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My first Christmas.

Unfortunately, my memory doesn't remember my very first Christmas as a little baby, but this year I have the fortunate blessing of being an uncle for my precious little nephew. When you think of Christmas or at least when I think of Christmas, the first thing I think about is presents. But there is a presence that I have come to yearn for this time of year, and that presence is the Lord. I became more alive spiritually when I was 21, when I prayed a prayer that changed my life. In the quiet of my bedroom, I offered my life to Jesus Christ. Being a Catholic, I went through all the necessary sacraments that I was brought up to receive. The first sacrament was reconciliation, and I did this in grade school, probably in grade one or two. We then moved to Markham, and I attended St. Patrick's elementary school which surprisingly still looks the same. Right next to my grade school is the church that I attended at 21, and have returned to lately. We had a religion class, and sometimes the priests would visit us from our church next door. These were sacred moments for me and I will always cherish them.

In high school I believed in God, attended church, but I never felt that I really knew God. I had a childlike faith in grade school, but in Catholic high school my faith was one of distant respect, not one that was truly alive. Although being confirmed, in grade school when I was 21 I had to make my faith my own. Some call it the born again experience, but what my heart really knew was that I truly discovered who Jesus Christ was to me, and my belief and faith truly came alive as an adult. I drifted from my catholic faith, but never renounced it. Experimented with eastern ideas, but throughout my absence from the church, as I was discovering truths about myself and about life, the Jesus I had rediscovered that day in my room when I prayed a sinners prayer was showing me things about life, my identity, my spirituality and my love for God that ultimately brought me back to my roots many years later.

If I could write a spiritual diary, which I plan on doing one day, I would title it something like "The boy who got lost in the woods, and found his way home" I would talk about the dangers that I have been through, the joy I lost and found, then lost again and am now in the process of rediscovering that joy through my faith in the Lord. Being that I never went to seminary, it would have to be a layman's rendition of the joy and faith, that I knew and discovered in my childhood which is now being practiced as an adult. Part of my journey has been going deeper into the mystery of my Catholic faith, and seeing God in that light through the eyes of a child.

We all have that child living in us as I have discovered, and there is an innocence in my walk with God right now, which day by day is building me into a stronger person of faith. The rediscovery of faith can be so exciting at times, that all you want to do is live it out and talk about it all the time. I spent years and I still enjoy studying the scriptures, and still talk about the bible in a podcast, what lead me to a deeper faith I have to admit was a better understanding of Christian doctrine. I wanted to talk about the Catholic catechism in this blog, and what it says about Jesus Christ, because what I believe the Lord is showing me about himself right now is more about His humanity.

Untill I get a better understanding of the doctrine of the Christ's humanity, I am a little bit reserved to talk about in a doctrinal way, other than to say that Jesus was fully God and fully man. There is a mystery about the incarnation, and I don't want to treat it lightly. This is what we celebrate this Christmas as Christians, the incarnation of the Son of God. I would like to close by quoting a verse from the Gospel of St. John; 1:14 NIV The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.


Jesus truly the Son of God, made his dwelling among us. The bible calls him the word. For right now, I will sit with this mystery, and praise God for it.

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