When I was asked to write a reflection for January for the Pallottine website, the first thing that came to mind was the pang of sadness that I always feel when the Christmas season ends towards the beginning of this month. I love the beauty and innocence and romance of Christmas with all of its wonderful outward manifestations – the tree, the candles, the cards, the carols, and especially the crib – I always feel a twinge of sadness as it is taken down and the figures carefully packed away for another year. However, others, I know, sometimes feel differently.

One of our priests had just happily packed away the crib in his church one January with a certain measure of relief that it was all over for another year when he received a phone call from a young man asking him if he would be interested in a set of crib figures. He was strongly tempted to tell the man in no uncertain terms that he had just happily packed the crib away for another year and that it was a ridiculous time to be phoning him with such an offer, when he remembered his mother’s constant good advice as he was growing up: “If you are ever offered something, say yes, and you can always get rid of it afterwards if it is no good to you”. So, as a good son of his mother, he accepted the offer of the figures, and was he glad when he learnt more about them. The young man, Joseph, was phoning from an estate agent’s which was closing down. They had been using these figures in their front window Christmas display for many years - a set of beautiful 18^th Century French half life-sized carved wooden figures. The business could have sold them for a lot of money, but instead had wanted to find a living home for them in a church. Thanks to Fr. Tom’s mother’s advice, the lovely church of Star of the Sea in Hastings has a wonderful set of 18^th Century French carved wooden crib figures which add so much to the beauty of the celebration of Christmas there every year.

This story strikes me as a kind of parable of how God can sometimes draw us back to the enduring wonder of the Christmas event in our day to day lives when we least expect it. We, as individuals and as Church, can be tempted all too quickly to pack away the Christ Child after Christmas in order to get on with the real business of life, even to get on with the real business of the adult Christ. We move so quickly in January in the Church’s Liturgy from the infant Christ to the adult Christ that we can risk losing something that is essential to healthy Christian spirituality and life and community – a sense of romance and childlike wonder in the most simple and humble and seemingly ordinary things in life, and especially at the extraordinary way in which God has become one of us in Christ as a tiny, innocent, vulnerable infant. Nothing else in all creation speaks to us so luminously and so eloquently of the infinite value of every human being in the eyes of God and of the infinite love of God for every person made in his image and likeness. What heart can fail to be touched with wonder and gratitude when the light of this infinite tenderness and humility and goodness of God dawns on it?

St. Vincent Pallotti speaks of spiritual infancy as a virtue which is essential to all in the Pallottine family. We are called to be first to imitate Jesus in his infancy if we are to be able to work effectively for the eternal salvation of others and to effectively encourage others to become actively involved in this greatest of tasks of incarnating the infinite love of Christ in our lives and in our world. He mentions some of the qualities of this spiritual infancy: ‘ingenuousness, candour, the simplicity of the dove together with the prudence of the serpent, sweetness and modesty’.

January is an important month in the Pallottine calendar, a month in which St. Vincent himself instituted the celebration of the Octave of the Epiphany in Rome from January 6^th to the 13^th, and one in which we celebrate his feast on the date of his death, January 22^nd. These feasts both show the opening out of God’s love to embrace all people and indeed all creation: the Epiphany marks the anticipation of the revelation of Christ to all the peoples of the world in the ‘unveiling’ of the infant Jesus to the wise men, while the feast of St. Vincent celebrates the life and charism of he who was called to proclaim the Universal Apostolate, the vocation of all the baptised, indeed of all people of good will, to cooperate with God and with each other in incarnating Christ’s love and building his kingdom in our world in every possible way. Yes, we are called to do this as adults if we are adults, to develop our faith intellectually and spiritually, to strive for a more profound and mature freedom in our life of discipleship, to give up childish ways of thinking and acting and reacting as individuals and as communities and as a Church (cf. 1 Co 13:11). We are also called to do all this, however, with childlike hearts, opened in simplicity to the God who desires to share our lives with us - and to those, made in his image and likeness, to whom he sends us to love and serve in his name. He will guide us in his paths if we will only make room for him and ponder all that he has done for us and continues to offer to us at each moment of our lives. We pray, like St. Vincent, that each moment of Christ’s growth to maturity in his humanity will touch and bless and redeem each corresponding moment of our lives up to this point from the very first moment of our existence, every experience that has left a lasting impression on our hearts whether we are conscious of it or not. Through the intercession of St. Vincent, may the Lord help us to find that balance of life which unites childlike wonder and openness with clear sighted discernment of the signs of the times and whole hearted commitment to building up his kingdom, that we may be united joyfully with others in working as equal partners in this great adventure of faith and love. May the Lord help us as we enter this new year to begin anew each day what Howard Thurman calls the work of Christmas: “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock, the work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among others, to make music in the heart.” (Howard Thurman)