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December 27 – SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST
“You are told to love God. If you say to me: Show me whom I am to love, what shall I say if not what Saint John says: No one has ever seen God! But in case you should think that you are completely cut off from the sight of God, he says: God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God. Love your neighbor, then, and see within yourself the power by which you love your neighbor; there you will see God, as far as you are able.”
Homily on the Gospel of John, 17

December 26
“Just as that one man laid down his life for us all, so the martyrs too imitated him, and laid down their lives for their brothers and sisters; and in order that this bumper crop of Christian peoples might spring up like sprouting seeds, they watered the earth with their blood. So we too are the fruit of their toil. We admire them, they are sorry for us. They strewed their bodies like garments on the road, when the colt carrying the Lord was led into Jerusalem; let us at least cut branches from the trees, pluck hymns and praises from the Holy Scriptures, and offer them in a joint expression of rejoicing.”
Sermon 280

December 25
“God wishes to make you god, not by nature in the case of him who gives you birth, but through gift and adoption. In the same way that he came to participate in your mortality through humanity, he has made you participate in immortality through elevation.”
Sermon 166

December 24
“In bending down to pick us up, he chose the smallest day, but the one from which light starts increasing. Thus by his very coming in this sort of way he is silently exhorting us, as effectively as if he shouted it aloud, to learn to be rich in the one who became poor for us; to accept freedom in the one who for our sake accepted the form of a slave; to take possession of the heavens in the one who for our sake sprang from the earth.”
Sermon 192, 3

December 23
“He showed them where he was staying; they came and were with him. What a happy day they spent, what a happy night! Who is there who can say to us what they learned from the Lord? Let us also build and prepare in our heart a house where he may enter in and teach us and converse with us.”
Homily on John 7.9.3

December 22
“True friendship, which is not measured by temporal concerns but takes delight in gratuitous love, traces its origins in that celestial republic of which Christ is King. Thus, no one can truly be a friend to another unless he is first friend to the Truth itself, and if such friendship is not gratuitous it does not exist at all. Many things have been said on this matter by philosophers, yet in their works there is no true piety, in other words no sincere worship of God from which all the duties of an honest life must be derived.”
Letter 155, 1-2

December 21 – SAINT PETER CANISIUS
“Enter then into your heart, and if you have faith, you will find Christ there. There he speaks to you. I, the preacher, must raise my voice, but he instructs you more effectively in silence. I speak in sounding words; he speaks within, by inspiring a holy fear. It is for him, then, to sow my words in your hearts … Because faith, and Christ, are in your hearts, he will teach you what I seek to communicate to you through the sound of my words.”
Sermon 102, 1

December 20
“Let us leave a little room for reflection, room too for silence. Enter into yourself, leave behind all noise and confusion. Look within yourself and see whether there be some sweet hidden place in your consciousness where you can be free of noise and argument, where you need not be carrying on your disputes and planning to have your own stubborn way. Hear the word in quietness that you may understand it.
Sermon 56. 22

December 19
“Upon the love of friends, I readily cast myself without reservation, especially when chafed and wearied by the scandals of this world; and in their love I rest without any disturbing care: for I perceive that God is there. … When I perceive that a man is burning with Christian love and feel that thereby he has been made a faithful friend to me, whatever plans or thoughts of mine I entrust to him I regard as entrusted not to the man, but to God.”
Letter 73, 20