As with many songs from Bono, the Edge, and U2, lean back and consider New Years’ Day as a prayer.

All is quiet on New Year’s Day. A world in white gets underway. I want to be with you, be with you night and day. Nothing changes on New Year’s Day. On New Year’s Day.

Sometimes, going to Christmas Mass is more than an act of faith…

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Indonesian Catholics attended a Christmas Mass, which ran smoothly and solemnly, at Jakarta`s Cathedral here on Thursday morning. Like in the previous years, during Christmas, the Cathedral intensified its security by deploying 20 policemen in the church area. A number of volunteers from the Indonesian Youth National Committee (KNPI) also helped guard the church. (More here.)

Giving is one of the lessons of Christmastime

MESA, AZ — About 20 low-income youth residents, ages 5 to 12, rang in the holiday season this afternoon by giving back to the community and their families as part of Mercy Housing Southwest’s Jingle Bell Hop. The celebration helped the children feel a part of and give back to their community, said Lena Kelly, Mercy Housing Southwest Regional Director of Resource Development. “Many of these children went home tonight to apartments without trees or gifts, because their own families cannot afford to celebrate the holidays,” Kelly said. “Through the Jingle Bell Hop, they had the opportunity to give to others who are in similar situations and see the importance of their gifts.” At Paz de Cristo, an outreach ministry of St. Timothy Catholic Community and the first stop on the Jingle Bell Hop, youth delivered 200 canned goods donated by Mercy Housing Southwest residents. (More here.)

A collaborative effort in empowering peer ministry

WILKES-BARRE, PA — Forty members of the Back Mountain Catholic Youth Council were recently commissioned as peer ministers. The Rev. James J. Paisley celebrated the Mass. Representatives from Gate of Heaven, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Our Lady of Victory, St. Frances X. Cabrini and St. Therese’s churches comprise the council.  (More here.)

Little diocese, big crowd, long travels: 
A great sign of vitality in Montana

HELENA, MT — Fourteen participants representing seven different faith communities in the Diocese of Helena joined more than 2,000 Catholic youth ministers at the National Conference on Catholic Youth Ministry in Cleveland, Ohio, during the week of Dec. 4-7. The theme was “Formed by Living Waters.” “The group from the Diocese of Helena was overwhelmed by session after session of challenging keynote presentations,” said Doug Tooke, youth and young adult minister for the diocese. (More here.) 

Dominican Father Augustine DiNoia, undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recently stated that “If the church wants to reach young people today, it must avoid the temptation to ‘fudge’ on core Catholic beliefs in an effort to make them more agreeable to contemporary tastes. Instead, it should confront with courage the major barriers in modern evangelization. . . The first, he said, is “the notion that it is arrogant to claim that Jesus Christ is the unique mediator of salvation.” A second barrier to the evangelization of young people in the mistaken and predominant belief that being a Christian means giving up one’s freedom and replacing it with conformity to an external set of rules. Finally, the third major barrier, Father DiNoia said, is the idea that the church’s moral teachings are more or less arbitrary, allowing or forbidding certain things regardless of their real relationship with human goodness. Read the whole report here.

Based on my recommendation, my youngest daughter, fell in love with Studio 60 on Sunset Strip.  This was a show that served as a follow-up for many on the creative team of West Wing, a story of a show that was like Saturday Night Live.

In this episode, many Katrina evacuee musicians from New Orleans are being hired as replacements for shows as the regular musicians are staging a sick-out to make space for their own.

The show concludes with a sweet, sweet version of O Holy Night that serves as an under-layer to two professions of love: one with a glance, another with confession.  Any night that involves love is a holy night.

Still celebrating Christmas folks (it’s not over – - – hey, the season just started!)  Here’s a favored Red Bull commercial that was banned as it was perceived offensive. Me, I prefer this Italian version, but if you need the translation, you can find it here.

Forty years ago. Apollo 8 was making the first manned spaceflight around the moon. Read the CNN report here.

Apollo 8 provided our first view of ourselves as one world from the perspective of another celestial body. “We were flying to the moon for the first time,” said Jim Lovell, one of the three astronauts aboard the historic flight. “Seeing the far side of the moon for the first time. Coming around and seeing the Earth as it really is — a small fragile planet with a rather normal star, our sun.”

And, at the end of the tumultuous year of 1968 – - The Tet offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the numerous riots and protests regarding the war and civil rights will seemed to culminate in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention – - the space mission also produced what to many was one of the most inspirational and soothing moments in history when Lovell and crewmates Frank Borman and William A.

Anders took turns reading from the Book of Genesis. It was Christmas Eve and the whole world was watching. NASA said at the time it was expected to be the largest TV audience to date.

The astronauts signed off with these words: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”

Forty years later, we remain on this third rock from the sun, still traveling together. We may have lost the perspective of Lovell, Borman, and Anders.

Over two thousand years ago, we were reminded that not only are we in this together, but that God has some skin in the game as well. Yet, we may have lost that perspective as well .  Hmmmm, stuff to think over. . .

Nonetheless, we wish you “good night, good luck, a merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”

Merry Christmas, friends!

My favorite movie of all time is White Christmas and it has become a tradition to remind myself and all that this is a time of year to inventory not hurts, losses, or missed opportunities.

(It’s funny, but I wrote this post ten days before Steve Angrisano sung this song at NCCYM!)

Please take the off-moments that you can sneak in over the holidays and be sure to sing along:

When I’m worried and I can’t sleep; I count my blessings instead of sheep; And I fall asleep counting my blessings; When my bankroll is getting small; I think of when I had none at all; And I fall asleep counting my blessings