Last Monday our National Cathedral in Wash. D.C. rang its huge bells 300 times to commemorate the 302,000 and counting, deaths from Corona Virus in the U.S. The number of hospitalizations for that one day were the highest (112,000) since the beginning of the Pandemic. “Tis the season to be merry” NOT.

    When I walk my dog each morning, I take a different street to discover each day a new set of decorations and lights. But there is one little red sign on the lawn which I love:  “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

    I have never had a time in 91 years, when the joy of Christ’s Birth at Christmas time, mingled so poignantly, excruciatingly, and painfully with his Death on Good Friday. What a life lived for us! But what about the 300, 000 + who died of a suffocating, stifling inflammation of our breathing system! Without oxygen to their brains, their presence on this planet drifted into an unseen eternity.

    But they are still with us, just as Jesus is still with us. It may be Birth-Day for Christ, but it is also Resurrection Day for all of them, including Christ. The Mass for the Deceased says: “Life is not taken away, but changed.” Resurrection does not mean “the resuscitation of the body.” It means the transformation of our consciousness into the consciousness of the Eternal Oneness of Being.

That is why I believe that our deceased loved ones are as present to us as God is present to us. That is why I pray to the deceased with the same voice with which I pray to God, and listen to the deceased with the same sense that I listen to God.  A blessing which I wish upon you all.

    A New Merry Christmas, and a New Happy Easter (2021.)