Too often our thoughts as we assemble at our Christmas Mass begin with what our eyes reveal to us – a baby in a manger. Let us remember that that baby, the Son of God, was sent to us by God for the purpose of helping us and rescuing us, perhaps mostly from ourselves.

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God our Father, grant us the grace,
in your mercy,
to become daily more at one with Christ, the Emmanuel,
evidencing to the world that God is indeed with us.

May our comings into your world be the advent of grace and joy;
may Christ be born anew in all our enterprises.
May the Word be spoken in our conversation,
and may we point the Way, illumine the Truth, live the Life.

Grant us the grace,
in our mercy,
to know that the noble call to be Christ to our age,
like all nobility, obliges.

May we live out our noble obligation to face life’s sorrows and humiliations,
like life’s joys and glories,
in and with and for the spirit of the Lord.

Grant us the grace,
in your mercy and in our mercy,
to know that “to live is Christ, to die is gain”;
to know that Bethlehem becomes Calvary,
but that Calvary becomes heaven!

Amen.

Written by Sister Maria Cordis Richey, RSM