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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, December 23, 1976
“News Of Great Joy”
Now it came to pass in those days,
that a decree went forth from Caesar
Augustus that a census of the whole
world should be taken. The first census
took place while Cyrinus was governor
of Syria. And all were going each to his
own town, to register.
And Joseph also went from Galilee
out of the town of Nazareth into Judea
to the town of David, which is called
Bethlehem -- because he was of the
house and family of David -- to register,
together With Mary his espoused wife,
who was with child. And it came to pass
while they were there, that the days for
her to be delivered were fulfilled. And
she brought forth her first born son, and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and
laid him in a manger, because there was
no room for them in the inn.
And there were shepherds in the same
district living in the fields and keeping
watch over their flock by night. And
behold, an angel of the Lord stood by
them and the glory of God shone round
about them and they feared exceedingly.
And the angel said to them “Do not
be afraid, for behold, I bring you great
news of great joy which shall be to all
the people: for today in the town of
David a Savior has been bom to you,
who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be
a sign to you: you will find an infant
wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying
in a manger.” And suddenly there was
with the angel a multitude of the
heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace among men of good will.”
And it came to pass, when the angels
had departed from them into heaven,
that the shepherds were saying to one
another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem
and see this thing that has come to pass,
which the Lord has made known to us.”
So they went with haste, and they
found Mary and Joseph, and the babe
lying in the manger. And when they had
seen, they understood what had been
told them concerning this child. And all,
who heard marvelled at the things told
them by the shepherds. But Mary kept in
mind all these things, pondering them in
her heart. And the shepherds returned,
glorifying and praising God for all that
they had heard and seen, even as it was
spoken to them.
Gospel According to St. Luke
Chapter 2 (vs 1-20)
Christmas Programs
NEW YORK (NC) - The U.S. Catholic
Conference (USCC), in cooperation with
the three major television networks, will
present Christmas specials, including a
satellite transmission of Pope Paul Vi’s
midnight Mass Dec. 24 from St. Peter’s
Basilica.
The papal Mass will be broadcast on
NBC’s “Christmas-1976” religious
special from midnight EST until its
conclusion. Franciscan Father Agnellus
Andrew, former director of religious
programming for the British
Broadcasting Corporation and president
of UNDA-International, the worldwide
The Southern Cross
Wishes All Its Readers
A Happy
And
Holy Christmas
association of Catholic broadcasters will
provide commentary.
CBS-TV will visit the Graymoor Friars
Dec. 24 from 11:30 to midnight in
“Christmas at Graymoor.” The program
will focus on the homeless men cared for
in St. Christopher’s Inn, and on the
residents of New Hope Manor, a
rehabilitation center for girls, both on
the Graymoor Friars’ grounds in
Garrison, N.Y. The program will also
feature the 35-member Graymoor
Chorale.
ABC-TV will broadcast “A
Bicentennial Christmas Liturgy” on
Christmas from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
EST. This program will show the
Christmas midnight Mass, taped at the
Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in
Providence, R.I., with music by the
Peloquin Chorale and Orchestra. Some
of the musical selections will come from
the American liturgy which Dr.
Alexander Peloquin composed for the
bicentennial. Bishop Louis E. Gelineau
of Providence will be the principal
celebrant and homilist.
All programs were produced in
cooperation with the USCC office for
film and broadcasting.
How Are You Thinking?
Rev. James Wilmes
One of life’s most searching questions comes
wrapped in the offhand inquiry, “How are you
feeling?” Yet the way we feel physically
depends many times on how we are thinking.
Consider how a good appetite is ruined by an
item of bad news. How a pleasant day is spoiled
by an unpleasant experience. Think how anger
flushes the face with blood; how fear drains it
white. There is nothing organically wrong in
these instances; it is the mind that is ill.
Nor is there organic change when good news
brings a sparkle to the eye. When faith gives
energy enough to do the seemingly impossible.
Or when love laughs at weariness. Thus it is that
the good which the mind perceives,
communicates itself to the body just as surely
as the evil held in the mind. Health is
contagious, flesh and blood mirror the sound
mind just as surely as they do the sick mind.
So how are you? Not your head or your
stomach or your heels, but YOU, the person!
Here are some requirements for contented living
worked out by Goethe, the famous German
poet and philosopher: “Patience enough to
work until some good is accomplished. Charity
enough to see some good in your neighbor.
Faith enough to make real the things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears
concerning the future. Strength enough to
battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake
them.
None of those are beyond the reach of
anyone who really means business, who would
really change their destiny with their thinking.
RESOLUTION: Think positive happy
thoughts always, savoring joyful memories
while “pulling the shade” on all that is negative,
depressing, angry. Control undesirable thinking
by first whispering a prayer - “I love you,
Jesus; help me, Jesus” - and then getting too
busy to think or else crowding out undesirable
thoughts with family chatter, phone calls, T.V.
programs until delay and time bring healing and
composure to evaluate or ignore poor thinking.
SCRIPTURE; “Where thy treasure is, there
also will thy heart be. If the light that is in thee
is darkness, how great is the darkness itself.”
Mt. 6, 21, 24. “Which of you by being anxious
about it, can add a single cubit to his stature?
Do not be anxious but seek first God.” Mt. 6,
25
PRAYER: Dear Jesus, flood my soul with
your thoughts and spirit so I may spread your
fragrance everywhere. Amen.
The Southern Cross
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Image And Likeness
Joseph Breig
In the beginning, the Bible tells us, God said,
“Let us make mankind in our image and
likeness.” And so it was done.
Then, in due time, God made himself in our
likeness. Without ceasing to be God, he became
one of us. Forever, he is one of us.
Like you and me, God, in becoming our
brother, began his human existence in the
womb of his mother. When he was miraculously
conceived in a virgin, his human characteristics,
like ours, were programmed from that moment
by the marvellous DNA chemical code, which
in our time has been discovered by the sciences
of genetics and microbiology.
Thus, like you and me, God was once an
embryo in his human nature in Jesus Christ.
And he was a fetus. Like us, he developed
within his mother.
Like us, for whose salvation he came among
us, God-in-Christ lived for overshadowing of the
Holy Spirit, his heart began its rhythmic
beating. His human brain developed. Swiftly,
his arms, legs, fingers and toes were formed. He
swam in the amniotic fluid, gaining in strength
and agility.
Protected though he was by the sac and the
fluid, Jesus the Savior-God must have felt the
impact of outside sounds, and of Mary’s
activities. Doubtless she felt his kicking as he
exercised his muscles.
As God, this little pre-bom infant Jesus
(whose name means He-Who-Saves) knew all
things, and possessed all power in Heaven and
on Earth. As God, he numbered the stars, the
planets, the moons, the comets he had created.
He held them all in his hand.
As God, too, he knew each of us perfectly,
each of us from Adam and Eve to the last one
of us who will ever come into being. He knew
our failings and wickednesses, but loved us
nevertheless. And so he entered into our
humanity to redeem us from our greeds, lusts,
cowardly betrayings of truth and justice.
When God took upon himself our human
nature, to live and suffer and die with us and
for us, he came to Earth as all of us come - as a
conception, an embryo, a fetus, an infant.
God in Jesus Christ, the pre-born child,
travelled for nine months in Mary’s body. He
was with her and Joseph, borne within her, on
the arduous journey to Bethlehem, humbly
obedient to Caesar’s order for a census of
humankind.
As God, Jesus guided and guarded the three
of them across the steep hill and through the
deep valleys. But as a human being, he lay
helpless within his mother’s womb, dependent
even for his human life.
As the almighty God, he sent the mysterious
star to proclaim his coming to the Magi, and
through them to the world. As man, he lay
hidden under Mary’s heart, awaiting his
birthday - the first Christmas.
When Mary’s days were accomplished,
God-in-Christ came forth from her. She
wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him
in a manger. And the Magi and the shepherds -
and after them countless others to the end of
time - came to worship him.
They came, and we come, to the Stable and
the Crib under the Star of Bethlehem, to
worship and thank our God who made himself
in our likeness - which is mysteriously his own
likeness - for our salvation. And we remember
that he said to us that whatever we do to his
least brothers and sisters, even to the tiny
human being within a mother -- the smallest of
his images and likenesses -- we do to him.
Every morning at three o’clock, 84-year-old
Henry Keuls awakens and begins thinking about
what’s wrong with the world. But he never
stops there. After he has thought about what’s
wrong, he begins to ponder about what he
could devise to change it.
Out of these morning thinking sessions,
Henry Keuls has conceived 20 inventions which
have been patented and manufactured to bring
greater safety, health or comfort to people.
Big and energetic, Mr. Keuls works ten hours
daily, driving from his New York office three
days a week to his plant in Berkeley Heights,
New Jersey, where his inventions are made.
An immigrant from Leiden, Holland, Henry
Keuls arrived in the United States in 1911 with
only $25. He worked as a ranch hand, a miner,
a factory worker and a salesman. Then he began
Called
By
Name
Georgia Carolina Ministry
Rev. John S. Adamski
Vocation Director
Archdiocese of Atlanta
His Birth, Verse Or Word
One of the enjoyable dimensions of every
Christmas season is the opportunity to hear
from friends through Christmas cards. It seems
as though many people make that special effort
to send greetings and a little note about
themselves because of this Christmas tradition.
During the rest of the year, it’s too easy to find
excuses to avoid spending the time with such
thoughtful communication.
As I’ve been reading cards coming in this
year, the beauty and meaning of many of the
verses has struck me more than once. Many
cards carry a printed verse which often
expresses much of what Christ’s birth is all
about. After such a reflection, sparked by the
verse, I often conclude by wondering why we
continue to find it so difficult to translate the
meaning of that verse into the substance of our
lives as Christian people.
Much of what we do to celebrate Christmas
in our society works against the true meaning
of this feast. Much of what we can do to
attempt to live as Christians reflects more of
our feeble nature than communicate Christ’s
presence. But the value of our celebration is the
opportunity which it gives us to enter into the
whole mystery and meaning of Jesus’ life in our
midst once again.
Christmas is our joyful, thankful, “would
you believe?!,” experience that our God’s love
for us cannot be contained or restrained but
flows over into human life in the person of
Jesus. It’s too profound and amazing a concept
for us to deal with within the circumference of
our minds alone. Rather, we need the flesh and
blood, energy and warmth which is found in
the man, Jesus. Here is God’s WORD, his
clearest and most important sharing of himself
with us. Jesus is WORD made flesh, made man,
made like one of us.
You and I as Christians are called, by the
nature of baptism, to join ourselves to his
amazing experience of life. Christmas, the life
of Jesus today, relies for meaning and substance
on the actions and effects of our lives.
Christmas should be the “pause that refreshes”
because it can fill us once again with the
excitement of knowing that our God loves us.
That excitement and connection of God with
our lives is the root and foundation of Christian
vocation. Every Christian man and woman is to
be the means, the person, of making it all
happen again within our experiences and for
the sake of the people around us. Christian
faith is the commitment to this WORD and the
strength to set ourselves in the direction of
bringing it all to life in and through us.
For those actively engaged in Church
ministry, or considering such a life of service,
Christmas can be the Lord’s message that we’re
on the right track, that we’re doing the right
thing. Whenever the frustrations of our
weaknesses and the difficulties of ministry seem
overpowering, Jesus’ birth is the clearest picture
and reminder that this is God’s work finally.
God’s work which is so important that he sends
his Son to make it all happen.
Let your Christmas days go beyond the
verses and wrapping which envelope so much of
our lives. Go beyond all that to a peaceful,
joyous hearing and speaking of the only
“WORD which matt God’s.”
his career as an inventor, devising the
cylindrical, screw-top box that contains the
familiar Tinker Toys. He went on to invent a
dozen toys, then he turned to devices to
improve the quality of living.
One of his recent inventions is the Vanes Air
Pollution Extractor, an inexpensive, lightweight
unit that uses no electricity, fits into any
window, and washes air free of dirt, insects,
pollen and fumes.
It is never hard to think of things that are
wrong with the world. But those who love God
and their fellow creatures will want, like Henry
Keuls, to go one step further, and think of what
can be done about it. Such creative thinking is
truly a partnership with the Creator.
For a free copy of the Christopher News
Notes, “Thoughts on Thinking,” send a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christophers, 12 E. 48th St., New York, N.Y.
10017.
What One Person Can Do
Rev. Richard Armstrong
HENRY KEULS, INVENTOR
