I am a rich man - Christmas present 2011

November 13th I started to listen to Christmas music for the new season of 2011.  It has been about a year and half since my dad past. (This will come back) I always start listening to Christmas music early.  I love it.  But it wasn’t until tonight I realized why I start so early.  And why I try to stretch Christmas out as long as I can by starting it as early as possible.  If I could, I would make it all life long.  I think my vision of heaven is the feeling of Christmas.  I know Christmas is different for everybody.  But I am talking about the status quo.  Peace on earth, goodwill to all men, women and children.

But tonight, my start of the Christmas season 2011 I had an epiphany.  Why do I enjoy this season so much?  It’s easy to say, that it is because of my childhood.  The presents.  Santa Claus.  The bigness of everything.  But it is.  Really it IS!   My childhood directly influences why I love Christmas so much and its not because of those things.  For my parents did everything to make Christmas special.  No, I did not get everything, or even THE present I wanted.  There was seldom the Red Ryder BB Gun under the tree.  But there was the possibility!  Oh, the possibility!  Oh the excitement!   And no matter what the big gift was, or the little one that was in the bottom of the stocking, it was special.   It was given with such love that still to this day, I have trouble fully understanding the amount of love that was in the present.   It usually changed everything for the next following year.  May it be a Commodore 64 (even though I barely knew what a computer was), or the matchbox motorcycle under the tree when I wanted a real one.  That made Christmas, it was the moments and the love within those moments.

Let’s not forget the TV.  The TV was the center of my family life growing up.  It was cartoons (animation) of Rudolph, Frosty, The Santa Clause, The little drummer boy, The Christmas Story, The Nativity; and all the music specials that feed into it all.  But there was also one thing; it was one of the two days we ALWAYS went to church.  Midnight Mass! (Even though I got to show off my new clothes as an 80′s teenager), it felt Holy.    It was the love incarnate, which made it special.  And it was my Dad.

My Dad’s favorite Christmas movie was a Wonderful Life.  As he was dyeing from cancer, he lived that.  It was a wonderful life for my Dad.  And he made Christmas that.  As much as he worked, as much time he spent from his family providing, he always made Christmas the pay off.  Not pay off in gifts, but pay off in making the season as he saw it.  Even though he didn’t practice his Catholic faith with piety, he lived it.  As my Mom says, she lives life as a prayer.  And that’s what my Dad did as well in his way.  And he made Christmas a prayer too, in the way he lived life.

Why am I rich man?    I bring you back to tonight.  I am sitting here listening to Christmas music for the first time for this Christmas season and I felt the Christmas spirit rising in me.  The warm thoughts of Christmas long ago started to flow, not quiet like Ebenezer, but flowing the same.   I found myself remembering certain moments.  Maybe gifts or gifts that wanted to be.  But the spirit arose.  And I was overwhelmed with my Dad’s spirit.  His Christmas Spirit, warmth and love surrounded me.  Crying, I looked down and found myself rubbing the palm of my hand……

I am a rich man.  I am my Dad’s son.  I have his name, and his ability to love.  And I feel his love radiating through every molecule that exist or I can imagine existing.  He is not gone, but in the room next to me.  And that’s the best Christmas present ever, and it happened in 2011.

May God keep you and bless you!

Wesolych Swiat

Sight, and how Jesus still heals - Readings Nov 14, 2011 Lk 18:35-43

“Son of David, have pity on me!”

Since my dad passed, the world has been a bit upside down for all of us in our family, to say the least.   There has been many blessings, and some blessings in disguise.  Reflecting on today’s Gospel, I looked at the blessings in disguise.

It’s easy to see the fruits of your faith when things are working out, or going the way you think or want them to go.  When things are not, it’s easy to feel trapped or helpless.  In some ways I feel like the blind man in today’s reading.  There are many things going on where it would be easy to say that the world is working against me.  I have cried “Lord, have mercy on me” many times dealing with my hardships.  But as today’s reading shows, the blind man was relentless with his faith.  And I have to ask myself, where has my faith wavered, where have I left out God and kept control myself.

It’s easy to cry out to the Lord about the injustice you see around you.  But do I petition the Lord to help me to “see” why the injustice and to have faith in the purpose of my path.  Or am I too busy planning how things should be and how I want God to make them for me.  I guess, if I was that blind man in the street and the Son of David was passing, he would turn to me and say “Ye have little faith”.

Many times Christ (and the Catechism of the Catholic Church) teaches us that we must have the faith of a child, to believe completely and freely.  The blind man, asked for pity, not even mercy.  He wanted his God to see him and for him to see God.  Are my cries to the Lord for me to see things His way, or is it to want him to make things the way I want them.

With today’s reading, for a brief moment, I can see.  The Lord is asking me to have faith that He will lead me where I need to be.  That the injustice I feel is a call to faith.  As long as I embrace it and ask Christ to be my light, I will see in faith the beauty of God’s way and see with clearer eyes.