December 20, 2024

In early December we gathered around an unlit Christmas tree in our cafeteria. It was bitterly cold and dark outside! Our young people offered reflections recounting the hundreds of small acts of kindness they did for others throughout the year. Then, together we shouted out a countdown from ten before one of our young people threw the switch. At once, hundreds of small Christmas tree lights filled the room with beams of light. This began the official Christmas season at Mercy Home for Boys & Girls.

The lighting of the tree is a moment of great joy and hopefulness. We need light, especially now. We need this hopeful light as we enter into the longest and darkest nights of the year. For millennia, many faith and cultural traditions have celebrated this time of year with light. Light takes on a significant importance in our homes, business, schools, and places of worship. The shimmering of lights using bulbs and candles pushes back against the winter darkness.

We celebrated Christmas parties at both campuses later in the month. The evenings began with Advent/Christmas Spiritual Celebrations. Our young people were holding lit candles in the dark chapel as they gave their reflections. When their reflections were complete, they brought their lit candles to everyone in the chapel, who were holding unlit candles, to share the light of hope and joy.

The glow in the darkened chapel quickly showed the beauty of each face holding a candle. As they held their candles, I offered my reflection from the scriptures beginning with the Book of Genesis on the Creation of Light, and the beginning of St. John’s Gospel which proclaims Jesus as the Light of the World.

I then told our young people one of my favorite stories. I shared with them the story of Alexander Papaderos, a Greek philosopher, teacher, and politician. Part of Papaderos’ childhood in Crete was spent in a concentration camp. The evil he had witnessed at such a young age after the Nazi’s invaded and destroyed his homeland could have hardened into resentment, hatred, and a thirst for revenge. It could have cast a permanent shadow over his life. Instead, he defiantly made it his mission to coax the goodness of the world out into the open in any way he could, ultimately founding an institute dedicated to peace and reconciliation.

One day, after giving a lecture at the institute, a student asked him, “Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?”

Responding to this profound question he removed a small, round mirror from his pocket, and he held it up. It was the size of a quarter. He then explained that as a child, at the end of the war, he came across the wreckage of a German motorcycle. He found pieces of its shattered mirror and took the largest one home as a curiosity. He was delighted in the ways in which he could use the piece of shattered mirror to reflect light captured by the sun. Papaderos directed the light of the sun to places that had never seen the light of day; to nooks, crannies and crevices. Over time, he scraped the piece of mirror against stones and bricks until is its edges were made smooth.

The piece of mirror that he kept in his pocket became a guiding principle of his life. He acknowledged that he is not the light of the world, nonetheless as a disciple, he is to reflect the light of Christ in the world. To bring the light of Christ to places of brokenness and darkness.

Papaderos reminds us that we are all children of the light, and we are to bring the light of hope, compassion, healing, forgiveness and understanding to those in need.

I reinforced in my preaching that all of us in the chapel are to bring the light of Christ to one another, to our community and into the world.

I want to thank all our friends at Mercy Home for the ongoing compassion, generosity, and friendship that you extend to our young people and to all of us.

Thank you for being shining examples of God’s love and presence to me and to all.

I wish you, your family members and loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

Fr. Scott Donahue
President/CEO