The future of faith in our world passes through Christian unity. Yes, we do not agree on everything. Yes, we have convictions that sometimes seem incompatible, or are incompatible. But that is precisely why we choose to love each other. Love is stronger than all disagreements and divisions. […] Jesus Christ is a bond that is stronger and deeper than our cultures, our political options, and even than our doctrines. The Lord! Jesus the Lord! Look at Him who gave His life for us!

OOoOooooOOOO the Creator wanted to become a creature

In other words, the Mass has an evangelical purpose apart from which it cannot be understood: we are called out of the world to be nourished and equipped (by the hearing and preaching of the Word, by the sacraments, and by fellowship) in order to be sent back out into the world to share the Gospel, engage in the ministry of reconciliation, and pass on to others the newness of spiritual life that Christ died to give.

As Bishop Barron puts it, after participating in the Mass and receiving Holy Communion, we are meant "to Christify the world," like re-oxygenated red blood cells bringing life to the rest of the body. As Christ breathed upon his apostles (John 20:22), and as he sent the Holy Spirit upon them at Pentecost in the form of wind (Acts 2:2), he continues to "breathe" the Holy Spirit in us through the Mass, which is an encounter in his Sacred Heart. Let us never separate ourselves from this vital connection to him — for our own sake and for the sake of the world.

Man is a relational being. And if his first, fundamental relationship is disturbed —his relationship with God— then nothing else can truly be in order. This is where the priority lies in Jesus’ message and ministry: before all else, he wants to point man toward the essence of his malady, and to show him — if you are not healed there, then however many good things you may find, you are not truly healed.

Caryll Houselander (The Passion of the Infant Christ, page 25)

Pope Benedict XVI (Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, page 224), trans. Philip Whitmore

A Prayer to the Great Little One

O very amiable Jesus, known as the Great Little One, grant me the grace to understand all the great truths expressed by this title and to realize its lessons. You are little by Your human nature, little by the state of childhood into which Your love has reduced You and by the rank You wanted to take among mankind, in order to enlighten and save us. You are a holy Child.

But at the same time You are great, beyond any greatness. You are great by Your divine nature, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, absolutely infinite. You are great by Your Person, the Person of the Word, in all equal to the Divine Persons of the blessed Trinity. You are great by the splendor of mercy and the source of all our grace and holiness. This is why, Holy Child, You inspire us so much. To secure my salvation and to become worthy of it, I, too, must be little and great.

I am little by the imperfection of my nature, by the lamentable state in which original sin has left us, by the consequences of my own sins. But, in order to imitate Your littleness and humility, I must become aware of this state of mine; I must have a permanent conviction thereof, which will inspire my prayers and all my hopes in heaven, my attitude towards all my neighbors. I have to be little in order to resemble You.

I must also be great. This I am by the eternal destiny You provided for me and all the possibilities of potential perfection You have created in me. I must become great by the reality of the virtues and of the grace, by the richness of supernatural gifts, the aim of which is to make me similar to You, to take part in Your eternal inheritance, the heavenly beatitude.

Grant me, O Jesus, the grace to reproduce in myself the resemblance of Your littleness and greatness. Be, O Divine Great Little One, the Model and the Source of my salvation and my holiness. Amen.

A little Child is born for us today; little and yet called the Mighty God, alleluia! Párvulus fílius hódie natus est nobis, et vocábitur Deus fortis, allelúia.

Pope Leo's January 2026 Prayer Intention: For Greater Prayer with God's Word

Lord Jesus, living Word of the Father, in You we find the light that guides our steps. We know that the human heart is restless, hungry for meaning, and only Your Gospel can give it peace and fullness.

Teach us to listen to You each day in the Scriptures, to let ourselves be challenged by Your voice, and to discern our decisions through closeness to Your Heart.

May Your Word be nourishment in weariness, hope in darkness, and the strength of our communities.

Lord, may Your Word never be absent from our lips or from our hearts — the Word that makes us sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, disciples and missionaries of Your kingdom.

Make us a Church that prays with the Word, that is built upon it and shares it with joy, so that in every person the hope of a new world may be born again.

May our faith grow in the encounter with You through Your Word, moving us from our hearts to reach out to others, to serve the most vulnerable, to forgive, to build bridges, and to proclaim life. Amen.

The Gospel we have just heard [Luke 2:1-14] opens with sober and precise words: In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census should be taken of the whole world. Luke places the birth of Jesus within the broader history of the world, marked by political decisions, balances of power, and logic that seems to govern the course of events. As then, history today is marked by decrees, political decisions, balances of power that often seem to determine the destiny of peoples. The Holy Land bears witness to this; the choices of the powerful have concrete consequences on the lives of millions of people.

Christmas, however, invites us to look beyond the logic of domination; to rediscover the power of love, of solidarity, and of justice. It is not a tale suspended outside of time, but an event that happens as history proceeds along paths we do not always understand and often do not choose.

The beginning of the Gospel passage is not a simple detail in a narrative, but rather a profoundly theological choice. Luke the evangelist tells us that God is not afraid of human history, even when it appears confused; marked by injustice, violence, and domination. God does not create a parallel history. He does not enter the world when everything is finally ordered and pacified. He enters real, concrete, sometimes harsh history and makes it His own from within.

There are those who think that only when material misery is done away with, and there is security for everyone, will Christ come into His own in men's lives. "Seek ye first all these other things and the Kingdom of Heaven shall be added to you" is the faith of the century.

Christ was born not because there was joy in the world, but because there was suffering in it. Not to riches, but to poverty. Not to satiety but to hunger and thirst. Not to security, but to danger, to exile, to homelessness, to destitution and crucifixion.

His incarnation now, in us, is in the suffering world as it is; it is not reserved for a Utopia that will never be; it does not differ from His first coming in Bethlehem, His birth in squalor, in dire poverty, in a strange city. It is the same birth, here and now. There is incarnation always, everywhere.

Thinking about how one non-canonical legend says that after giving the Child gifts, the Magi painted an image of Jesus with His mother and took the likeness of them back home. And how I didn’t notice this before, but Pope Benedict mentions how Saint Joseph is absent from the canonical narrative. And I don’t know what that means, but it’s interesting