Fr. Bill's Weekly Message for 12/14/97

Dear Parishioners:

The following is from the pen of Fulton Sheen. I couldn't do better.

"We say a person has a 'sense of humor' if he can see through things. Those who lack a sense of humor are said to be too thick.

"Humor is a kind of transparency as seriousness is an opaqueness. God made the world with a sense of humor, in the sense that we were to see Him through His creation: to see His Power in the mountains, His Beauty in the sunset, His Wisdom in a snowflake, His Love in the human heart.

"Poets have inherited this sense of humor for, like Thompson, they can look at the sun and see in it the host that is raised in benediction over the world, and at night set in the flaming monstrance of the west.

"Saints must have a sense of humor, so as to be able to see a resurrection through the trials and sorrows of life.

"Man loses his sense of humor through sin. He begins to take money seriously, flesh seriously, business seriously, food seriously. These have no other purpose than to satisfy him.

"Now Christmas Day was the restoration of humor, and those who displayed it most were the shepherds and the wise men. They came to this little Babe and 'saw through Him' - God Himself. His flesh was the sacrament of His Divinity.

"When the Babe grew, He taught in parables or with a sense of Divine Humor. Salt and camels, sheep and goats, patches on old clothing, wine in new bottles, businessmen, traders, were not to be taken seriously. All were telltale of something else.

"Christmas then is a romance and a joy only to those who have a sense of humor, whose vision is not opaque when they look at a Babe, but can see through Him and all the problems of life answered in the vision of a God Who appeared as a Man.

"They who pass through this life with that sense of humor, which is faith, will one day be rewarded by the one thing that will make heaven Heaven - His Smile."

God bless,

Fr. Bill


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