Worldpriest Global Apostolate Christmas Greetings 2023

Christmas Reflection by Venerable Patrick Peyton C.S.C.

Mary’s visitation

Because Mary was ordinary – that is a really human being, unselfish, heart full of affection – this mystery tells me something remarkable about loving God.  The God-Man was now divinely conceived in her womb.  Keep to your quiet home, Mary, (we might have advised) and love Him, love Him alone. But Mary knows this secret about loving God:  to love God alone is to love Him not at all.  Of her Son’s commandment, “Love one another,” Mary’s visitation was an unconscious prophecy.

Loving God requires that I love everyone else – even those I cannot like!  How do I do that?  Practice seeing Christ in others, and act accordingly.  “What you do for others, you do to me.”  Christ meant that.

Bethlehem

“Mary and Joseph found accommodations in one of Bethlehem’s hillside caves. It offered some protection from the biting cold of a December night, nothing more. Air, heavy with moisture seeping through damp earthen walls; stifling odours of cattle; darkness made all the more emphatic by a lantern’s frail light and the smallest patch of night horizon, too low for stars – yes, there would be room here. And here, Mary and Joseph loved God as He was never loved on earth.

God can be loved – wholeheartedly – anywhere. Loving God does not depend on the kind of a place I’m in – it depends on the kind of a person I am.” Father Peyton’s Rosary Prayer Book;

May we wish all cardinals, bishops, priests, friends, benefactors, Global Rosary Relay participants, Rosary Thursday participants, Worldpriest representatives, volunteers, and all members of the Worldpriest Global Apostolate team a very happy Christmas a holy and a blessed New Year for 2024.

“May the message of Christmas fill your heart with eternal hope, as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Marion Mulhall

Founder – Worldpriest Global Apostolate