Archbishop Dolan's Thought for the Week

January 6, 2009 - Year of St. Paul

Dear Friends united in love and service of Jesus Christ and His Church: 

A blessed “Twelfth Day of Christmas,” the traditional feast of the Epiphany, (which we observed last Sunday).

Remember the Friday prior to Christmas? It was a snow day, with everything closed, ice and blizzards all over the place.

The next day I was chatting with a woman after Mass and asked her how she spent her snow day.

“Archbishop, it was great,” she began. “It was an early Christmas present.”

She continued, explaining how for three years she had been living in an apartment complex, one of eight units. In those three years, she went on, she had not formally greeted any of her neighbors, those who resided in the other seven units.

“Oh, I might nod at them, and they at me, when we’d pass in the hall. But, I knew none of their names. More often than not I’d snarl at them when they got a parking place better than mine, or when they made too much clamor coming in.”

But not on the snow day!

“It was great!” She eagerly explained. “All of us were home. Two or three of us met as we went out to shovel the sidewalks. Then another called us up to her apartment for a cup of hot chocolate. The old lady I always watched limp down the steps started out, telling us she needed to walk up to the corner to get food, and we made her go back inside, assuring her we’d go up to the store for her. The one couple who had two kids came out and we all pitched in and helped them build our version of ‘Frosty the Snowman.’ When another neighbor couldn’t get his old Taurus started, the guy on the third floor (who I thought was kind of cute and wanted to get to know) came out with jumper cables to help.”

“By the time late afternoon came, we were one big happy family, laughing, calling each other by name, joking, swapping stories. The young couple with the two kids invited all of us to their apartment, telling us they had a big pot of chili on the stove. We all brought something along, and had a feast. One of the two kids recited her Christmas poem for us all, to a standing ovation, and we all started singing Christmas carols. We need more snow days,” she concluded.

Christmas is the cosmic snow day. It’s the day God brings us all together, the time we all learn each other’s names, smile and embrace people who are strangers no longer, help each other out, tell the stories and sing the songs that identify us as children of God saved by His Son, and realize we’re all members of a household of faith, the Church, that has Christ as the cornerstone and the Apostles as the foundation.

Let’s have more snow days!

One last time, as the season we all love comes to an end, let me say it:

A blessed Christmas!

A peaceful New Year!

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan

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