May the Blessed Virgin help you and me make this offering of love this Christmas.

Christmas 2012

Tonight is the great celebration of the beginning of the fulfillment of all our hopes and dreams. We have been speaking about hope these last four weeks of Advent and now here we are at Christmas the great feast of hope. Tonight (today) we celebrate, liturgically, the birthday of our Hope, of Hope Himself—Jesus Christ the Christ Child-God become Man, become one of us in order to be intimately and personally with each one of us.

Again and again the beauty of this Gospel touches our hearts: a beauty that is the splendour of truth. Again and again it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that my glory frightens you, and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face of my grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me and love me. (Pope Benedict Homily at Christmas Eve Mass).

In light of this great truth, this reality, even amidst the darkness of this world, there is so much to hope for, there is so much hope in our world. Jesus Christ was truly born 2,000 years ago; He is again truly reborn anew on our sacred altars at every Holy Mass. He is still truly God with us, as one of us, in our daily lives; and He is truly physically present in every tabernacle of the world where He continually waits for us to come and adore Him so He can fill us with His hope along with His peace and joy.
I find in my priestly life that Children are very open to the truths of our Beautiful Catholic Faith, many times more so than us adults. I find one of the truths to which they are most open is the truth that the Little Christ Child is still on earth truly and physically present in the Holy Eucharist. Because of their littleness and innocence children very quickly catch on to the idea that because of this truth of all truths, they quickly understand that we all must learn to kneel in faith before the Holy Eucharist in Adoration, with hearts full of Contrition, Thanksgiving and Petition.

In light of all the terrible current events we are facing in our world and our country this Christmas we truly want peace restored to our country and to our world. But Christmas reminds us that peace first begins in our own hearts and then in our families and from there it goes out into the world. The source of this Peace is the Christ Child in the Holy Eucharist present in all the tabernacles of the world and on every Altar where a validly ordained Catholic Priest offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the Holy Mass, which is Christ’s Mass, by Jesus own words said through the priest, “this is my Body…This is my Blood,” ordinary bread and wine are transformed by the miracle of Transubstantiation into the Christ Child Himself.

This Christ child beckons us to come and Adore Him in the Holy Eucharist in order that He can bless us with His Peace, for He is the Prince of Peace and He offers to each of us a peace that the world cannot give. In the Holy Eucharist Jesus, the Christ Child literally holds out, in his hand, His own Heart beating for love of each one of us. This is His gift to us. The only gift He wants from us is our loving heart in return.

The more we accept His loving heart in the Holy Eucharist through Faith, Hope and Love, the more we offer our heart in return, the more we will find peace in our heart and the more we will become peace makers in our families, parish families, communities and our world. This is what the Angel promise to the shepherds, not just peace to all men, but instead peace only to men of Good Will; that is, Men with whom God is well pleased. This is true peace, the peace of God, and it comes to those who are open to God’s love and who Love God in return, by following His Holy Will, and His commandments, especially His Commandment to Love one another as He has loved us.

The Heart of the Christ Child truly present in the Holy Eucharist is the Source of the Love we need in order to be enabled to love one another as God loves us; The Holy Eucharist is literally the God who IS LOVE and who becomes Man to give us the power of His Love! This Christmas, and at every Holy Mass, Jesus, the Christ Child offers us this Love, which is the gift of His whole heart and being, the gift of His entire Self.

We have prepared our gifts for others this Christmas, but have we prepared our gift to Jesus. He wants only one thing, and that is you—the gift of yourself wrapped in love and in the purity of a good Sacramental Confession. Love, true love that is, is really an exchange of persons, a gift of self to the other. Jesus offers you Himself this Christmas; I pray that the inn of your heart, that your lives be fully open to this gift by the offering of your heart in return. May the Blessed Virgin help you and me make this offering of love this Christmas.

My hope for all you and this parish family is that this Christmas would be a time in which we would all become as little children before the Christ Child newly born in the Manger and adore Him there as the True and Living God become true man. Let us make haste to love Him. "In our case, it is probably not very often that we make haste for the things of God. God does not feature among the things that require haste. The things of God can wait, we think and we say. And yet he is the most important thing, ultimately the one truly important thing" (Pope Benedict, Christmas Eve Homily).


On behalf of Father William and the entire parish staff, I would like to wish all of you and your families, a very blessed and merry Christmas.God bless you all and again Merry Christmas to you and your families and all the families of St. Patrick’s parish!