A Blessed Christmas

 

“Arise, all ye nobles and peasants; Mary invites all, rich and poor, just and sinners, to enter the cave of Bethlehem, to adore and to kiss the feet of her new-born Son…Let us enter; let us not be afraid.” 

“Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man…I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.”

- St. Alphonsus Liguori

“This day He Who Is, is born; and He Who Is becomes what He was not.”

St. John Chrysostom

“Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness. No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all.”

St. Leo the Great

The true and really only meaning of Christmas is Our Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On Christmas day our priest was so generous as to bring me Holy Communion, the best gift of the day. 

This year we had 3 grandbabies to celebrate Christmas with and what fun it was!

It wasn't snowing but raining.

Goldilocks

The generosity!

Photo as everyone (except me 😓) was heading out to Midnight Mass. We pulled together a lovely choir of ladies. It was an interesting time as there were several rounds of covid (not caught from each other but separately!! no joke!), my sciatica (to keep it simple) kept me home from all but a couple practices, yet, these beautiful faith-filled ladies pulled it off! Celeborn recorded the prelude and the parts I heard were beautiful. So much love in the voices. All for the Greater Glory of God! I look forward to receiving the full recording and enjoying the music. 

I tuned in to St. John Cantius in Chicago for a glorious Solemn Pontifical High Mass with an hour prelude of gorgeous music complete with full orchestra.  The archbishop was the celebrant. 

We slept for too-few-hours before all were up, chores finished and a casual breakfast was laid out to grab as desired. We always start with our Christmas stockings (replenished after St. Nicholas Day. Some stick the gifts they didn't want to wrap inside, cards, notes, etc... 

Look who is standing with very little help! He's getting so much balance and can cruise around holding on to stuff. FG1 is getting so big!!

The teens and tweens (who are actually in their twenties according to Tolkien, not pre-teens!) do an annual gift exchange. Frodo had Bilbo and wrapped his gift with wood and screws! Cleverness!

Cassandra the jolly one

The gift below "Baking Soda Bible" came with a video of "Jug and Hen". I laughed my head off. I love creative gifts. So much fun!

Cassandra is sitting up pretty well these days when plopped down. She's getting there!

Cousins enjoying some time in their hand-crocheted stockings (by Belladonna of course!) Unbelievable works of art! I will have to get a photo of the stockings she has made and post it.

We had a cookie exchange, we  only partially got to the full presentation. The cookies below didn't even get out of the bags! 😂  We had 2 batches burnt to a crisp but we still had more than plenty of cookies just the same.

A blessed Christmas to all!