Florida newsletter of the Society of St. Pius X
1513
Catholic Faith and Culture in Florida
n. 15
christmas 2016
Christmas is the Feast of
the Incarnation of our Savior,
our Lord Jesus Christ,
true God and true man
“God so loved the
world, that he gave
up his only-begotten
Son, so that those who believe in Him
may not perish, but have eternal life.
When God sent his Son into the world,
it was not to reject the world, but so
that the world might find salvation
through Him. For the man who believes in him, there is no rejection” (Jn
3:16-18).
The holy Family, the Angels, the
shepherds and the Magi welcomed the Light coming into the
darkness of our world. “And now
the people that went about in darkness
has seen a great light; for men abiding
in a land where death overshadowed
them, light has dawned” (Isaias 9:2).
However, the people of Bethlehem had no room for the true
Light, as they were busy and satisfied with their habits, their visitors and the many tasks they
were willingly burdened with.
Today, during Christmastide, Advent and even long before Advent, people overburden themselves with a terribly noisy and
overwhelming materialistic spirit,
which is totally opposed to the
spirit of the liturgical season.
Christmas is the oasis of silence
and poverty of the most beautiful
night enlightened by the Divine
Visitation.
The cheerful and traditional
Catholic practice of offering gifts
is the acknowledgement of the
presence of our Lord in the soul
of our dear neighbor. In most
Catholic countries, on December
5, eve of the feast of Saint Nicholas, famous for his generosity
towards the poor, gifts used to
be bestowed to the children. On
the eve of the Epiphany, celebrating the visit of the Magi, the
same practice still occurs under
the same spirit in many places.
The custom of offering gifts at
Christmas has been propagated
by Martin Luther to replace the
custom of December 6, rejecting
the veneration of the saints. It is
under Protestant influence that
this custom has been widely
spread in modern times. In the
16th century, as the feast of saint
Nicholas was no longer kept under Henry VIII in England, appeared ‘Father Christmas’ and
‘his’ gifts, now seen as one and
the same as ‘Santa Claus’, following the Protestant custom to
shorten Christian names, as
Nicholas, to disconnect their relation with the saint.
2
It is interesting with time to notice how the Protestant world is
a world of desecration and absence of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He is absent from their temples,
absent from their selective Bible,
absent from their crosses and He
now disappears from their
Christmas.
Whenever gifts are offered under
liturgical feasts, Catholics must
always keep in mind
the very reason of
this custom, which
is to celebrate, in
Faith, Hope and
Charity the presence of God in the
neighbor.
Yet, ‘Santa Claus’
has no longer any
connection with
Saint Nicholas. It is
a tentative of incarnating materialism
and greed in the
hands of totalitarian
media and corporations.
Furthermore, this trick has negative effects on Catholic and natural education. Many parents do
not realize the devastating consequences of giving any room in
their family life to a big lie.
‘Santa Claus’ cannot be compared with any fairy tales or stories you tell to children. They
know the nature of tales speak-
ing to their imagination, and they
are just stories. However, these
may be very useful in education
to virtue and to face adversities,
like the fairy tales of Anderson.
‘Santa Claus’ is not such. The
attention, the words and actions
produced to constantly bring
him to existence are building an
enormous lie that children will
discover one day. They won’t be
angry with their lying parents, but
they will lose filial
confidence, tracking
the supposed many
other lies that they
were and are supposedly told.
The age of reason
may even induce
them to doubt or
challenge the Faith
that their parents
tried to teach them
with difficulty in a
g o dl e s s
‘S an t a
Claus’ world.
When the world celebrates this
figure, it underminingly denies
the very reason of Christmas.
Divine Light has come down
into our world of darkness and
death, but this world does not
want It. “The man who does not
believe is already rejected; he has not
found faith in the name of God’s onlybegotten Son. Rejection lies in this,
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that when the light came into the world
men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil.
Anyone who acts shamefully hates the
light, will not come into the light, for
fear that his doings will be found out.
Whereas the man whose life is true
comes to the light, so that his deeds may
be seen for what they are, deeds done in
God” (Jn 3:18-21 sq). Let us welcome the light and propagate the
light! Let us put away whatever
may obscure the great gift of
Christmas! “No man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place,
nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they that come in, may see
the light” (Lk 11:33).
Christmastide is now a battlefield
between two masters; one tries to
steal the Divine glory of the
Good Lord. As “no man can serve
two masters. For either he will hate the
one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt
6:24). You must live in the light
of the true Master and absolutely
avoid the darkness of the evil
one.
Mary chose her Master and “said,
Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it
be unto me according to thy
word” ( Lk 1:38). At Christmas,
because of her total Love, one
with the true Master, she gives us
the most precious gift, the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us announce and bring to our
world, to our neighbor with our
cheerful gifts, the greatest Gift
ever and evermore.
Merry Christmas!
4
His name shall be
called Emmanuel, Isaiah .
teach by example, to teach us
what we are meant to be, by being Himself what we are meant
be. This call of God to redemption, to repentance, to desire is
Emmanuel means God with us. made clear by what He has done.
There is so much contained in God has created us for Himself.
this simple word. It states a fact, To be among us is His desire,
the fact that this child whom we and that desire has been fulfilled.
adore is God. God, because He On our part, there is an element
is God, has become Incarnate in of awe, God is in a manger beorder to constantly remind us cause I have sinned and because
that He is in fact watching over He is going to make up for my
us, that He does in fact have a sins.
vested interest in our lives. He is We heard all through Advent this
not at such a distance as to be call, “Come”, and we are meant
unreachable. Though it is quite to make this our life, to be conimpossible to comprehend Him, stantly moving toward our Lord.
we can in reality know Him. He He wants us all to come to Him.
has manifested Himself through “Come to Me all you who labor and
His Word, the Word made flesh. are burdened”. “Suffer not the little
The Incarnation is a manifesta- children to come to Me”. Whether
tion of our God. It shows us we are little children, or whether
who He is. It is a call to follow we are burdened by our labors,
Him, to do the will of our Fa- Christmas is for us. God has
ther, this noble Father who is to come for us.
be revered and respected, and yet
Ask Him to appreciate His comserved with love.
ing, this appreciation is going to
We must be moved, invited, to be acquired not so much from
make a response to His love, to reading and writing, but from
His care, to His sacrifice. He has looking and reflecting. Look at
showered us with so many gifts, our Lord this Christmas and ask
not the least of which is His Him to convert you, to never
birth. He dwelt amongst us. Our cease calling you to a closer intiLord was truly a child in a crib, macy with Him, a closer union of
and He humbled Himself to this mind and heart with this God
level for our instruction. It is the who is man. Come, come to visit
great work of an educator to God among us.
Fr. Thomas Brooks
5
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407 872 1007 - [email protected]
6
Wonder
Today we are used to having everything and anything we want at a
whim. We have whatever we
may desire at our fingertips. Everything comes too easy. Everyone
gets instant gratification, even in
the intellectual realm. There is no
more wonder. We are completely
satisfied with the life we have
here on earth without any consideration of the things beyond.
“The world will never starve for want of
wonders, but only for want of wonder.”
G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909).
One definition of wonder is: to
desire or be curious to know
something. This desire is largely
lacking, if not lost all together. It
is a desire for greater things
(whether it is knowledge or an
achievement) or even just for
greatness. In general, we have
lost the sense of always striving
to be better than we are, i.e. virtue; to be always working toward
perfection. But in particular, we
no longer want to really know
things. Superficially we want to
know about certain things as they
come up in day-to-day life or we
may even Google something if it
is really out of our range; but we
soon forget these and move on to
the next topic without any real
thinking having taken place and
no real contemplation or pondering. It never penetrates our being.
7
We never
actually
gain new
knowledge
or discover Mr. James Durbin
something
of meaning. When we attain new
knowledge, we attain something
greater than ourselves. It makes
us better, seeing as before we
were ignorant of it and now we
know it. But it all starts with that
desire, with wonder.
Wonder is a way to God. It is a
type of contemplation. Take
someone who is looking at a
painting. They will sit in silence
and explore the different aspects
of the painting. They enjoy the
painting just by sitting there and
thinking about it, pondering it; its
perfection, its beauty, its style,
color, size, shape, brush strokes,
etc. They enjoy it for its own
sake. They are wondering about
it. This is what the child will do
concerning little things. First he
will discover that there are things
existing in the universe. He will
ask what things are. Then he
starts to wonder about things
and, eventually, he asks the question “why.” The child is so desirous to discover. He is wondering
about the “real-life painting” that
is creation and about the Artist
behind it. “Because children have
abounding vitality, because they are in
spirit fierce and free, therefore they
want things repeated and unchanged.
They always say, "Do it again"; and
the grown-up person does it again until
he is nearly dead. For grown-up people
are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong
enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning,
"Do it again" to the sun; and every
evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It
may not be automatic necessity that
makes all daisies alike; it may be that
God makes every daisy separately, but
has never got tired of making them. It
may be that He has the eternal appetite
of infancy.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
Wonder requires patience, perseverance, silence and, above all, a
desire; all of which are hard to
find in this world: patience, because the answers will not come
to us in an instant; perseverance,
because there is no guarantee
that we will find all the answers
concerning the thing we are contemplating; silence, because it
will require our full attention;
and desire, because, without this,
one would never imagine that
they could wonder at the very
existence of a painting. In our
busy commercial would, where
can people find the time to stop
and wonder? A second definition
of wonder is: to feel admiration
and amazement; to marvel. Who
of us takes the time to stop and
look at something very simple?
Who of us will see a beautiful
landscape or building or starry,
night sky and not take it for
granted but rather wonder about
it, to try to see God in it and beneath it? Is not creation God’s
painting, revealing something of
Himself to us if we would but
stop and enjoy it for what He
made it to be? Why do we not
wonder at the smallest blade of
grass or the tallest sky-scraper or
the very gift of existence? “Men
spoke much in my boyhood of restricted
or ruined men of genius: and it was
common to say that many a man was a
Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a
more solid and startling fact that any
man in the street is a Great MightNot-Have-Been.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
8
But this is our calling. This is the
call of God to humankind. Another definition of wonder is: a
feeling of surprise mingled with
admiration, caused by something
beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar,
or inexplicable. That is what God
is, wonderful, full of wonder. He
wants us to be forever in heaven
with Him, contemplating Him,
Seeing His beauty, seeing how
wonderful He is, to be filled with
Himself, to wonder at Him.
“Through Whom Angels praise Thy
Majesty, Dominations worship, Powers
stand in awe: Heaven and the hosts of
heaven with blessed seraphim unite,
exult, and celebrate; and we entreat
that Thou wouldst bid our voices also
to be heard with theirs, singing with
lowly praise: Holy, holy, holy, Lord
God of Hosts! Heaven and earth are
filled with Thy glory. Hosanna in the
highest! Blessed is He Who comes in
the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the
highest!” ~ Common Preface. The
Saints and Angels fall down in
admiration and wonder before
the Majesty of God. And that is
what
we
must do even
while
on
earth. Our
time here as
pilgrims
is
not disconnected from
the
time
hereafter.
Heaven
is
meant to be
a continuation of our
life as we
lead it on
earth. That is
to say, how
we lived our earthly life is how
we will live our next life. If we
loved God on earth, we will love
Him after we die. If we loved
something instead of God, i.e.
hated Him, we will hate Him in
eternity. If we do not try to see
God in the beauty of creation
around us, if we do not wonder
at the effects of God, how can
we prepare ourselves for God in
heaven when we will see Him,
not through a veil but, face to
face? If we do not wonder about
the obvious, will we wonder
about God, here or in heaven?
Where would the Church be today without the great saints who
wondered about Divine mysteries? Where would theology be
without a St. Thomas Aquinas or
the
early
Church fathers or the
desert
fathers? They
did not have
Google
to
tell them the
answers.
They were
curious
to
know. They
had a desire
to discover.
They
had
wonder!
They wanted
to attain a
knowledge
of the mystery that is God. If we
cannot do this for even the visible realities of everyday, if we
take the obvious for granted;
how will we be able to see God?
O the depth of the riches of the
wisdom and of the knowledge of
God! How incomprehensible are
his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! (Rom. 11:33)
9
The Exaltation
of the Holy cross
The Feast of tion “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the
the Exaltation Jews” remained attached to the
of the Holy True Cross. In one version of the
Cross,
cele- common tradition, all three
brated every crosses were taken to a woman
Fr. Louis Alessio year on Sept. who was near death; when she
14,
recalls touched the True Cross, she was
three historical events: the find- healed. In another, the body of a
ing of the True Cross by St. Hel- dead man was brought to the
ena, the mother of the emperor place where the three crosses
Constantine; the dedication of were found, and then laid upon
churches built by Constantine on each cross. The True Cross rethe site of the Holy Sepulcher stored the dead man back to life.
and Mount Calvary; and the res- In celebration of it’s discovery,
toration of the True Cross to Constantine ordered the conJerusalem by the emperor Hera- struction of churches at the site
clius II. But in a deeper sense, of the Holy Sepulcher and on Mt
this feast also celebrates the Holy Calvary. This feast began to be
Cross as the instrument of our celebrated on a later date after
salvation. This instrument of tor- these churches were consecrated
ture, designed to degrade the on Sept. 13 & 14, and spread
worst of criminals, became the from Jerusalem to other churchlife-giving tree that reversed the es, until, by the year 720, this
Original Sin of Adam when he particular feast became universal.
ate from the tree of the In the early seventh century, The
Knowledge of Good and Evil in Persians conquered Jerusalem,
the Garden of Eden.
and the Persian king Khosrau II
According to tradition, first men- captured the True Cross and
tioned by St. Cyril of Jerusalem took it back to Persia. In 629,
in 348, St. Helena, nearing the Emperor Heraclius, having iniend of her life, decided under tially taken it to Constantinople,
divine inspiration to travel to Je- decided to restore it to Jerusarusalem in 326 to excavate the lem. Tradition says that he carHoly Sepulcher and attempt to ried the Cross on his own back,
locate the True Cross.
but when he attempted to enter
Three crosses were found on the the church on Mt. Calvary, a suspot where it was hidden. Ac- pernatural force stopped him.
cording to tradition, the inscrip- Patriarch Zacharias advised him
10
to take off his royal robes and
crown and to dress in his penitential robe instead. As soon as
He heeded this advice, he was
able to carry the True Cross into
the church.
For some centuries a second
feast, the Invention of the Holy
Cross, was celebrated on May 3
in the Roman and Gallican
churches, following a tradition
that marked the date as the day
on which St. Helena originally
discovered it. But in Jerusalem,
however, the finding of the
Cross was officially celebrated
from the beginning on Sept. 14.
When we participate in the Mass,
the unbloody sacrifice offered on
the altar is the renewal of Christ’s
Sacrifice on the Cross with which
we intimately unite ourselves as
branches to vine, as members of
the Mystical Body to our Divine
Head. When we receive Holy
Communion, we do not simply
unite ourselves to our Lord; we
also nail ourselves to the Cross,
dying with Him that we might
rise with Him on the last day.
Christianity without the Cross is
useless and meaningless; only by
faithfully uniting ourselves to
Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross
can we enter into eternal life: “If
any man will follow me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross daily,
and follow me”[Luke 9:23].
Christ as our Redeemer pur-
chased the Church at the price of
His own blood; as the eternal
High Priest He offered Himself,
and continues to offer Himself as
a Victim for our sins. Is it not
evident, then, that His kingly dignity partakes in a special manner
of both these offices?
The foundation of this power
and dignity of Our Lord is rightly
indicated by St. Cyril. “Christ,” he
says, “has dominion over all creatures,
a dominion not seized by violence nor
usurped, but His by essence and by
nature.” His kingship is founded
upon the ineffable hypostatic
union. From this it follows not
only that He is to be adored by
angels and men, but that to Him
as man angels and men are subject and, therefore, must recognize His empire; by reason of the
hypostatic union Our Lord has
power over all creatures.
But a thought that must give us
even greater joy and consolation
is that Christ is our King by acquired, as well as by natural right,
for He is our Redeemer. Would
that they who forget what they
have cost their Savior might recall the words: “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of
a lamb unspotted and undefiled.”[1
Pet i, 18-19]. We are no longer
our own property, for Christ has
purchased us “with a great price” [1
Cor Vi, 20]; our very bodies are
the “members of Christ.”
11
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