V.J.E.
Praised be Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament!
Merry Christmas! May the joy and peace of Christ be with you and your family. From all of the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in the Immaculate Conception U.S. Region, we wish you a Merry Christmas! We would like to share with you a reflection written by Sr. Lourdes of the Holy Eucharist Furnells, HMSS on Luke 2: 1-7 to draw you deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation this Christmas.
My dear one,
This world cannot recognize the Queen of the Universe, or her defender, or the child in her womb as the Son of God. The world sees only two poor travelers with child. In this inability to see, the world commends them to a manger worth less than all the rest. We will often be treated this way.
Rarely will the world recognize that you are royalty, and even more rarely, will they treat you as such. But we are not royalty as this world defines it. Instead we are royalty as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have revealed it. Her richness was not in being adorned with jewels and waited upon, no, her richness was in going wherever she needed and accepting whatever was given without complaint. The newborn King sought not the light of gold or the blare of trumpets, but the light of the stars and the ballad of the sheep and oxen. So let us learn from the Holy Family how to truly live our royalty by accepting whatever is given without complaint, with a humble heart and seeking not to be surrounded by what is beautiful, but making that around us beautiful by coming into it. And let us not expect the world to understand or see, rather never relinquish our dignity for the sake of the world’s acknowledgment.
My dear one, have you ever felt rejected and given less than you deserve? Know that the Holy Family too was rejected and given less than they deserved. But they did not let what they were given change them, but rather they changed it. Now, it is not a depiction of a palace that is enshrined in every Christian home, but the image of a manger with a Queen on her knees and a King in a trough with their defender standing by, beside the shepherds and sheep and oxen.