Fr. Todd 12/21/25

Dear Sacred Heart and St. Mary on the Lake,

            A very Blessed and Merry Christmas this coming week!  I look forward to seeing everyone for our Christmas Masses.  

            As we enter into the celebration of Christmas, I want us to protect the spirit the season cultivates- a sense of yearning, of hope, of expectation, of searching.  This is a critical spiritual sense for us for it means we always looking for God.  It means we will not settle for anything less than Him, that we will not be satisfied by anything less than Him.  It may seem a funny thing to say, but one of the great gifts Jesus might bring us for Christmas is to become dissatisfied if we have been settling for all the wrong things. 

            I think of this quote from C.S. Lewis: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

            God has more than we can ask for imagine and we are far too easily pleased.  Jesus takes on flesh and is born for us to be set free.  But I have to want to be set free for me to receive the grace He longs to give at Christmas.  Let us be moved by this Holy season to look for Him in our lives.  The hymns of Advent and Christmas particularly carry this sense of yearning.  I want to share the lyrics of one; O come, Divine Messiah.  A beautiful song to sing.  A powerful song to also slow down and pray through it lyrics that their yearning can become our own.

1. O come, divine Messiah;

The world in silence waits the day

When hope shall sing its triumph

And sadness flee away.

Refrain:

Dear Savior, haste! Come, come to earth.

Dispel the night and show your face,

and bid us hail the dawn of grace.

O come, divine Messiah;

the world in silence waits the day

when hope shall sing its triumph

and sadness flee away.

2. O Christ, whom nations sigh for,

Whom priest and prophet long foretold,

Come, break the captive's fetters,

Redeem the long-lost fold. [Refrain]

3. You come in peace and meekness

And lowly will your cradle be;

All clothed in human weakness

Shall we your Godhead see. [Refrain

God Bless,

Fr. Todd