the Apostle, Saturday, December 27, 2025

John 20, 1–8

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.

The “other disciple” is understood to be John the Apostle and the writer of this Gospel.  John and Peter were known to belong to the innermost group of the Apostles, witnessing events in the life of Jesus to which the other Apostles were not privy.  Later, we seem them acting together in the Acts of the Apostles in the healing of a crippled beggar.  John takes part in the action of the Gospel but he writes of himself as “the other disciple” or “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, not using his name out of a sense of modesty.

John was a young man at the time he began to attend the preaching of St. John the Baptist, perhaps no more than fifteen or sixteen, the son of Zebedee and the younger brother of James.  His age can be estimated because he was not married when the Lord called him to be an Apostle, and we can say this because he was working with his father as a fisherman.  If he had been married, he would have had his own boat  so as better to support his family.  This also accords with tradition, which counts him as the youngest of the Apostles.  The Lord recognized his zeal and perhaps also a certain excitability, calling him and his brother James “the sons of thunder”.  St. Mark gives us reason for this by describing their desire to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan town which forbade them entrance of their way to Jerusalem.  Perhaps this mixture of zeal, excitability, and innocence is what drew the Lord especially to him in friendship.  The love between the two men shows most in John’s presence beneath the Cross, and in the Lord’s entrusting his Mother to his care.

Following Pentecost, John remained for some years in Jerusalem.  His acquaintance with the city shows itself in the precise details he gives of it in his Gospel, details which in some cases were proven to be accurate through archaeological discoveries.  A Galilean would only know about these things if he had spent much time in Jerusalem.  In fact, his familiarity with the city and its people as well as the focus he put on the Lord’s preaching in the city in his Gospel make it plain that the Gospel was written for Judean Christians.  Although tradition tells us that John wrote his Gospel late in his life — as late as twenty years after the city fell to the Romans — it would seem that he wrote it before that time.  When he writes of the deeds Jesus performs in the city, he tells us just where he performed them or where he preached, as though to guide people to these places, which would have made no sense of these places no longer existed.  And if he had written either long after the city was destroyed or for Gentile Christians, there would have been no need for him to speak so specifically about places and times.

After writing his Gospel, he moved on to Asia Minor to spread the Gospel.  He is associated with the city of Ephesus, seemingly years after Paul had spent time there.  It was there that he wrote his three Letters.  It was on the island of Patmos, off the coast or .Asia Minor, that he experienced the visions which he set down in the book we call that of Revelation, or as the Apocalypse.  In the book he speaks of being exiled there for his preaching the word of God.  He is said to be the last of the Apostles to die, and if he were fifteen or sixteen in 30 A.D., he could have lived into the 90’s as tradition also hands down to us.  He is supposed to be the only one of the Apostles to have died naturally.

We give thanks to God for the writings and the holy example of this man and pray that we may know Christ crucified so as to know him in the glory of his Resurrection, as John did.

The Feast of St. Stephen, Friday, December 26, 2025

Matthew 10, 17-22

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

Even as the churches still echo with hymns to the Baby in the manger, the Feast of St. Stephen rushes upon us.  Though the reason for the date of Stephen’s Feast has to do with the procession of his relics from Palestine to Constantinople in the 5th century, we learn that faith in the One born in Bethlehem carries a price.  

For perhaps ten years after the Resurrection of the Lord, the Jewish Christians and the Jews co-existed in an uneasy peace.  The Christians insisted that they were the true Jews who believed that the Law had been fulfilled by Jesus Christ, and so they continued to meet in synagogues and to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem.  It was not long however before the increase in the number of the Christians and in their confidence led to theological clashes with the Jewish leaders.  This resulted in the stoning of St. Stephen, the most outspoken among the Christian leaders, and following this, persecution of the members of the Church throughout Judea and Galilee.  The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading provide us with a glimpse of what that first persecution looked like: “They will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues . . . Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name.”  The Lord did not hide the future from anyone who cared to listen.  He told his disciples on more than one occasion that believing in him would likely cost them their lives.  It is revealing to us of the hold he had on the people of the time that they continued to believe and to follow him and, indeed to die for him.  It is in prayer that we can experience his hold on us today.

The Lord tells us that persecution and loss comes upon believers as a matter of course.  We must expect it and fortify ourselves for it by prayer, fasting, and alms-giving. We do this for him.  As long as he is before our eyes, we will be safe, no matter what happens.  We may be “hated by all” because of his name, but if we “endure to the end”, we will be saved.