Joy runs through and through Luke’s Infancy Narrative. The angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary was a joyful one. “Then in her Magnificat, Mary “rejoices in God my Savior.” When Elizabeth gives birth to John, her neighbors and relatives rejoiced with her.” At the birth of Jesus, the angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds and proclaims “good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
Think of a time when you rejoiced in what someone else had done – a family member, a close friend. Whatever they did, you felt part of it. And you rejoiced.
That’s the kind of rejoicing Mary expresses in her Magnificat. She rejoices in “the greatness of the Lord: in “God my savior.” When she experiences firsthand how truly good God is, her heart is lifted. It is delight – pure joy, not at all self-conscious.
The best prayer of all is the kind I experience when there comes upon me a flood of realization about how good God is.
When I thank God for this, I am “blessing God.” Perhaps I don’t think of it that way – blessing God. But that’s what I’m doing, and it’s a fine form of prayer. Try it.
Spend some quiet time with the Lord.
St. Boniface was an eighth century monk who brought Christianity to Germany. In order to do so he had to overcome deep-rooted idolatry.
One of the best known episodes is the time when he stepped up to a great tree dedicated to the God Thor, and began to chop it down. The people shrank back in horror. But when the tree crashed to the ground and nothing happened, many were won over to Christianity.
When he was 80 years old, Boniface was attacked and brutally killed by a group of hostile pagans.
A later legend gives a different twist to the tree incident – and relates it to the Christmas tree.
As the legend goes, one day Boniface came upon some men gathered around a great oak tree, about to sacrifice a child to the god Thor. Boniface himself struck the tree down, and from its center there grew a small evergreen
Boniface told the people to take small evergreens into their homes and surround them with gifts.