As we near the feast day of Christmas, we can reflect on the various ways that the Resurrected Jesus is present in the world still today. The Catholic Church teaches that Christ is present in the Word (Scripture), the Eucharist, the priest, and in all the baptized.
Next weekend, for the feast day, we will welcome many visitors and some of our own parishioners who are ‘coming back’ to Mass after months or years away.
This is an important weekend for us to go out of our way to be extra hospitable to people sitting next to us in the pew, greeting them before or after Mass. Introduce yourself and find out a little bit about them. Your welcoming hospitality could be the ‘turning point’ in whether they come back or not. Each person reveals some presence of Christ and our relationship with them helps unite the Body of Christ.
As we pray for all of those who have been away from the church and sacraments, spend some time in prayer in front of the Manger scene in your home…asking the Child Jesus and the Holy Family to bring home to the sacraments those who have been too busy or distracted in worldly things. Let us all approach the Manger this week, acknowledging how much we need Jesus in our life.