HEADING TO ROME: December 27-January 7

This is a picture of St. Peters. I will be having Vespers with the pope on New Year's Eve and on New Year's day we will be having mass with the Pope all at St.Peters. We also have tickets to go below St.Peters and to see St.Peters tomb! That is so cool!. We also received permission to have mass in the catacombs in St. Philip Neri's very small chapel. I loved the catacombs when I was there in 1992 and 2000. On this trip we are also going to stay two nights in Assisi which will really be neat!

My Lansing flight is suppose to leave today at 2pm which takes me to Chicago. From there I meet my friends Michelle, Glorie and a priest friend Fr.Ken who use to live and go to school there. He knows the lay of the land! He will be staying at the North American Collage and we are staying in a convent. Anyway our plane is suppose to leave for Rome nonstop at 4:45. I hope the weather doesn't screw things up. I will be praying for all my friends and family and for the special intentions friends gave me. I will be back January 7th in the evening. I will leave you with this article on the Holy Family:

- Catholic Exchange - http://catholicexchange.com -
Fulfilling the Law in Every SensePosted By Fr. Jerome Magat On December 27, 2008 @ 12:02 am In Touched By Grace

The Gospel narrative for the feast of the Holy Family places Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the Temple as they come to Jerusalem to present the child Jesus to the Lord, pursuant to the dictates of the Law of Moses.
This epic scene is replete with drama as the Holy Family encounters Simeon and the prophetess, Anna. Simeon’s cryptic prophecy amazes both Our Lady and St. Joseph. Any set of parents of a newborn baby would be taken aback if a stranger made such comments about their child. And yet, we know, as did Mary and Joseph, that Jesus was not an ordinary child. After all, the salvation of the world had come among them in the flesh.
On one level, we can appreciate the humble obedience of the Holy Family in adhering to the prescripts of the Law of Moses, even though Jesus had no real reason to be presented in the Temple insofar as it was the Lord Himself being presented to the Father.
And yet, it is precisely this fulfillment of the prescripts of the Law of Moses that ushers in the definitive era of salvation in Christ. In the drama of the presentation in the Temple, Jesus closes the era of the Mosaic Law and begins the fulfillment of that law in His very person. Already in the Temple, we are given a foreshadowing of the sufferings of the Blessed Mother at Calvary and how Jesus would redeem Israel and the world.
To be sure, the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple is a unique setting in which to encounter the Holy Family on this feast. Perhaps we might prefer to contemplate them at home in Nazareth or in Bethlehem in the days immediately after Christmas. However, the Church proposes this reading for our meditation in order to help us understand the cosmic significance of the infant Jesus and the place of the family in God’s designs for salvation.
In the Holy Family, we observe that God acts through the family in order to bring about the work of salvation. He willed that His only begotten Son be subject to human parents and receive His human formation within a family. In doing so, God shows us how Jesus truly identifies with the human experience, including family life.
Pope John Paul II once wrote that the future of civilization passes through the family. If that is true for the ordinary family, how much more true was it for the Holy Family? They are the model for family life: pure, unified, harmonious, obedient to the Father’s plan, and teeming with mutual love. In this family, loving God with their whole heart, mind and soul was the first priority.
It was out of love for God that they experienced the meaning of family love. They embodied every virtue that every family ought to emulate. In an age where the family is plagued by divorce, infidelity, abortion, abuses of various types and disunity, the Church places the Holy Family before us to remind us of how God desires for us to live within the confines of family life - to fulfill the Law of Love that His Son came to establish.
Article printed from Catholic Exchange: