The best Christmas yet

I say it every year:  "This is the best Christmas yet." And so it is once more.  I have so much for which to be grateful to God, not the least of which is my Catholic Faith: without it,  today would be just another day.  Because the weather was so raw last night with blizzard skies and temperatures too cold for my youngest daughter to brave, I couldn't go to Midnight Mass:   it was the first time in many years that I had to miss it, and miss singing in the choir as well.  However, the good God saw fit to console me by allowing me to be present at all three Christmas Masses today, one after the other:  what perfect, unexpected joy!  Three Holy Masses on Christmas Day:  Heaven on earth!

 This year all four of my living children are with me, though my oldest son is quite ill just now.  My littlest one is spending another Christmas in Heaven, his ninth.  (Merry Christmas, Saint Thomas Edmund, whom I love so very much; as much as I miss you, I'm so happy that you are there with Our Blessed Mother.)

  Rivendell, the name which my children and I have given our little antique home on the Oregon Trail, is warm and snug in the midst of nearly a foot of snow;  it's lovely to look out at the perfect whiteness of it all from a toasty room while sipping hot tea all the while.  It is a happy home, thanks be to God, with good food and good friends wading through the snow to spend Christmas with us.

And to all of you wonderful friends I have met through this blog I send my thanks for your inspiring and encouraging words.  When I started writing "A Trail of Flowers" nearly a year ago as one of my New Year's resolutions I really had no idea what it would be, but it has become a channel through which the good God has connected me to friends I would have never met otherwise.  I am grateful for each and every one of you, and I promise to pray for your intentions as I ask for your prayers as well. Though he will not see this, I especially thank the one who inspired this blog in the first place;  may God bless him and all those he loves. God's ways are not our ways, thanks be to God:  they are so much better than we could ever imagine.  God is Love, and we must be His instruments.  May He use us all to do His will in this world so that we may all be with Him forever in the next.

A blessed Christmas to you all:  may it be for you the best one yet.

Blessed Christmas

My Christmas Rosary I say
For you upon this blessed day;
Each prayer a precious Christmas rose
To please the Baby Child, Who knows
How many joys I wish for you;
May every one of them come true!
--Anonymous

Star of My Heart

"Star of my heart, I follow from afar.
Sweet Love on high, lead on where shepherds are,
Where time is not, and only dreamers are.
Star from of old, the Magi-Kings are dead
And a foolish Saxon seeks the manger-bed.
O lead me to Jehovah's Child
Across this dreamland lone and wild,
Then will I speak this prayer unsaid,
And kiss His little haloed head —
"My star and I, we love thee, little Child."
Except the Christ be born again to-night
In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
The world will never see His kingdom bright.
Stars of all hearts, lead onward thro' the night
Past death-black deserts, doubts without a name,
Past hills of pain and mountains of new sin
To that far sky where mystic births begin,
Where dreaming ears the angel-song shall win.
Our Christmas shall be rare at dawning there,
And each shall find his brother fair,
Like a little child within:
All hearts of the earth shall find new birth
And wake, no more to sin."

--Vachel Lindsay

Hodie Christus natus est! A blessed Christmas to you and to those you love, dear readers.