December 24

A little girl

Had wandered in the night, and now within

The shadows of a broken stall, was waiting,

While the night winds and the breath of time

Were moving over her.

The beat of pulses and the hush of heat

Had made a silence more intent within

Surrounding silence. Deepening of night.

…And then a moment’s fall,

…A sigh, unheard within the dark, and then…

She…wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid

Him in a manger.

She knelt and held Him close against her heart,

And in the midnight, adoration fused

With human love, and was not separate.

And very near, the man named Joseph came.

He was the first

To find her thus, the first of all the world.

And when her faint smile called for him to take

Him for a breathless moment, he was first

To know there is no other blessedness.

For Reflection

What is Mary’s interior response to Jesus? Joseph’s? What is your response to Jesus when you behold Him in the Blessed Sacrament? When you receive Him into your being at Holy Communion? How can you increase your devotion to the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Entrust to Mary, Mother of God, your reception of her Son. Her intercession will yield abundant fruit, the Fruit of her womb.

(Excerpted from A Woman Wrapped in Silence By John W. Lynch)