Sunday, December 28 , 2025 – The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (Feast Day)
Today marks my last bulletin reflection for the calendar year 2025, the last of fifty-two written for the year. Over the course of this year, I have written on the significant and not so significant. Some were more meaningful and others less. A few may have been a bit edgy or controversial. There were those weeks when I had to “rack my brain” to come up with a topic or event to reflect on to meet our bulletin deadline. But here at the end of the year, I hope you have found some of them meaningful and helpful.
From the beginning, to now, and in the year to come, my continual goal for this weekly bulletin column is to see and reflect on the intersection of normal life events and spirituality. Where is God and how does God speak in the normal day-to-day joys and struggles we face. I do not believe in secular only moments. Of course, there are those blessed events in our lives we can easily name as holy, but how is God infused in the normal and perhaps evil times. When we see events around us, and live through our own sin and struggles, what new life is God calling us to in those moments. What is God calling us in the tragedy and corruption we see? God is always offering us a way out of such unfortunate times, offering us new beginnings. Those can be holy moments—if we are faithful to reflection and prayer.
This disposition I am addressing calls us to praying constantly—not to have a prayer book in our hands or to be constantly saying Our Fathers or Hail Marys throughout the day, but to keep God in the cross-hairs of daily experiences to reflect on how God is calling us to react, respond, grow, and maybe convert. We do not need to go to profound thoughts always, but what spiritual reflections strike us to understand ordinary moments in faith. I believe this is a grace worth pursuing.
Maybe the best way to sum this closing reflection for 2025 is to call us to reflect on the final verse of Mathew’s Gospel which speaks of God being present to us:
…And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (28:20)