Christmas Letter from Bishop Farrell

Dear Friends in Christ:

The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year. But, amid the fun and excitement, it is important to take a moment to reflect on what Christmas really means.

It can be said that Christmas actually began with Adam and Eve. Yes, the rupture between the Creator and the created, so vividly described in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis, was actually the beginning of the Christmas story. After humanity used the gift of freedom to turn its back on God, the immediate Divine reaction was to seek to heal the breach.

For millennia God reached out in loving faithfulness through the prophets and sages seeking a similar response from humanity, but to no avail. Finally, the God who reached out became the man who responded. That is the Incarnation. That is the Son taking on humanity in loving response to the Father. That is Christmas.

The Incarnation was the first Christmas gift, the gift of love, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of healing. It is a gift that keeps on giving in and through the Sacraments where we encounter the Father's healing and forgiving love through Jesus.

This Christmas, as we set out our home manger scene, remember that we are really celebrating, God's refusal to take no for an answer. Let us continue to add our response to Jesus' perfect response to the Father's healing and forgiving love.

Hopefully, that includes imitating the Father's love in reaching out to the poor and the marginalized as He reached out to us. Jesus calls us to reach out to others in his words to the Apostles: "I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do." (John 13:15)

It is my prayer and my wish that you and yours will have a blessed Christmas and New Year and that you will always choose to be a disciple of Jesus and not just an admirer.

Faithfully in Christ
Most Reverend Kevin J. Farrell, D.D.
Bishop of Dallas

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

December is truly a Marian month. We don’t think of it as such but it really is with two feast days, the Immaculate Conception which we have just celebrated on December 8, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Monday, December 12, and, of course the Nativity of Our Lord which is also a Marian feast because of Mary’s “fiat” to the Angel Gabriel.

Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast is particularly significant in the Diocese of Dallas because she is the patron of our beautiful cathedral. Behind the altar is a computer generated copy of the tilma of St. Juan Diego upon which Mary left her image.

Juan Diego’s tilma, or cloak, woven from crude cactus fibers, miraculously imprinted with the iconic image of Mary, has become the unofficial symbol of the Mexican people. It played a particularly important role in combating efforts by some of the Spanish Conquistadors to have the native Mexican people declared less than human in order that they might be exploited as slave labor.

Despite a royal order that the native inhabitants were to be evangelized, the missionaries had a constant struggle to protect them from exploitation.

When Mary appeared to a simple Indian, speaking in the Indian tongue, and leaving her image as an Indian woman, the situation changed and the native peoples began flocking to the Catholic faith. It is another example of how the role of Mary is to lead people to her Son.

At midnight Monday I will join the cathedral parishioners and many others in beginning the day-long observance of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I invite you to join us in singing Las Mañanitas and celebrating the Eucharistic Liturgy at Midnight Mass.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

On Thursday, December 8th, we observe the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a feast that finds its origin in the Eastern Church in the fifth or sixth century and gradually spread to the Western Church being observed under several names.

In this feast we recognize and celebrate the fact that Mary was sinless from the moment of conception, that is, her conception was immaculate, without sin. Some people confuse this belief with that of the Virgin Birth, but the Virgin Birth refers to Mary giving birth to Jesus and the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary's conception.

As the observance became more widespread it was declared a doctrine of the Church. In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pope Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."

In 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a young girl of Lourdes, France, claimed visions in which Mary identified herself with the words "I am the Immaculate Conception." The apparitions were later recognized by the Church as private revelations and Lourdes has become a center of Marian veneration. Bernadette entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers and died in 1879. She was canonized on December 8, 1933 by Pope Pius XI.

I always see Mary as leading us to Jesus, a role described in the story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:5) where she says "do whatever he tells you."

Those words were not addressed only to the wine steward, but to each one of us.

Remember, it all began in a stable

It seems incredible, but Christmas is becoming “politically incorrect”. I am all for Happy Hanukkah and Joyous Kwanzaa, but please don’t try to eliminate Merry Christmas. In an effort not to offend any group, there is a tendency to seek a common, non-offensive greeting…Happy Holiday, and instead of Christmas trees we are having Holiday Trees.

Kwanzaa celebrates African culture; Hanukkah (Chanukah) celebrates the rededication of the Temple at Jerusalem. Both represent important cultural and religious events for the African-American and Jewish communities that have become part of our American Mosaic.

Early Christians were very politically incorrect by refusing to worship the Roman Emperor as Kyrios (Lord), and willingly suffered martyrdom rather than renounce their faith. Christian martyrs were not restricted to the early church, but have been numbered in every century. According to a news story from Zenit: In two millennia of Christian history, about 70 million faithful have given their lives for the faith, and of these, 45.5 million -- fully 65% -- were in the last century, according to "The New Persecuted."

Christmas is the raison d’être for Christianity. Without the event that Christmas celebrates there would be no Christianity. The Feast of the Nativity, the birth of Jesus, the Christ (Messiah), was an occasion of such significance that most of the world began counting time again.

Political correctness diminishes every tradition and religion by replacing them with an acceptable “civil religion” that embraces everyone. This nation is much more than a melting pot. It is a beautiful mosaic, and Christianity sparkles as part of that mosaic.

The next time you are at the mall shopping and admiring all those beautiful decorations remember it all started in a stable in Bethlehem.