Comites Christi

Today we can’t imagine it.  We take Christmas with lots of sugar.  And we take it in a day.  Though we’ve been baptized into his death, we have little time for or patience with how that death is told at Christmas, a death that confuses lament and praise forever.

-Gabe Huck

Feast of Stephen

Feast of St. John 

Holy Innocents

These feasts, the feasts of the Comites Christi, the companions of Christ, appear to remind the Church of the dangerous life that is the life of the Word made Flesh.  There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.  Loving and caring always involves an-other.  The neighbor at my side is my companion.

Christ made love the stairway that would enable all Christians to climb to heaven.  Hold fast to it, therefore, in all sincerity, give one another practical proof of it, and by your progress in it, make your ascent together. 
-Fulgentius 6^th Century, feast of Stephen, office of readings