Christmas: December 31st

Optional Memorial of St. Sylvester I, pope

MASS READINGS

December 31, 2018 (Readings on USCCB website)

COLLECT PRAYER

Come, O Lord, to the help of your people, sustained by the intercession of Pope Saint Sylvester, so that, running the course of this present life under your guidance we may happily attain life without end. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

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Old Calendar: St. Sylvester I ; Other Titles: New Year's Eve

Today is the seventh day in the octave of Christmas. The Church celebrates the optional memorial of St. Sylvester I, pope and confessor. He ruled the Church during the reign of Constantine when the Arian heresy and the Donatist schism had provoked great discord. He convoked the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.

Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas - Day Seven
The last day of the year is also the feast of St. Sylvester — bishop of Rome in 314. Constantine gave him the Lateran Palace, which became the cathedral church of Rome. Many legends exist about Sylvester. He supposedly cured Constantine from leprosy and later baptized him on his deathbed. New Year's Eve, along with its innocent gaiety, is really a day for serious reflection. On the eve of the civil New Year the children may join their parents in a holy hour, in prayer and thanksgiving for the gifts and benefits which God has given them in the past year, and to pray for necessary graces in the forthcoming civil year.

Day Seven activity (New Year's Eve Party)
Day Seven recipe (Silvesterpunsch)

St. Sylvester
St. Sylvester, a native Roman, was chosen by God to govern His holy Church during the first years of Her temporal prosperity and triumph over Her persecuting enemies. Pope Melchiades died in January, 314. St. Sylvester was chosen as his successor. He governed the Church for more than twenty-one years, ably organizing the discipline of the Roman Church, and taking part in the negotiations concerning Arianism and the Council of Nicaea. He also sent Legates to the first Ecumenical Council.

During his Pontificate were built the great churches founded at Rome by Constantine — the Basilica and baptistery of the Lateran, the Basilica of the Sessorian palace (Santa Croce), the Church of St. Peter in the Vatican, and several cemeterial churches over the graves of martyrs. No doubt St. Sylvester helped towards the construction of these churches. He was a friend of Emperor Constantine, confirmed the first General Council of Nicaea (325), and gave the Church a new discipline for the new era of peace. He might be called the first "peace Pope" after centuries of bloody persecution. He also established the Roman school of singing. On the Via Salaria he built a cemeterial church over the Catacomb of St. Priscilla, and it was in this church that he was buried when he died on December 31, 335.

Numerous legends dramatize his life and work, e.g., how he freed Constantine from leprosy by baptism; how he killed a ferocious dragon that was contaminating the air with his poisonous breath. Such legends were meant to portray the effects of baptism and Christianity's triumph over idolatry. For a long time the feast of St. Sylvester was a holyday of obligation. The Divine Office notes: He called the weekdays feria, because for the Christian every day is a "free day" (the term is still in use; thus Monday is feria secunda).

Compiled from Heavenly Friends, Rosalie Marie Levy and The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch

The Word Among Us

Meditation: John 1:1-18

7th Day within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord

We saw his glory. (John 1:14)

Before God became man in Jesus, the closest that any ordinary Jewish person came to “seeing” God’s glory occurred just once a year on the Day of Atonement. On that day, and only on that day, the high priest was allowed to enter the inner sanctuary of the Temple where God dwelt. No one else could encounter God and experience his glory face to face.

But when Jesus became one of us, he gave all of us the privilege of seeing God’s glory—because he himself is the glory of God! Jesus made something that was abstract into something that was personal and real. Imagine the emotion that his disciples felt when they told their fellow Jews, “No one has ever seen God,” but “we have seen his glory.”

Today’s Gospel contains many statements about Jesus that can sound abstract and a little mysterious. He is the bearer of “grace and truth” (John 1:14), the light shining “in the darkness” (1:5), and the one through whom we receive life (1:12). But far from being abstract, these words don’t describe something God does in a vacuum. They describe what Jesus wants to do for each of us.

Jesus wants to show you the difference between true life-giving thoughts and toxic, negative ones. He wants to shine the light of his mercy on the situations that you find hopeless and disappointing. And he wants to take the areas of your heart that feel dead and give them fresh strength and newness. Whatever it is that you most need, God has sent his Son to help you. He sent his Son so that you too could proclaim “I have seen his glory.”

God is not far away! He dwells with you and he wants to reveal himself to you in your everyday circumstances. So as you look toward 2019, spend some time asking him where you most need to see his glory in your life. Surrender those areas to him. Ask him how he wants to show you his grace and his truth in those situations in the coming year.

Jesus came to dwell among us so that we could witness his glory in every area of our lives—even those we have most given up on!

“Lord, open my eyes so that I can see your glory each day of this new year.”

1 John 2:18-21
Psalm 96:1-2, 11-13