Five Ways – Dec 25

December 25, 2025

1.  Children’s Joy.  Many Christian Churches observed Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025 as the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, with the Gospel reading Matthew 2, the Flight Into Egypt.  One nun asked her third graders to draw a picture of this episode.  All except one boy had the donkey led by St. Joseph and carrying Mary and Jesus fleeing into Egypt. The one boy had them in an airplane, literally on a flight into Egypt. The nun noticed a fourth person in the plane and asked the boy who that was. With a look of exasperation, he exclaimed: “Why that is Pontius, the Pilot!”  May this Christmas season remind us of family joy.

2.  Let us now prepare for the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, observed in many places from Jan. 18-25.  This year’s theme was prepared by the Churches of Armenia.  It is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians:  “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to be the one hope of your calling” (4:4). Materials may still be obtained from the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute.

3.  My gratitude to Most Rev. Bernard Hebda, the archbishop of St. Paul, MN, for reminding us in his Weekly Word of Dec. 29, 2025, than Pope Leo last week quoted the Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer regarding the meaning of Christmas:  “God marches right in …God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and the broken.” May we respond during the Christmas season.

4.  My gratitude to all who responded to the Five Ways e-letter of Oct.-Nov. 25 with prayers for my broken left humerus shoulder bone.  I am now back at the parish in Georgetown, MA, undergoing physical therapy at a local center every Monday and Friday through Feb. 2.  Please pray especially that I will do the exercises prescribed at home and completely recover.

May each of us have a happy and holy New Year.

In Christ’s love,

Fr. Harry Winter, O.M.I.

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