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Nurses, doctors, healthcare workers, aides, first responders, homecare specialists, ministers, parents and spouses, support and relief workers and friends. We are all grateful for you. Art by Bro. Mickey O'Neill Mcgrath, OSFS
This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. A wonderful way to prepare for Christmas is to make an Advent wreath. It could be a great activity to share during this Thanksgiving holiday. Hope these photos inspire you!
You will need four candles—traditionally, three purple and one rose, though you can substitute white or anything you have around the house. Then, you will need some evergreen boughs or other greenery/decor to arrange around them. They don't even have to be in a circle; you can place them in a straight line—say, on the mantel over the fireplace. Have fun and enjoy this tradition together.
• Candle one (purple) represents hope. It is often called the prophets’ candle.
• Candle two (purple) represents peace. It is often called the angels’ candle.
• Candle three (pink) represents joy. It is often called the shepherds’ candle.
• Candle four (purple) represents love. It is often called the Bethlehem candle.
• You can also include a Christ candle in the middle of the wreath.
To celebrate with an Advent wreath, you light a candle on each Sunday of Advent. The first Sunday, you light candle one; the second Sunday you light candles one and two, etc. You can find readings to go along with the candle lightings online, make your own prayer or find a Christmas book that represents the theme of the week and read it with your children.
Tag us in your photos or text your photo to 619-977-1692 so we can share in the joy and encourage one another 🕯💜
This year Lord, let me be the one. The one who stops, sees the grace, the restoration and turns to you in thanksgiving. Grant me a heart ripe with thanksgiving. Amen
📷 The Ten Lepers, James C. Christensen 1942-2017
A UNIVERSAL LOVE THAT PROMOTES PERSONS
106. Social friendship and universal fraternity necessarily call for an acknowledgement of the worth of every human person, always and everywhere. If each individual is of such great worth, it must be stated clearly and firmly that “the mere fact that some people are born in places with fewer resources or less development does not justify the fact that they are living with less dignity”.[81] This is a basic principle of social life that tends to be ignored in a variety of ways by those who sense that it does not fit into their worldview or serve their purposes.
107. Every human being has the right to live with dignity and to develop integrally; this fundamental right cannot be denied by any country. People have this right even if they are unproductive, or were born with or developed limitations. This does not detract from their great dignity as human persons, a dignity based not on circumstances but on the intrinsic worth of their being.
Excerpt: FRATELLI TUTTI
Pope Francis Encyclical
On Fraternity and Social Friendship
*Part of a sequential daily series to read and reflect on this new encyclical.
Gospel Matthew 10:30
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
#dailyingodsword
A Thanksgiving Prayer
for this time
On this Thanksgiving Day like no other,
O God, your name is worthy to be praised.
For in your mercy and kindness
no thought of ours is left unguarded,
no tear unheeded, and no joy unnoticed.
For the blessings we have known
and for those we have yet to recognize,
to you we give our grateful thanks.
For life that reminds us how fragile we are and also how strong we can be: We thank you, O God.
For sheltering that urges us
to rediscover what truly matters:
We thank you, O God.
For communication that allows us
to connect in ways new and old: We thank you, O God.
And for mindfulness that shows us
how much we rely on one another: We thank you, O God.
Watch over your family, Lord, gathered here
and at tables separated by miles,
and bless those who work tirelessly to keep us all safe.
Though we may be kept apart
on this day that calls us together,
we know your Spirit draws us close.
Lord, we ask you to ease the pain of empty chairs that bring to mind our loved ones who have died.
Let our grieving find its rest in your Son, Jesus,
in whose Resurrection is our hope.
Grant your Spirit to be present here
that this meal may become a foretaste of your heavenly table
where every tear shall be wiped away, every hunger fed,
and no distance can separate us from your love in Christ,
from whom all good things come.
Amen.
”A Thanksgiving Prayer in Time of Pandemic.” Copyright © Diana Macalintal, 2020.
Blessings from Silver Strand.
Inadequate understandings of universal love
99. A love capable of transcending borders is the basis of what in every city and country can be called “social friendship”. Genuine social friendship within a society makes true universal openness possible. This is a far cry from the false universalism of those who constantly travel abroad because they cannot tolerate or love their own people. Those who look down on their own people tend to create within society categories of first and second class, people of greater or lesser dignity, people enjoying greater or fewer rights. In this way, they deny that there is room for everybody.
100. I am certainly not proposing an authoritarian and abstract universalism, devised or planned by a small group and presented as an ideal for the sake of levelling, dominating and plundering. One model of globalization in fact “consciously aims at a one-dimensional uniformity and seeks to eliminate all differences and traditions in a superficial quest for unity… If a certain kind of globalization claims to make everyone uniform, to level everyone out, that globalization destroys the rich gifts and uniqueness of each person and each people”.[78] This false universalism ends up depriving the world of its various colours, its beauty and, ultimately, its humanity. For “the future is not monochrome; if we are courageous, we can contemplate it in all the variety and diversity of what each individual person has to offer. How much our human family needs to learn to live together in harmony and peace, without all of us having to be the same!”[79]
Excerpt: FRATELLI TUTTI
Pope Francis Encyclical
On Fraternity and Social Friendship
*Part of a sequential daily series to read and reflect on this new encyclical.
PSALM 96:11-13
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
Before the LORD, for he comes;
He shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with his constancy.
#dailyingodsword
