The CatholiCity Message

Volume VI, Number 25 – December 23, 2002

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

We wish you a happy and holy Christmas and a blessed New Year!

1. START 2003 WITH OUR LADY
Remember that our first CatholiCity 54 Day Rosary Novena of 2003 begins on 1 January, and ends on 23 February. It's an easy way to get started on an excellent resolution: to pray the Rosary more often. For more info on this novena, go here:

http://www.catholicity.com/support/praywithus.html

For a free Rosary tape or CD to help you along, go here:

https://secure.catholicity.com/order.html

2. A FINAL CHRISTMAS GIFT
The United States and Canada continue to suffer economic recession. As a Christmas gift to our fellow CatholiCity Citizens in need, let us pray together for the unemployed as well as for all the families who have a parent away from home during Christmas, especially for our soldiers. We wrote this prayer before last Christmas, except this year Escriva, Pio, and Juan Diego have all been canonized, but we think it still works just the same. Please join us...

"Dear Saint Joseph, you knew what it was like to lose your job, even to leave your homeland, for the sake of your family. Please intercede powerfully on behalf of all our friends and relatives and for anyone we know who is seeking employment, or is away from home this Christmas, especially for our soldiers. Ask your Son to give them a super- abundance of the graces they need to hang in there and to provide generously for their temporal needs. We trust in Providence, as you did. We love you, Saint Joseph, Patron of Canada and the Universal Church! We love you, Mary! We love you, Jesus! Saint Escriva, Saint Pio, and Saint Juan Diego, pray for us! Amen."

3. THE MAN IN THE STORY
We bet we're like many of you: Christmas is a hard time for us. We never seem to get the warm fuzzies that so many others experience. We're thankful that you get them if you do–we really are. So we'll just keep typing and see what we end up writing...

"O come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel."

That has always been the Christmas song that pierces our heart. We are not able to go into the details, but 2002 was the most difficult year of our life in many ways. We will always look back on it as the year we endured more suffering than any other. It was the year of the True Cross.

If any of you are suffering–physically, emotionally, mentally, in your relationships, from your own sins or the sins of others–in any way, then we're with you in the trenches.

Oh, how we pray for our words to penetrate your soul, to give you comfort if you are suffering. There are a thousand different ways to meditate on the Christmas story. We suppose the way we're looking at as we write this is not the usual way...

Tonight, we ask you to see Joseph. Jesus had the angels, Mary, and the shepherds, as well as the anonymity of being born "off the grid"--unknown in a filthy barn. But without Joseph, Jesus would have been murdered. Herod went on a satanic killing spree. Tiny little hearts were pierced by the sword, and mothers and fathers everywhere in Israel after that first Christmas began their new year with a funeral and endless months of emotional agony over their loss.

And Joseph had to take his family on the run to a foreign land. Instead of heading home, they rushed off, just the three of them, into the unknown. Sometimes we wonder about that journey...

All the pictures and programs show Joseph with Mary riding on a donkey with the child in her arms. Few details are ever given, and it's usually a pleasant scene, almost warm and tender, with the camera angle showing them from a gentle distance, walking under the stars.

Yet the reality must have been so harsh. We don't know for sure that they even had a donkey. We'll wager they were forced to walk–this after a long journey to Bethlehem for the Roman census.

Joseph was afraid.

Some of us are fathers. We know what it is like for women after giving birth, even weeks later. Joseph must have carried his baby most of the time as they trudged along, mile after mile. He gave Mary most of the food he scrounged to make sure she could give milk.

Joseph was hungry.

Travel was not easy and not safe back then. As they rested by the side of the trail at night every little sound in the darkness must have perked up Joseph's ears, alert for danger; he prayed for protection. Hoping, during his short, furtive naps, for another dream to guide him.

Joseph was tired.

The year that Jesus was born must have been the hardest year of Joseph's life. Trying to pick up work in Egypt, living in poverty, wondering when God would call them home. He wasn't perfect. He was flesh and blood. He didn't know what would come next.

Joseph didn't know the details of the future.

Yet, during quiet moments, he held Mary's hand, and she gripped tight in return, and her smile gave him strength in a hard, cold world. When his wife and son were asleep, Joseph would often stay awake, despite his fatigue, trying to figure out what to do next.

Joseph trusted in God.

Joseph raised himself up on an elbow, one hand on his beard, and in the light of a full moon, beheld the two lovely faces of Mary and the baby, asleep, and his heart practically burst at the beauty of it, just as our heart almost burst the other night when your author awoke, and raised himself up on his elbow, and gazed upon his own baby, a son, in the moonlight.

Joseph was silent.

Maybe, just maybe, during our most difficult times, when we're asleep, God shows Saint Joseph our faces, and we're beautiful, too. His heart swells. And, Joseph vows again to carry us during our darkest times, when we are strangers and sojourners in cold and forbidding lands.

Joseph is with us.

And we remain with you...

With Joseph,

Your Friends at CatholiCity