Reflections
for Sunday, December 27, 2009
This feast can always bring joy to us. In the first reading we have
Hannah, who really wanted a son and got one, offering this gift of God back
to God. Here it is the mother determining, at least in part, the life of
her son.
In the Gospel, we have the twelve-year-old Jesus more or less determining
the life of his parents when he takes off on his own to do His Father’s
work.
In the second reading, from the First Letter of John, we are all being
instructed how to live in this world with our eyes clearly on the Lord and
the world to come.
Perhaps today, then, we can reflect on our own personal lives, asking who
are the people who affected us in the past and who are those who now touch
our lives and influence us. We can also reflect on all those whose lives
we touch or influence in any way. These relationships-those we touch and
those who touch us-really form our personal family in a strong sense. Yes,
there are children involved and we have been touched and influenced as
children. As we grow older, it is more normal to begin to choose these
relationships and to choose how we affect others and how they affect us.
This is why the second reading is so very important on this Sunday. All
of these relationships must be put into the hands of the living God. As we
grow in our following of Christ, we want to become mature Christians who
seek the Lord and who choose for the Lord both in the ways we relate to
others and in the ways they relate to us.
On this Sunday so soon after Christmas this year, let us be aware of the
Holy Family and how their lives totally changed our entire world-not by
power and not by money, but by honest self-sacrificing love. It is this to
which we are called.
So often it looks as if the world has not changed at all since the coming
of our Lord. Yet if you and I change even slightly, the whole world has
changed. Let us seek to love others today and to allows to love us-and let
us recognize that this can transform the whole world.
May the Father send His Spirit into our hearts so that we may love as His
Son has loved us.
Readings of the day:
First Reading:
Second Reading:
Gospel:
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Reflections are available for the following Sundays:
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