Medley Minute with Fr Sam: Lost loved ones, broken hearts, disappointments, traumatic losses, pains that just plague the heart - these are the things which are a cause for making Christmas, a time normally of great joy, a time of tears and sorrow for those who have known great pain. “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about” is to be taken a lot more seriously in this time. Shiny lights at dusk, sugar cookies, beautiful decorations, flowers, songs of joy and celebration, movies and stories of peace on earth and good will toward men - these all become occasions of acute bitterness and piercing pangs of woe for those who know that this time is supposed to bring joy, hope, love, and peace, to taste only bitterness, feel only loneliness, experience more emptiness than normal. All year we busy ourselves with projects, goals for school, plans for work, and constant movement. Then Christmas comes and all is still. There is time to stop and listen. If you listen with your heart, you can see on the faces on many a kind of dread, a map of their loss. These are the people for whom is reserved God’s special graces and mercies. In some privileged years at Christmas I have found myself in prisons, orphanages, hospices, and homes where these hurting people are trying to rejoice, but their celebrations are marked with profound awareness that all is not merry and fine. Today I am celebrating Christmas in a rehabilitation hospital. Here in a particular way, the prophecy of Isaiah is proclaimed, “that the lame may walk.” In prisons they hear, “that captives may be set free,” in homeless shelters, “that the poor have the Gospel of God proclaimed to them.” Yet most of the people right next to you are not so obvious. They struggle and put on a good face, but in their hearts they aching to hear once again the good news, GOD IS WITH US, he has not forgotten your sorrow, he heals the broken hearted. So as you open presents, sing songs, make merry, remember that Mary and Joseph also endured at this time great rejection, cold, and didn’t really understand why the Savior was to be born in a cave. Each person has a cave, a hole in their hearts, longing to be filled with God’s love.