From my notebook

I'm home this snowy Sunday morning, the first time our parish has canceled Mass in anyone's memory. I'm especially disappointed since it would have been the first Sunday celebration for our newly-ordained friend, Fr. Bill Spencer, a widower edging toward his 70th year who assures his bishop that, since he is too old to retire, he will serve as long as God gives him grace. And the diocese of Saginaw is lucky to have him, too. May he live and flourish a hundred years.

So, with the blowing snow and flickering fireplace putting me in a meditative frame of mind, I offer you some excerpts I've found worth noting lately:

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"True faith shines forth when we come to our times of prayer day after day, month after month, year after year with no thoughts of the joys or fears that may be associated with prayer. This is letting God pass out of one's speculations and be himself."

On St. Teresa's fourth mansion in From Ash to Fire by Carolyn Humphries

On John the Baptist:
"Without John the Baptist, the angels, shepherds and wise men can turn into sentimental mush. . . . John rages against 'me' and 'my', or even 'us' and 'ours'. It is about God . . . John reminds us that God has not abandoned us. He has prepared a road home."

Fr. Michael Busch, Rector of St. Michael's Cathedral, Toronto

"The more God wishes to bestow on us, the more does he make us desire."

St. John of the Cross

"[Christmas shows us] that smallness that Christianity fearlessly proclaims, in the teeth of a world that worships only bigness, and misunderstands it at that. We are too used to the holiday; we have domesticated the birth of Christ, rather than imbuing the hearth with the mysterious might of that child, the Word through whom all things were made."

Anthony Esolen

"I truly and firmly believe that your divinity can defend me. Full of trust, I hope in you."

From the prayer to the Infant Jesus of Prague

"From the desire to be loved,
from the desire to be extolled,
from the desire to be honored,
from the desire to be praised,
from the desire to be preferred,
from the desire to be consulted,
from the desire to be approved,
from the desire to be popular,
Deliver me, O Jesus."

Prayer of the Missionaries of Charity