Glad Tidings to the Poor

(Prayer offered on the Public Address system for the entire La Salle Academy educational community on Monday morning, 18 December 2017)

Let us remember we are in the holy presence of a loving God.

As we began the third week of Advent, we read in the book of Isaiah:

God has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.

This passage is quite powerful especially if you think of it in relation to how our founder reflects on Saint Nicholas.  Saint John Baptist de La Salle wrote of Saint Nicholas long before the legend of Santa Claus spread across the United States.  He describes Saint Nicholas’s love of the poor and he specifically writes of four young people that Saint Nicholas encountered who were enslaved, treated as captives and prisoners.  Through great personal sacrifice Saint Nicholas freed each prisoner from their captivity, he helped to heal their broken hearts, and through his devotion to God brought glad tidings to the poor.

In my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice.

In today’s Gospel of Matthew we are reminded that Joseph is visited by an Angel of the Lord in his dreams and commanded to name Mary’s Son Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

The Gospel of Matthew reminds us that the birth of Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy :

They shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”

Glad tidings in deed, that God is traveling this journey with us.

Today and tomorrow as we celebrate Christmas within our Lasallian community be mindful that God is with us, present in every person we encounter.

Let Us Pray,

God, we beg of you, to lead us on the way to heaven by the path you have traced out for us. Help us to embrace the perfection of your state that you have brought us into. Help us remember you have always and will always desire that we find in it the way and the means to be sanctified.

Saint John Baptist de La Salle…Pray for Us.

Live Jesus in Our Hearts…Forever.

Mark Carty–Social Studies Teacher

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