Taking Jesus' "little baby hand"
Feast of The Holy Family, and The Quack Zine.
Good morning!
And Blessed Feast of The Holy Family!
Today, Simeon tells us that Jesus will be “a sign contradicted”.
I've never been quite sure of what that means. But certainly, Jesus’ nature of self-abnegation and poverty are contradicted everywhere we look.
The coffee is done, and I'm about to head out to Lincoln Park to start the line, with cinnamon roles and bananas.
At Mass today, I asked that Jesus help me to see His face in everyone I meet, especially those whom I dislike.
I will certainly fail to remember my own prayer, and decline a thousand invitations from God to love Him in my neighbor.
We fail and fail to love perfectly. But we must recall those other words from today: “the Lord keeps His covenant forever”.
And our covenant —of flesh and blood given for the forgiveness of sins — reminds us that Jesus is with us in body, blood, soul, and divinity even today, more than two millenia after He entered history.
In our moments of frailty, we are warmly invited to begin again and again. Pope Francis stressed this in his Urbi et Orbi Address this Christmas:
For today, all of us, with all our shortcomings, embrace the sure promise of an unprecedented gift: the hope of being born for heaven. Yes, Jesus our brother has come to make his Father our Father; a small child, he reveals to us the tender love of God, and much more.
Rejoice, you who have abandoned all hope, for God offers you his outstretched hand; he does not point a finger at you, but offers you his little baby hand, in order to set you free from your fears, to relieve you of your burdens and to show you that, in his eyes, you are more valuable than anything else.
Anyways, I wish all who read this a fruitful and fortifying Sunday.
Also…big news! The Quack Zine, a fabulous new Queer Catholic resource for whom I am now an editor, needs submissions.
Please, please, if you identify as LGBTQ+, send something our way: poems, stories, reflection, visual art; even fragments or snippets of language, as we are thinking of tying lines from multiple writers into a collaborative poem. This issue’s theme is A Weary World Rejoices, however, submissions need not explicitly address the theme, nor relate directly to Catholicism/religion.
The deadline is Friday Jan. 12, and you may send all material via email to thequack_qatholic@gmail.com.
Also, once again, please consider fasting for Gaza on Thursdays, and if you’re not in Wichita, then keep an eye out for Palestinian liberation efforts near you.
With love,
J.