Dear friends,
In last year’s Christmas Message, sent to all the parish households, I quoted a great line from the Holy Father’s Christmas homily of 2007, in which he encouraged us to “welcome the Child in God and that Child Who is small for you will enlarge your heart beyond its wildest imaginings.” I also used the image of enlarging our hearts in my homily at the 9:30 and 11:00 masses last Sunday. Indeed, God becomes small for us because in a baby there is simplicity, there is gentleness, there is defenselessness. As a Babe, God does not overwhelm us. As a Babe, God takes away our fear of His greatrness and does what every baby does for us, invites us to give our love.
Physically, someone with an enlarged heart has cause to worry. Spiritually, it’s just the opposite. Someone with an enlarged heart is in great shape. In our parish community, there are many suffering from a spiritually enlarged heart. It is evidenced in each visit by a Pastoral Visitor to one of our homebound and in every “communion call” to the two nursing homes we serve every Sunday of the year and during the week, as well. It is evidenced with each casserole, prepared and delivered to the Father English Center in Paterson. It is evidenced with each item of food or clothing dropped off at the Passaic Street entrance for young mothers in Jersey City and every Prayer and Pampers distributed to the many homes where young women can nurture and deliver their babies, as an alternative to aborting them. It is evidenced in the 800-1000 gifts placed around the Giving Tree in these last weeks of Advent. It is evidenced in the gratitude, comfort, encouragement and hope that come streaming through the many acknowledgement letters that I receive from all of the groups and charities helped through our Sharing Our Gifts program. They may only be names to most when they are published in the bulletin but they are real people with real needs to whom YOU reach out with helping hands through Sharing Our Gifts. Since its inception, this program has now distributed close to a half a million dollars.
I am convinced that this is a community with a much enlarged heart and it is evidenced every minute of every day of the year. Sometime you can see the people with the enlarged hearts (and hear them, too), like the wonderful voices of our Adult, Children’s and Bell Choirs, raised in song and praise at our Sunday worship, and at last week’s Christmas Concert. And sometimes it is evidenced by only one, in the quiet giving of comfort and peace in a nursing home. And sometimes it is evidenced not by or in a material way, but in a spiritual way, as the many who come to pray for parishioners in distress or extreme physical danger, as happens all too often in our community. But in all these ways and circumstances, I am convinced that the heart of this parish is enlarged because of you – and the wonderful giving of yourselves, without return, except for the knowledge that God lives and loves in you. One of the reasons that led me to ask for another term as pastor was because of the wonder I feel when I see, feel and experience the true heart of this community. In these very difficult days, when we struggle with our own anxieties and worries about the future, one sure way to rekindle the real spirit of Christmas, of the God Who became small for us, in service to us, is to remember the ways in which we live for service to others. The frown in our heart and the sigh in our voice will melt away in the face of the smile we put on someone’s face with every good deed done for them.
“Every day is Christmas in the heart of Christians.” (John Paul II). Because Christmas gives us the courage and hope to believe we do not live life alone; because Christmas celebrates a newborn Child Who restores dignity to every life being born, brings hope to those overcome by doubt and discouragement and heals life’s wounds; because Christmas is the mystery of a God Who dwells, not high and remote, but near and within – Jesus, the Love that moves the sun and the stars, born in a human heart, then let every day be Christmas for you and through you for others.
In this season of grace, may the Light shine on you, in you and through you, and may there abound for you a multitude of joy and blessings,
Fr. Ron
