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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!
Here are this week’s must-reads:
+ My hope as we start a new year is that God will bless you and give you the joy, peace and rest that only He can provide. No need to “finish strong” or compare your year to someone’s highlight reel. Whatever has been good and beautiful, let’s give thanks to Him. Whatever has been trying and sad, let’s entrust to Him — and have hope for what He can do with it in this new year. 💙🙏
“We praise you, O God! The Church suggests that we should not end the year without expressing our thanks to the Lord for all his benefits… With hearts full of thanksgiving, let us prepare to cross the threshold of (the new year), remembering that the Lord is watching over us and guarding us. To him this evening we wish to entrust the whole world. Let us also offer him our hopes for a brighter future. And let us place these prayers in the hands of Mary, Mother of God. Amen.”(Pope Benedict XVI)
+ A reflection on our Christmas day, on some surprising peace amidst a little chaos, and my hope for you this Christmas season — because we’re still celebrating over here 😉
+ “The birth of Jesus brings light into our darkness, hope into our despair, and peace into our restless hearts. We celebrate not just the birth of a child but the beginning of a story that changed everything.” — Lysa Terkeurst
This week’s Collection is a Special Edition featuring the favorites & best sellers of the year! You can check it out at CatholicWifeCatholicLife.com/Collection
+ “Rather than the good life being realized through self-sufficiency, health, purpose, and productivity, the good life in Christ is realized through being for others — through self-giving love. This of course does not mean that self-sufficiency, health, and productivity have no place in the Christian life. It just means that those values are not ends in and of themselves, but are ordered toward love of God and love of neighbor.” — Corynne Staresinic
+ “For those discerning what God’s will & path is for their lives in the upcoming year, Bishop Barron suggests we ask ourselves an important question: ‘Which path makes me most generous?’ Such a helpful question.” — Rich VIllodas
+ “Let us ask the Lord that we may become vigilant for his presence, that we may hear how softly yet insistently he knocks at the door of our being and willing. Let us ask that we may make room for him within ourselves, that we may recognize him also in those through whom he speaks to us: children, the suffering, the abandoned, those who are excluded and the poor of this world.” — JD Flynn
+ “There are a few things that have put me at ease amidst the rejections that I’ve walked through recently. And the first is that verse that says, “for everything there’s a season and a time for everything under heaven.” And Jesus’s life was a great reflection of this promise. He didn’t go into public ministry until He was ready. He didn’t perform His first miracle until He had appointed His 12 disciples and He didn’t lay down His life until it was His time to do so… Even Jesus’s life, the rhythm of His life echoed the “for everything there’s a season.” And I think what’s most encouraging for me is that no season lasts forever.
So, I don’t know what type of change you’re walking through right now, but I’m going to give you three encouraging things that are helping me walk through my current season. And the first is that God truly makes all things new… Whatever season you’re in, God desires, and He will make all things new in His time…” — Ashley Stevens
+ “Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old, behold I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:18-19) Happy new year & happy Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God! Let’s ask for her intercessory prayers today as we begin a new year. 💙🙏
+ “May Mary show us, in her Son,
the Way of peace,
and enlighten our vision,
so that we can recognize Christ’s face
in the face of every human person,
the heart of peace!”
— Pope Benedict XVI
+ I loved this caption: “As we celebrate the with-ness of Jesus, we’re praying you experience the kind of hope that “puts to rest all the lives we could have lived and gently reminds us, ‘This is the one you’ve got. Don’t waste it.'” — Hope Heals
+ “Wherever you find yourself this Christmas (season), He is there with you.” — Missionary of Beauty
+ “Holiness is only boring if you don’t understand what it means. It’s not a puritanical way of life devoid of joy. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a life full of joy even in hard times. It’s family members who strive to love each other well. It’s each member of the family seeking their purpose and living out their vocations to the best of their ability. It’s a home full of goodness, virtue, and mercy. We won’t always get it right in our families, but it’s the trying that matters. If you are struggling, call on the Holy Family for guidance and help.Let the Holy Family be your guide, Catholic Pilgrims. We may not be able to be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but that does not mean our families can’t be holy. With God’s help, they can.” — Amy, The Catholic Pilgrim
+ “God is important, by far the most important thing in our lives. The shepherds teach us this priority. From them we should learn not to be crushed by all the pressing matters in our daily lives. From them we should learn the inner freedom to put other tasks in second place – however important they may be – so as to make our way towards God, to allow him into our lives and into our time. Time given to God and, in his name, to our neighbour is never time lost. It is the time when we are most truly alive, when we live our humanity to the full.” — Pope Benedict XVI
+ “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.” — The Gate of the Year (‘God Knows’) by Minnie Louise Haskins
+ At this hour, let us ask him to move our hearts with the holy curiosity and the holy joy of the shepherds, and thus let us go over joyfully to Bethlehem, to the Lord who once more comes to meet us. Amen.” — (Pope Benedict XVI)
More of the Favorites of the Year!
