Christmas Joy Is Never Eclipsed by Earthly Events

As I have noted in so many published commentaries in the past thirty-one years and even in my college lectures and various public addresses throughout my adult life, most of the Jews alive at the time of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Nativity in Bethlehem believed that the long-promised savior would deliver the Jews from their bondage to their Roman persecutors and occupiers and thus restore a territorial Israel to its place as the ruler of the peoples. This false concept of the Messias as a political redeemer is propagated today by the Talmudist, who, like their Abrahamic ancestors, believe that their deliverer will manifest himself thunderously out of a mountainside and then use armed force to slay Israel’s enemies.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would never admit the matter in quite those terms, it is nevertheless true that he believes he is on a mission from his false god to destroy all the enemies of Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah in particular at this time, to vanquish them once and for all and thus help to secure the Holy Land for the Jews to whom he believes it rightly belongs, and variations of this belief characterize every single secular ideology extant today as some look to the “left” or to the “right,” to Marxism or to “conservatism,” to statism or to libertarianism, to globalism or to nationalism.

There are those who believe that Donald John Trump, who is responsible for unleashing a global genocide by means of his “Operation Warp Speed” that he insists in his own fanciful, narcissistic view of things, has saved up to “one hundred million lives,” will “save” the United States of America from the totalitarianism of the deep state elitists, and there are those who believe that Trump poses such a mortal threat to their view of an one-party “democracy” from which no one can dissent legitimately that the levers of judicial process have to be weaponized to disqualify from holding the presidency and to do everything imaginable to put him jail for the rest of his life while placing his followers on “terrorist watch” group lists. This is all part of what I have long referred to as the illusion of secular salvation, an illusion that clouds the minds even of many fully traditional Catholics to the extent that the events of this passing world are permitted to intrude upon or perhaps even eclipse the joys of Christmas, the penances of Lent, the glories of Easter, and the season of Pentecost in which we recall the beginning of Holy Mother Church’s missionary work to convert men and their nations to the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be true order within the souls of men, an order that is but the necessary condition for well-ordered relations among men within and among nations.

Our ancient adversary, who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls, is busy at work now during Octave of Christmas to deceive Catholics and non-Catholics alike that it is even necessary to “cancel” the joy of Christmas because of various events in the world, including very particularly the continuing genocide of innocent civilians in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force in its request to eradicate the Mohammedan terrorist organization Hamas without realizing its operation is only recruiting future leaders for Hamas just as its invasion of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982, which was designed to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and to kill Yasir Arafat, only served to make the PLO stronger to such an extent that it was only eleven years later that Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace agreement at the White House on September 12, 1993. There are Protestant ministers even a Catholic presbyter or two who believe that the State of Israel’s butchery has obliterated the joy of Christmas.

Here are a few examples of this utterly obscene view of the Nativity of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity of the Most Pure Virgin Mary, in Bethlehem, at Midnight, in piercing cold that heralds our redemption from a slavery to sin and the punishment for it by eternal death that was the unhappy lot of the children of Adam prior to Good Friday:

The town best known as the birthplace of Christ can expect a further exodus of Jesus' followers after canceling Christmas celebrations and removing festive decorations, a former Catholic priest told Fox News.

"You have a town … that is no longer Christian," theologian Jonathan Morris told Fox News. "Even an essential holiday like Christmas will not be respected."

Officials in Bethlehem, the biblical city in the West Bank where Jesus was born, announced Nov. 14 that Christmas decorations wouldn't be displayed and that holiday celebrations would be canceled to show solidarity with Gaza amid ongoing bloodshed from the Israel-Hamas war. Year-round Christmas decorations would also be removed "in honor of the martyrs and in solidarity with our people in Gaza," the city council posted on Facebook.

"We're seeing a political statement overtaking something that we Christians and that the Christians of Bethlehem consider to be so sacred," Morris said. "When you turn over a Christian holiday — a sacred holiday — to politicians, it's going to be desecrated, and that's what we're seeing in Bethlehem." 

"They are saying 'anyone who attacks our Palestinian brothers … we are going to protect them, we are going to defend them, and we're not going to have a celebration here,'" Morris said. 

The former priest said the elimination of holiday decor and celebrations has destroyed tourism, which accounts for 90% of Bethlehem's revenue, according to The Jerusalem Post.

"That's how [Christians] made a living," Morris said. "So, we can be sure that not only has tourism dropped off almost entirely, but there will be a further exodus of Christians from Bethlehem, and that's tragic." 

A Bethlehem city spokesperson told The Telegraph in November that celebrating Christmas wouldn't be appropriate.

"The reason is the general situation in Palestine; people are not really into any celebration, they are sad, angry and upset; our people in Gaza are being massacred and killed in cold blood," the spokesperson told the outlet. "Therefore, it is not appropriate at all to have such festivities while there is a massacre happening in Gaza and attacks in the West Bank."

Meanwhile, Christians have been increasingly persecuted, becoming targets of religious harassment worldwide, according to an International Christian Concern report published Nov. 1. Morris said Hamas and other terrorist organizations have amplified Christians' risk of persecution.

"Jews are not welcome," Morris said. "Christians are not welcome."

"That's why Israel is right to make sure that they are defending freedom and innocent life," Morris continued. "The sad part is, when you have terrorists, there's no speaking sense to them, and they've been inflicting pain on the Palestinian Christians for a very long time. Many Christians have fled." (Jesus was born in this village. Now they’ve canceled Christmas. Are his followers no longer welcome?.)

Putting aside former Legionaries of Christ presbyter Jonathan Morris’s praise of the nonexistent desire of the Zionists to “defend freedom and innocent life” aside, except to note that the Israeli Defense Force has about as much respect for the Christians as the members of Hamas have for either Christians or Jews, Morris is correct to state that the de-Christianization of the West Bank, which, though unstated by Morris, has been caused by the Mohammedans and, of course, the Israelis by means of their policies of building settlements on the West Bank has left the City of David, Bethlehem, in the hands of those who hate Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and those who desire engage in what they believe is worship at the very place of His Sacred Nativity.

This demonstrates once again that there will never be any kind of peace or true justice in the land of Our Lord’s Nativity, Hidden Years, and Public Life and Ministry—the very land upon whose soil He wrought our Redemption by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday as He offered Himself in a bloody manner to His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal God the Father in atonement for our sins, a sacrifice that is perpetuated every time a true priest offers this Sacrifice in an unbloody manner in Holy Mass, until everyone in the Holy Land is converted to the true Faith and exclaim, “Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomini Domine, Hosanna in Excelsis.”

The Jews are suffering at the hands of Hamas as a chastisement for their continued unbelief and, in turn, the Jews are imposing such suffering on Hamas and the mostly Mohammedan population of  Gaza as a chastisement for their unbelief in the Incarnation, Nativity, Passion, Death, Resurrection of Ascension of the God-Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who had sanctified the ground on which he toiled for thirty years at manual labor while sanctifying domestic life as He submitted Himself in humility and obedience to His foster-Father and His Most Blessed Mother and upon which He preached and performed miracles prior to undergoing the fearful events of His Sacred Passion. The current conflict in the land chosen by Our Lord Himself onto which to be born and to redeem us should be seen as an opportunity to transcend the ephemeral events of the world to focus on the fact that Christmas Day made possible the only liberation that matters, namely, our liberation from captivity to the devil by means of Original Sin and the outflowing of redemptive graces won He won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Fallen men, as stupid and self-centered now as they were 2023 years ago, continue to believe in the myth of secular salvation as they continue to place nationalist and/or ideological causes above everything up to and including the subordination of the events of our redemption to geopolitical, ethnic, ideological, or nationalistic goals that must be “worshiped” as even more important than our salvation from sin and eternal death.

These blasphemous efforts to “cancel” Christmas communicate that the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis is of nature as to trump all mention of the lowly manner in which the King of Kings was born miraculously of His Virginal Mother and wrapped in swaddling clothes while being placed in a manager that served as feeding trough for the very stable animals whose breath warmed Him as He was adored by Our Lady, Saint Joseph, the rugged shepherds and the angels who had informed them that their redemption was at hand. These blasphemous efforts have included a conciliar presbyter trying to manipulate Our Lord into a champion of the Palestinian nationalist cause and of mindless leftists in the City of New York shouting that “Christmas is canceled!" while carrying sacrilegious displays of bloody mangers:

A priest told CNN hosts Monday morning that Christmas is the story of a “Palestinian Jew” in “occupied territory.”

CNN’s Poppy Harlow asked Catholic priest Fr. Edward Beck to speak to feelings of hopelessness as wars continue to rage around the world.

“Can I ask you the question that my kids ask me, and I think most people’s kids ask them? Then why do such bad things happen? As we sit here on Christmas there is still so much pain and suffering, particularly right now in the world. Can you speak to those who feel hopeless this morning, father?”

“I don’t think, Poppy, we get an answer for the why, but I think the message of Christmas is that God enters into it with us and we’re not alone in it,” Beck said.

“What I’m so struck by is that the story of Christmas is about a Palestinian Jew. How often do you find those words put together?” he continued. “A Palestinian Jew born into a time when his country was occupied, right? They can’t find a place for her to even give birth, his mother. They’re homeless. They eventually have to flee as refugees into Egypt, no less. I mean, you can’t make up the parallels to our current world situation right now.”

“So in some way that is who we believe God becomes. Born into that situation, and yet that very man Jesus says, ‘Love one another. Love your enemies. There is hope. There is light in the darkness. I’m attesting to that,'” Beck told Harlow. “So somehow that God enters that experience of suffering and that struggle and is actually born into it, that is what is so miraculous about the celebration for me.” (Priest Tells CNN Hosts That X-Mas Is About A ‘Palestinian Jew’ In ‘Occupied Territory’.)

What utter and complete blasphemy.

First, the poor presbyter uses the fact of Roman occupation of the Holy Land to say that Our Lord was born in “occupied territory,” implying that He was concerned about the political liberation of the Jews from their Roman oppressors. This is little other than an inchoate attempt to justify “liberation theology” as applied to the Palestinian situation.

Second, “Father Beck’s” inability to answer why the suffering occurs in the world, including in the Holy Land at this time, betrays him as a theological ignoramus on a par with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who answered “I don’t know” when a young girl asked him why tragedies such as caused Typhoon Haiyan in 2015 occurred.

Hey, “Father” Beck, human suffering and misery are the consequences of Original Sin and of our own Actual Sins. Unbelief is a sin, and it is a sin that must be punished. The Israelis are suffering for their own unbelief and so are the Palestinian Mohammedans. The fact that Christians are suffering as well means that they have an opportunity to unite those sufferings to those of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by offering them to Him as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in reparation for their own sins and for the conversion of all others, including their fellow countrymen.

Sure, the Palestinians are suffering injustices from the Israelis in the natural order of things. However, a putative priest must always be willing to place the natural events of this passing, mortal vale of tears into their deeper supernatural significance. Many conciliar presbyters are incapable of even thinking in this manner, something that should be a part of their baptismal sensus Catholicus.

Third, Father Beck seems incapable of saying that Our Lord born us for in Bethlehem in humble conditions of poverty and anonymity to win our salvation for us as He suffered in ignominy as a presumed “blasphemer” by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood. Our Lord did not become Incarnate in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation to, in effect, tell us all to “have a nice day.” He came preach the truth of the true Faith and lead all men to salvation through the Church He created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

In addition to supposed priests babbling ideologically based blasphemies, there are the committed leftist nihilists who are always at the ready to mock and blaspheme everything to do with Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the Holy Faith:

They’re out to “cancel” Christmas.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters converged on Midtown Monday, lugging a blood-red mock Nativity scene and chanting “Christmas is canceled here.”

“Long live the intifada,” the crowd of about 500 demonstrators yelled, using the Arabic word for “rebellion” or “uprising,” as they mobbed the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree where revelers were enjoying the holiday.

“While Ur Shopping Bombs are Dropping,” read one of the signs carried by the protesters.

“No Joy In Genocide,” said another, written atop the faux Nativity scene, which was splattered in what appeared to be fake blood and which several of the demonstrators carried on their shoulders. (Pro-Palestinian protesters out to cancel Christmas as they storm NYC again.)

No worldly crisis can ever suppress the joy of the annual celebration of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Nativity on Christmas Day. Those who dare to declare that Christmas is “canceled” may very well find themselves “canceled” at the moment of their own Particular Judgments.

Mindful of the distractions posed by the world, the flesh, and the devil, Pope Leo XIII wrote the following on Christmas Day 1888 on Exeunte Iam Anno:

6. If We look into the kind of life men lead everywhere, it would be impossible to avoid the conclusion that public and private morals differ much from the precepts of the Gospel. Too sadly, alas, do the words of the Apostle St. John apply to our age, “all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life.”[1] For in truth, most men, with little care whence they come or whither they go, place all their thoughts and care upon the weak and fleeting goods of this life; contrary to nature and right reason they willingly give themselves up to those ways of which their reason tells them they should be the masters. It is a short step from the desire of luxury to the striving after the means to obtain it. Hence arises an unbridled greed for money, which blinds those whom it has led captive, and in the fulfillment of its passion hurries them madly along, often without regard for justice or injustice, and not seldom accompanied by a disgraceful contempt for the poverty of their neighbor. Thus many who live in the lap of luxury call themselves brethren of the multitude whom in their heart of hearts they despise; and in the same way with minds puffed up by pride, they take no thought to obey any law, or fear any power. They call selflove liberty, and think themselves “born free like a wild ass’s colt.[2] Snares and temptation to sin abound; We know that impious or immoral dramas are exhibited on the stage; that books and journals are written to jeer at virtue and ennoble crime; that the very arts, which were intended to give pleasure and proper recreation, have been made to minister to impurity. Nor can We look to the future without fear, for new seeds of evil are sown, and as it were poured into the heart of the rising generation. As for the public schools, there is no ecclesiastical authority left in them, and in the years when it is most fitting for tender minds to be trained carefully in Christian virtue, the precepts of religion are for the most part unheard. Men more advanced in age encounter a yet graver peril from evil teaching, which is of such a kind as to blind the young by misleading words, instead of filling them with the knowledge of the truth. Many now-adays seek to learn by the aid of reason alone, laying divine faith entirely aside; and, through the removal of its bright light, they stumble and fail to discern the truth, teaching for instance, that matter alone exists in the world; that men and beasts have the same origin and a like nature; there are some, indeed, who go so far as to doubt the existence of God, the Ruler and Maker of the World, or who err most grievously, like the heathens, as to the nature of God. Hence the very nature and form of virtue, justice, and duty are of necessity destroyed. Thus it is that while they hold up to admiration the high authority of reason, and unduly elevate the subtlety of the human intellect, they fall into the just punishment of pride through ignorance of what is of more importance.

7. When the mind has thus been poisoned, at the same time the moral character becomes deeply and essentially corrupted; and such a state can only be cured with the utmost difficulty in this class of men, because on the one hand wrong opinions vitiate their judgment of what is right, and on the other the light of Christian faith, which is the principle and basis of all justice, is extinguished. (Pope Leo XIII, Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

This was written one hundred thirty-five years ago but it is a perfect description of the world today on Christmas Day, 2023.

His Holiness, though, gave us the antidote for the misery caused by human pride’s choosing salvation in all the wrong places: Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Faith:

There is, nevertheless, some consolation for Us even in looking on these evils, and We may lift up Our heart in hope. For God “created all things that they might be: and He made the nations of the earth for health.”[3] But as all this world cannot be upheld but by His providence and divinity, so also men can only be healed by His power, of Whose goodness they were called from death to life. For Jesus Christ redeemed the human race once by the shedding of His blood, but the power of so great a work and gift is for all ages; “neither is there salvation in any other.”[4] Hence they who strive by the enforcement of law to extinguish the growing flame of lawless desire, strive indeed for justice; but let them know that they will labor with no result, or next to none, as long as they obstinately reject the power of the gospel and refuse the assistance of the Church. Thus will the evil alone be cured, by changing their ways, and returning back in their public and private life to Jesus Christ and Christianity. (Pope Leo XIII, Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

“Neither is there salvation in any other.”

There is no salvation in the American cause or the Palestinian cause or the Russian cause or the Ukrainian cause.

There is no salvation in Marxism-Leninism, Socialism, Conservativism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Anarcho-Libertarianism, Nihilism, Naturalism, Secularism, Utilitarianism, Positivism, Relativism, Immanentism, Globalism, Statism, Evolutionism, Environmentalism, Feminism, Racialism, Hegelianism, Protestantism, Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, Mohammedanism, Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Bahai-ism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Animism, Theosophy, Rationalism, Deism, Nazism, Fascism, Capitalism, Mormonism, Paganism, Pantheism, Heathenism, Hedonism, Freudianism, or any other kind of “ism” except Catholicism.

Quoting Saint Ambrose, Pope Leo XIII explained that nothing is the equal of Holy Mother Church”

We are greatly consoled by the words of the Apostle Paul, “For all things are yours; and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”[21] By the hidden dispensation of divine providence the course of earthly things is so guided that all things that happen to man turn out to the glory of God for the salvation of those who are true disciples of Jesus Christ. Of these the mother and guide, the leader and guardian is the Church; which being united to Christ her spouse in intimate and unchangeable charity is also joined to Him by a common cause of battle and of victory. Hence We are not, and cannot be anxious on account of the Church, but We greatly fear for the salvation of very many, who proudly despise the Church, and by every kind of error rush to ruin; We are concerned for those States which We cannot but see are turned from God and sleeping in the midst of danger in dull security and insensibility. “Nothing is equal to the Church;” (says St. John Chrysostom,) “how many have opposed the Church and have themselves perished? The Church reaches to the heavens; such is the Church’s greatness. She conquers when attacked; when beset by snares she triumphs; she struggles and is not overthrown, she fights and is not conquered.” Not only is she not conquered, but she preserves that corrective power over nature, and that effective strength of life that springs from God Himself, and is unchanged by time. And, if by this power she has freed the world grown old in vice and lost in superstition, why should she not again recover it when gone astray? Let strife and suspicion at length cease, let all obstacles be removed, give the possession of all her rights to the Church, whose duty it is to guard and spread abroad the benefits gained by Jesus Christ, then We shall know by experience, where the light of the Gospel is, and what the power of Christ can do. 15. This year, which is now coming to an end, has given, as We have said, many signs of a reviving faith. Would that like the spark it might grow to an ever-increasing flame, which, by burning up the roots of sin, may open a way for the restoration of morals and for salutary counsels. We, indeed, who steer the mystical barque of the Church in such a storm, fix Our mind and heart upon the Divine Pilot Who holds the helm and sits unseen. Thou seest, Lord, how the winds have borne down on every side, how the sea rages and the waves are lashed to fury. Command, we beseech Thee, Who alone canst, the winds and the sea. Give back to man that tranquillity and order-that true peace which the world cannot give. By Thy grace let man be restored to proper order with faith in God, as in duty bound, with justice and love towards our neighbor, with temperance as to ourselves, and with passions controlled by reason. Let Thy kingdom come, let the duty of submitting to Thee and serving Thee be learnt by those who, far from Thee, seek truth and salvation to no purpose. In Thy laws there is justice and fatherly kindness; Thou grantest of Thy own good will the power to keep them. The life of a man on earth is a warfare, but Thou lookest down upon the struggle and helpest man to conquer, Thou raisest him that falls, and crownest him that triumphs. (Pope Leo XIII, Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

Yes, far from Our Lord and His Holy Church, they who seek truth and salvation in other places will seek it to no purpose, which describe the canonization of the Palestinian cause at present or any nationalistic cause now or in the past.

It was in the midst of the terrible events of World War II that Pope Leo XIII wrote the following about the joy and the hope of Christmas that transcends all the events of the world:

As the Holy Christmas Season comes round each year, the message of Jesus, Who is light in the midst of darkness, echoes once more from the Crib of Bethlehem in the ears of Christians and re-echoes in their hearts with an ever new freshness of joy and piety. It is a message which lights up with heavenly truth a world that is plunged in darkness by fatal errors. It infuses exuberant and trustful joy into mankind, torn by the anxiety of deep, bitter sorrow. It proclaims liberty to the sons of Adam, shackled with the chains of sin and guilt. It promises mercy, love, peace to the countless hosts of those in suffering and tribulation who see their happiness Shattered and their efforts broken in the tempestuous strife and hate of our stormy days.

The church bells, which announce this message in every continent, not only recall the gift which God made to mankind at the dawn of the Christian Era; they also announce and proclaim a consoling reality of the present, a reality which is eternally young, living and lifegiving; it is the reality of the “True Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this World,” and which knows no setting. The Eternal Word, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, began His mission of saving and redeeming the human race by being born in the squalor of a stable and by thus ennobling and hallowing poverty.

He thus proclaimed and consecrated a message which is still, today, the Word of Eternal Life. That message can solve the most tortuous questions, unsolved and insoluble for those who bring to their investigations a mentality and an apparatus which are ephemeral and merely human; and those questions stand up, bleeding, imperiously demanding an answer, before the thought and the feeling of embittered and exasperated mankind.

The watchword “I have compassion on the multitude” is for Us a sacred trust which may not be abused; it remains strong, and impelling in all times and in all human situations, as it was the distinguishing mark of Jesus.

The Church would be untrue to herself, ceasing to be a mother, if she turned a deaf ear to her children’s anguished cries, which reach her from every class of the human family. She does not intend to take sides for any of the particular forms in which the several peoples and States strive to solve the gigantic problems of domestic order or international collaboration, as long as these forms conform to the law of God. But on the other hand, as the “Pillar and Ground of Truth” and guardian, by the will of God and the mandate of Christ, of the natural and supernatural order, the Church cannot renounce her right to proclaim to her sons and to the whole world the unchanging basic laws, saving them from every perversion, frustration, corruption, false interpretation and error. . . .

And where could you with greater assurance and trust and with more efficacious faith place this vow for the renewal of society than at the foot of the “Desired of all Nations” Who lies before us in the crib with all the charm of His sweet humanity as a Babe, but also in the dynamic attraction of His incipient mission as Redeemer? Where could this noble and holy crusade for the cleaning and renewal of society have a more significant consecration or find a more potent inspiration than at Bethlehem, where the new Adam appears in the adorable mystery of the Incarnation? For it is at His fountains of truth and grace that mankind should find the water of life if it is not to perish in the desert of this life; “Of His fullness we all have received.” His fullness of grace and truth grows as freely today as it has for twenty centuries on the world.

His light can overcome the darkness, the rays of His love can conquer the icy egoism which holds so many back from becoming great and conspicuous in their higher life. To you, crusader-volunteers of a distinguished new society, live up to the new call for moral and Christian rebirth, declare war on the darkness which comes from deserting God, of the coolness that comes from strife between brothers. It is a fight for the human race, which is gravely ill and must be healed in the name of conscience ennobled by Christianity.

May Our blessing and Our paternal good wishes and encouragement go with your generous enterprise, and may they remain with all those who do not shirk hard sacrifices — those weapons which are more potent than any steel to combat the evil from which society suffers. Over your crusade for a social, human and Christian ideal may there shine out as a consolation and an inspiration the star that stands over the Grotto of Bethlehem, the first and the perennial star of the Christian Era. From the sign of it every faithful heart drew, draws and ever will draw strength; “If armies in camp should stand against me, my heart shall not fear.” Where that star shines, there is Christ. “With Him for leader we shall not wander; through Him let us go to Him, that with the Child that is born today we may rejoice. (Pope Pius XII, Christmas Message, December 25. 1942.)

We rejoice on Christmas Day no matter our own personal circumstances and no matter the events transpiring in the world. As Pope Pius XII above:

His light can overcome the darkness, the rays of His love can conquer the icy egoism which holds so many back from becoming great and conspicuous in their higher life. (Pope Pius XII, Christmas Message, December 25. 1942.)

We must always rise above the events of the world, and we must always celebrate Christmas, the Octave of Christmas, and the entirety of the Christmas Season, which is impinged in this year’s liturgical calendar with the start of Septuagesima on Sunday, January 28, 2024, five days before Candlemas, and, indeed, throughout the course of our entire lives.

Christian joy must the keynote of our lives at all times, especially in times of pain, suffering, and tragedy.

Yes, we rejoice on Christmas Day and always because we are, through no merits of our own, members of the true Church and have been given a Most Blessed Mother Who desires that we supplicate her now in the manger as she kneels before her Infant Son and as she stands so valiantly at the foot of her Divine Son’s Most Holy Cross in every offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Every Rosary we pray can help to plant the seeds for the conversion of men and the world from this cause or that cause to the only cause that matters, the Catholic cause to seek the sanctification and salvation of all men who have been given a Redeemer to adore, obey, and love now and for all eternity in Heaven.