Journey to Bethlehem Day 17

Tuesday, December 17 Psalm 146:1-4

1 Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
3 Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

Robert, Cardinal Sarah, author of The Day is Spent, made some apt seasonal observations in a recent interview.
“Civilized man is fundamentally an heir; he receives a history, a religion, a language, a culture, a name, a family.
Refusing to join a network of dependency, inheritance, and filiation condemns us to enter the naked jungle of competition from a self-sufficient economy. Because he refuses to accept himself as an heir, man condemns himself to the hell of liberal globalization, where individual interests clash without any other law than that of profit at all costs.”
One doesn’t have to be a Socialist to get the point. Like the good Cardinal, read Put not your trust in princes to include the princes of commerce as well.
After all, they are not the sponsors of Christmas.

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, and especially the hearts of the people of this land, that the barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.