Click here for Christmas Novena
9 Day Scheduled Meditation

V25 – 12.16.28– I was doing my meditation, and since today it was the beginning of the Novena of Baby Jesus, I was thinking about the nine excesses of His Incarnation, which Jesus had narrated to me with so much tenderness, and which are written in the first volume…“why do you want to oppose the reading of the nine excesses? Ah! You do not know how much Life, how much Love and Grace they contain. You Must Know that My Word is Creation, and in narrating to you the Nine Excesses of My Love in the Incarnation, I not only Renewed My Love which I had in Incarnating Myself, but I Created New Love in order to invest the creatures and conquer them to give themselves to Me. These Nine Excesses of My Love, Manifested with So Much Love of Tenderness and Simplicity, Formed the Prelude of the many Lessons I was to give you about My Divine Fiat, in order to form Its Kingdom…”

Sitting Bull (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake) with his Crucifix

Sitting Bull (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake), also nicknamed Slon-he or “Slow”; (c. 1831 – December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies.

In 1883 Sitting Bull embraced the Catholic faith and was baptised by a French-speaking Jesuit priest.

He earned money by selling his autographed picture and gave much of that money to the poor.

William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody is one of the most iconic figures of the Wild West. His Wild West show made him one of the most famous people in the country. Cody was known as a trapper, a soldier, a Medal of Honor recipient, bullwhacker, “Fifty-Niner” in Colorado, a Pony Express rider in 1860, wagonmaster, and a stagecoach driver. But Cody also became a Catholic the day before his death.

It is believed that Cody was inspired to become a Catholic by his friend Sitting Bull, himself a Catholic convert.

Sitting Bull was re-buried in the Catholic part of Mobridge cemetery in South Dakota.

The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is a major Christian holy site, as it marks the traditional place of Christ’s birth. It is also one of the oldest surviving Christian churches. In the Bible The birth of Jesus is narrated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew gives the impression that Mary and Joseph were from Bethlehem and later moved to Nazareth because of Herod’s decree, while Luke indicates that Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem while they were in town for a special census.

Scholars tend to see these two stories as irreconcilable and believe Matthew to be more reliable because of historical problems with Luke’s version. But both accounts agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. According to Luke 2:7 (in the traditional translation), Mary “laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.” But the Greek can also be rendered, “she laid him in a manger because they had no space in the room” — we should perhaps imagine Jesus being born in a quiet back room of an overflowing one-room house. The gospel accounts don’t mention a cave, but less than a century later, both Justin Martyr and the Protoevangelium of James say Jesus was born in a cave. This is reasonable, as many houses in the area are still built in front of a cave. The cave part would have been used for stabling and storage – thus the manger. History The first evidence of a cave in Bethlehem being venerated as Christ’s birthplace is in the writings of Justin Martyr around 160 AD. The tradition is also attested by Origen and Eusebius in the 3rd century. In 326, Constantine and his mother St. Helena commissioned a church to be built over the cave.

This first church, dedicated on May 31, 339, had an octagonal floor plan and was placed directly above the cave. In the center, a 4-meterwide hole surrounded by a railing provided a view of the cave. Portions of the floor mosaic survive from this period. St. Jerome lived and worked in Bethlehem from 384 AD, and he was buried in a cave beneath the Church of the Nativity. The Constantinian church was destroyed by Justinian in 530 AD, who built the much larger church that remains today. The Persians spared it during their invasion in 614 AD because, according to legend, they were impressed by a representation of the Magi — fellow Persians —that decorated the building. This was quoted at a 9th-century synod in Jerusalem to show the utility of religious images. Muslims prevented the application of Hakim’s decree (1009) ordering the destruction of Christian monuments because, since the time of Omar (639), they had been permitted to use the south transept for worship.

The Crusaders took Jerusalem on 6 June 1009. Baldwin I and II were crowned there, and in an impressive display of tolerance the Franks and Byzantines cooperated in fully redecorating the interior (1165-69). A Greek inscription in the north transept records this event. The Church of the Nativity was much neglected in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, but not destroyed. Much of the church’s marble was looted by the Ottomans and now adorns the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. An earthquake in 1834 and a fire in 1869 destroyed the furnishings of the cave, but the church again survived. In 1847, the theft of the silver star marking the exact site of the Nativity was an ostensible factor in the international crisis over the Holy Places that ultimately led to the Crimean War (1854–56).

In 1852, shared custody of the church was granted to the Roman Catholic, Armenian and Greek Orthodox churches. The Greeks care for the Grotto of the Nativity.

Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D..

Around this time of year we are bombarded with anti-Catholic propaganda questioning the blessed day of Christ’s birth as December 25. This date, we arrogantly are told, was originally a pagan holiday. The Early Church “chose” it to “Christianize” a Roman feast of the Sun. According to this theory, the Christmas date was only established in the 4th century, when we have the first evidence of the Nativity being celebrated in Rome in 336. The conclusion: The origins of Christmas are pagan, and we do not really know the date the Savior of mankind was born.

Let us not be too quickly impressed with these lies whose aim is solely to diminish the homage we pay Our Lord Jesus Christ and to denigrate the Catholic Church. In fact, the opposite is true. It is the thesis of the pagan origins of Christmas that is a myth without historical substance. No ancient Roman festivals on December 25 – The notion that Christmas had pagan origins began to spread in the 17th century with the English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians, who hated all Catholic things. The Puritans hated Catholicism so much that they revolted against the so-called Anglican church because, even with their heresies, they considered it still too similar to the Catholic Church. They abhorred the feast days and in particular, they detested the Christmas feast with its joyous ceremonies, celebrations and customs.

Since the Bible gave no specific date of Christ’s birth, the Puritans argued that it was a sinful contrivance of the Roman Catholic Church that should be abolished. Later, Protestant preachers like the German Paul Ernst Jablonski tried to demonstrate in pseudo-scholarly works that December 25 was actually a pagan Roman feast, and that Christmas was yet another instance of how the medieval Catholic Church ‘paganized’ and corrupted ‘pure’ early Christianity. Around the same time, the Jesuit Jean Hardouin with his eccentric theory of universal forgery that put in doubt every historical source known, backed the Puritans on their theory of Christmas having pagan origins. But his research was largely discredited given his absurd affirmations. For example, he maintained all the Church Councils that took place before Trent were fictitious and almost all the classical texts of ancient Greece and Rome were false, made by monks in the 13th century. Such assertions are blatantly absurd, given the countless source documents demonstrating the opposite.

The two principal claims for Christmas having pagan origins pretend that the early Church chose December 25 in order to divert Catholics from Roman pagan festival days. The first claim pretends that it replaced the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia, a time of feasting and raucous merry-making held in December in honor of the pagan god Saturn. Now, the Saturnalia festival always ended on December 23 at the latest. Why would the Catholic Church, to diverge the attention of her faithful from a pagan celebration, choose a date two days after that party had already ended and whoever wanted had already overindulged? It makes no sense. No serious scholar believes this claim. 8 Christmas established before the pagan Sun festival – The second claim is that the Catholic Church established Christmas on December 25 to replace a solar feast invented by Emperor Aurelian in 274 AD, the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Birth of the Unconquered Sun).

The fact that Christmas entered the world calendar (the accepted Roman calendar) in 354 – which was after the establishment of the pagan feast – does not necessarily mean the Church chose that day to replace the pagan holiday. Two principal reasons concur with this conclusion: First, one must not simply assume that the early Christians only began to celebrate Christmas in the 4th century. Until the Edict of Milan was published in 313, Catholics were persecuted and met in catacombs. Hence, there was no public festivity. But they celebrated Christmas among themselves before that Edict, as hymns and prayers of the first Christians confirm . Second, this claim is based on unsound assumptions. As scholar Thomas Talley points out in his book The Origins of the Liturgical Year, Emperor Aurelian inaugurated the festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun trying to give new life – a rebirth – to a dying Roman Empire. It is much more likely, he argues, that the Emperor’s action was a response to the growing popularity and strength of the Catholic religion, which was celebrating Christ’s birth on December 25, rather than the other way around.There is no evidence that Aurelian’s celebration preceded the feast of Christmas, and more reason to believe that establishing this festival day – which never won popular support and soon died out – was an effort to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Catholics.

Dates based on the Scriptures – But let us leave the realm of conjecture and return to historical records. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, even though the Christmas date was not made official until 354, clearly it was established long before Aurelian instituted his pagan feast day. The conception of St. John the Baptist is the historical anchor to know the date of Christmas, based on the detailed and careful calculations on dates made by first Fathers of the Church. The early tractatus De solstitiia records the tradition of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Zachariah in the High Temple when he was serving as high priest on the Day of Atonement (Lk 1:8). This placed the conception of St. John the Baptist during the feast of Tabernacles in late September, as the Archangel Gabriel said (Lk 1:28) and his birth nine months later at the time of the summer solstice. Since the Gospel of Luke states that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary in the sixth month after John’s conception (Lk 1:26), this placed the conception of Christ at about the time of the spring equinox, that is, at the time of the Jewish Passover, in late March. His birth would thus be in late December at the time of the winter solstice.

That these dates, based on Tradition and Scripture, are trustworthy is confirmed by recent evidence taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose authors were very concerned about calendar dates, essential for establishing when the Torah feasts should be celebrated. The data found in the Scrolls make it possible to know the Temple’s rotating assignment of priests during Old Testament times and show definitely that Zachariah served as a Temple priest in September, thus confirming the tradition of the Early Church. The Catholic Church determined March 25 as the date of Our Lord’s Conception long before Aurelian decided to make his solar feast. For example, around 221 AD, Sexto Julio Africano wrote the Chronographiai in which he affirmed that the Annunciation was March 25. Once the date of the Incarnation was established, it was a simple matter of adding nine months to arrive at the date of Our Lord’s birth – December 25. This date would not be made official until the late fourth century, but it was established long before Aurelian and Constantine. It had nothing to do with pagan festivals. We can be certain that the first Catholic apologists and Fathers of the Church, who lived very close to the time of the Apostles, were fully aware of the dates associated with the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They had all the calendar sources at hand and they would not allow any untruth to be introduced in the Catholic liturgy. The date of Christ’s birth was transmitted by them as being December 25, a Sunday. Addressing the verse of Luke 2:7, Fr Cornelius a Lapide comments on the architecture of this choice: “Christ was born Sunday, because this was the first day of the world.… Christ was born on Sunday night, in keeping with the order of His marvels, so that the day on which He said Let there be light, and there was light, was the same day on which, at night, the light shone in darkness for the upright of heart, that is, the sun of justice, Christ the Lord.”

Preparation for Holy Christmas
The Nine Excesses of Love in the Incarnation of the Word

The Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
The silver star in the Grotto of the Nativity marks the spot of Jesus’ Birth

Book of Heaven
The Call of the Creature to the Order, the Place and the Purpose
for which He was Created by God
Volume 15 – December 8, 1922

The first word that Adam pronounced.  What the First Lesson that God gave him was.  The Divine Will Operating in man.

Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta the Little Daughter of the Divine Will:

… “Here, then, is the reason why We (the Most Holy Trinity) constituted Her (Our Lady, the Blessed Mother Mary) Queen of all; because when We operate, We do it with reason, wisdom and justice:  She (Our Lady) never gave life to Her human will, but Our (God’s) Will was always intact in Her.  How could We say to another creature:  ‘You are Queen of the heavens, of the sun, of the stars, etc.’, if instead of having Our Will as dominion, she were dominated by her human will?  All of the elements, the heavens, the sun, the earth, would have withdrawn from the regime and dominion of this creature.  All would have cried out in their mute language:  ‘We do not want her, we are superior to her, because we have never withdrawn from your eternal Volition – as You created us, so we are’.  So would the sun have cried out with its light, the stars with their glittering, the sea with its waves, and everything else.  On the contrary, as soon as they (all of the elements, the heavens, the sun, the earth) all felt the dominion of this excelling Virgin (Our Lady) who, almost as their sister, never wanted to know Her own will, but only That of God, not only did they make feast, but they (all of the elements, the heavens, the sun, the earth) felt honored to have their Queen (Our Lady), and they ran around Her to form Her cortege and to pay obsequies to Her – the moon, by placing itself as footstool at Her feet; the stars as crown, the sun as diadem, the Angels as servants, and men as though in waiting.  Everyone – everyone paid Her honor and rendered their obsequies to Her.  There is no honor and glory which cannot be given to our Will – whether acting within Us, in Its own center, or dwelling in the creature.  …

OUR LADY OF LORETO

Act of Consecration to Our Lady of Loreto

O Immaculate Virgin Mary, we come to thee with confidence: welcome this day our humble prayer and our act of consecration.O Mother, thou didst carry thy Divine Saviour in thy most pure womb: receive our homage of faith and filial love as we come in spirit into thy Holy House. It iso, by the presence of the Holy Family, the holy home par excellence. And it is our wish that every Christian family be inspired by it.

From Jesus, all children learn to obey and to work. From thee, O Mary, all women learn humility and the spirit of sacrifice. From Joseph, who didst live for Jesus and for thee, all men learn to believe in God, to live in and for you, all men learn to believe in God, to live in the family and in society with fidelity and honesty. O Mary, we pray for our Pope and for the Universal Church, for our country and for all the nations of the world, for the suffering souls for all sinners. And we all wish to consecrate ourselves to thee.

Spiritually present in the Holy House, where thou didst conceive by the Holy Spirit, we want to repeat with lively faith the words of the Archangel Gabriel: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!” We want to invoke thee still, saying: “Hail Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church!”

We turn to thee O Mary. Receive our consecration to thine Immaculate heart. Totally thine, we wish to confirm by this act of love our unlimited love for Jesus, thy Son, and our hope in thee, our Mother. And thou, O Queen and Mother of Mercy, grant to thy children an abundance of heavenly blessings. Amen.

UNIVERSAL CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE
60025 LORETO (AN) ITALY —– TEL. 071/970.104

IN 2012 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Blessed the faithful
at the end of Mass in front the Basilica of Loreto, Italy

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI made a pastoral visit to Loreto on October 4, 2012. The visit was set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Blessed John XVIII’s visit to the Shrine of the Holy House in the Italian town.

The shrine, a Catholic place of pilgrimage visited by thousands each year, contains the house where the Virgin Mary lived.

Many saints, blesseds, and Popes have visited the house of Loreta. Amongst them were Saint Francis of Sales where he made his vows of celibacy in the Holy House; Saint Therese of Lisieux – before she went to ask the Pope for permission to enter the Carmel at the age of 15, she visited the Holy House; Saint Maximilian Kolbe – in his return to the city of the Immaculata, shortly before being taken to the concentration camp; and many other saints.

Pope St. John XXIII went to Loreto on October 4, 1962,
the day before convening the Second Vatican Council. ***

That was the first time in modern times that a Pope left the Vatican. 

Pope St. John XXIII asked the Virgin of Loreto for the protection of the Council

His Holiness Pope Emeritis Benedict XVI
Visits the Holy House of Loreto for Private Prayer
On the 50th anniversary of Blessed John XVIII’s visit to the Shrine

***

Article by junno arocho on from when
Pope Emeritis Benedict XVI made a Pastoral Visit to Loreto
to entrus the SYNOD OF BISHOPS AND YEAR OF FAITH
TO THE BLESSED MOTHER

By Junno Arocho

LORETO, Italy, OCT. 4, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Pope Benedict XVI made a pastoral visit today to the Marian Shrine of Loreto where he entrusted the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization and the Year of Faith to the Blessed Mother. The visit of the Holy Father also commemorates the 50th anniversary of Blessed Pope John XXIII’s visit to the shrine. The late Pope entrusted the Second Vatican Council to the Virgin Mary on the eve of its inauguration.

The shrine, a Catholic place of pilgrimage visited by thousands each year, contains the house where the Virgin Mary lived. Upon arriving via helicopter to Loreto, the Pope met with a community of Capuchin Friars before entering the shrine to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

The highlight of the day was the morning mass at the Piazza della Madonna di Loreto in front of the shrine. In his homily, the Pope reflected on the significance of the house of Mary in Loreto, where the Annunciation and the Incarnation took place. The Holy Father also reminded the faithful of Blessed Pope John XXIII invitation 50 years ago to “reflect on that union of heaven and earth, which is the purpose of the Incarnation and Redemption.”

“This invitation resounds today with particular urgency. In the present crisis affecting not only the economy but also many sectors of society, the Incarnation of the Son of God speaks to us of how important man is to God, and God to man. Without God, man ultimately chooses selfishness over solidarity and love, material things over values, having over being. We must return to God, so that man may return to being man,” the Pope said.

Pope Benedict XVI also said that even in the most difficult of times or moments of crisis, the mystery of the Incarnation provides hope and “that we are never alone, that God has come to humanity and that he accompanies us.”

Contemplating on the Annunciation, the Holy Father underlined the liberty given by God to choose His will freely. “But grace does not eliminate freedom; on the contrary it creates and sustains it. Faith removes nothing from the human creature; rather it permits his full and final realization,” the Holy Father said.

The Pope concluded his homily, entrusting the difficulties affecting the world to the Virgin Mary. Closing with a prayer, the Holy Father commended the upcoming Synod and Year of Faith as well. “Mother of the “yes”, you who heard Jesus, speak to us of him; tell us of your journey, that we may follow him on the path of faith; help us to proclaim him, that each person may welcome him and become the dwelling place of God. Amen,” the Pope said.