Never has there been a greater untruth, and never will there be, than "life begins at forty". That phrase is merely the aged justification for growing old against their will, a soothing ointment for lost vigor and faded beauty which can never be strong and fresh again. I can understand why a hoary old world should put a premium on age, for the world wants the sympathy of those who grow old with her; but I cannot understand why anyone whose vision is broader than the years and whose hopes are higher than an ivy vine should value age above youth. Anyone with the vaguest understanding of either the world of nature or the world of grace knows that life does not begin at forty. Life begins at BIRTH.

There are other introductions to life than the opening of the womb either the womb of the great portals of flesh or the womb of the baptismal font - the one begetting us as children of humans, the other as children of God. Religion by its very nature, has something to do with birth and therefore with youth. Doesn't all religious history reveal that the closer we get to God the younger we become and therefore the more like children? Thus it might well be that as we grow old in years we grow young in God. But how can we grow younger as we grow older?

Answer me this question: What is youthfulness? Youthfulness is proximity to the source of life. A child of four is younger than a child of six because he is two years closer to the source of life: his parents. A person of twenty is younger than a person of forty because he is twenty years closer to the source of life: his parents.

Now we have another source of life besides our parents, namely, God. Hence the closer we get to God the younger we become. And so true is this, that the day on which saints die the Church call natalitia. The world celebrates a birthday on the day we are born to temporal life; the Church celebrates a birthday on the day on which we are born to eternal life. But in either case: Life begins at birth.

The other side of the picture is this: Not only do we become younger and more like children the nearer we get to God but the closer God gets to us the more he becomes a child. God never came so close to us as in the Incarnation and then he appeared as a babe. The reason Christmas is the happiest day of the year is because it is a birthday - not the fortieth but the first! God might have revealed himself to us in all the full bloom and blossoms of a triumphant king of two score years; he might have canonized maturity by making his life begin at forty - but he actually began it as a child. And to the eternal confusion of those who value age above youth he completed his life work finished his Father's business while still in his early thirties. Who, then will say that life begins at forty?

There is no escape from the tremendous fact of Christmas day that when God revealed himself to this poor world of ours, men cried in astonishment: "Why, it is a child!" And so it is that the closer we get to God the more we become children and the closer God gets to us the more he becomes a child. No one in the world ever suspected that the Ancient of Days who presided at creation would take his throne in that creation as a babe in a crib, just as no one ever thought he would tell the old men of forty like Nicodemus that they must be born again.

According to all worldly standards, it is the aged who are learned. And yet when Wisdom came to earth he was a child and when Wise Men came to Wisdom they were told to be like children. Christmas then is the coronation of childhood, the glorification of the young whose hearts are simple, the proclamation to aging hearts that the world need not despair and die because the Fountain of Youth has come into it with his quickening drafts to unburden the years, turn time backward, make old things young again.

Christmas then is the solemn day when God becomes a child when we become children and where we all meet at a crib. The aging old world is already jaded with its memory, for it believes that life begins at forty. But we who will see Bethlehem again every Christmas morn and receive the babe not in our arms but in our hearts, know the world is wrong. LIFE BEGINS AT BIRTH!

BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 - 1979 )

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -