Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1319683
3 DENVER CATHOLIC | DECEMBER 2020 Independent Living Assisted Living 2835 West 32nd Avenue | Denver, Colorado For more information, call our trusted advisors, Pam or Melissa today at 720.909.3814. The Gardens at St. Elizabeth HomeIsHere.org Make us your home for the holidays. Call today for current specials. God was not a watchmaker, some remote mechanic who wound up the world and let it go. God was a baby, crying to be picked up." This is the simple and profound truth that each of us should focus on during these holy days. No matter what else is happening in the world, God became a human being, "the Word was made flesh" (Jn 1:14). He drew close to us and he remains with us. There is another lesson in the story of Christmas that we would do well to pray with this year. We hear in Luke's story of the Nativity that when the shepherds in the fields nearby heard the announcement from the angels that Jesus, the Messiah, was born, they made haste to find him. In his book Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Nar- ratives, Pope Benedict XVI explains that this quickness to respond is an example for how we should receive the good news of Jesus' birth today. "The shepherds made haste, partly no doubt from human curiosity, in order to see this great thing that had been announced to them. But surely, too, they were driven by their joy on hearing that now, truly, the Saviour, the Mes- siah, the Lord had been born, the one so long awaited – and they would be the first to see him. How many Christians make haste today, where the things of God are concerned?" he asks (The Infancy Narratives, p. 79). Each of us can ponder in our hearts the ques- tion, "Have we received the Good News of Jesus transmitted by the angel to Mary (Lk 1:26-38), to Joseph (Mt 1:18-25), and to the Shepherds (Lk 2:8-20)?" I encourage you to take 15 minutes in quiet prayer with each one of these passages and open your heart to receive Jesus. In his 2019 homily at the Christmas Vigil Mass, Pope Francis reminded us, "Let us con- template the Child and let ourselves be caught up in his tender love. Then we have no further excuse for not letting ourselves be loved by him. Whatever goes wrong in our lives, whatever doesn't work in the Church, whatever problems there are in the world, will no longer serve as an excuse. It will become secondary, for faced with Jesus' extravagant love, a love of utter meekness and closeness, we have no excuse." "At Christmas," the Pope said, "the question is this: 'Do I allow myself to be loved by God? Do I abandon myself to his love that comes to save me?'" My prayer for you is that this Christmas you answer these questions in your heart of hearts and encounter Jesus and give your heart to him.