{"id":7865,"date":"2015-12-05T14:05:18","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T12:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/?p=7865"},"modified":"2015-12-05T14:05:18","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T12:05:18","slug":"christmas-jesus-is-our-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/2015\/12\/05\/christmas-jesus-is-our-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas. Jesus is our gift!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pontifical<\/a>The greatest gift of God to us is Jesus Christ himself\u2014the Emmanuel\u2014God with us. The celebration of Christmas is all about God\u2019s love and mercy towards us as human beings. Jesus came to show us the merciful and loving face of the Father, in order that we might come to understand our dignity as sons and daughters and so recognize in each person\u2014our brother or sister.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than two-thousand years after the coming of our Saviour, it is plain to see from the violence, war, hate, corruption and exploitation present in our society, that we didn\u2019t get the message that we failed to understand the Kingdom of God and its benefits for all humanity. Christmas is about celebrating our new life in Christ\u2014it is really not about expensive gifts, scrumptious feasts and wild parties\u2014it is all about understanding our own dignity and that of others and so begin living in an attitude of mutual respect. To live the golden rule \u201cdo unto others as you would have them do unto you\u201d (Lk 6:31). We need to see the world through the merciful eyes of Jesus and like Him, be people who go about doing good, bringing hope, peace, joy and life to all who we meet on our earthly pilgrimage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"PontificalJesus still offers himself as a constant and eternal gift of mercy, healing, hope and new-life for all of us that open our hearts and minds to Him.<\/span><\/p>\n

He desires that we have the fullness and abundance of life (Jn 10:10) and offers Himself as the Way, Truth and Life (Jn 14:6) to all who seek Him with sincerity and humility. Once we accept to follow Him and become missionary disciples, then automatically we are called and sent to be \u201cother Christs\u201d (anointed) people who are the gift of Christ to all whom we meet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our mission on this earth is to be the hands, feet, mouth, mind and heart of Jesus so as to bring about transformation and the coming of the Kingdom in our society.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are in this Jubilee Year of Mercy<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us open ourselves and invite others to this life changing experience! A very blessed Christmas and a New Year filled with the joy of being missionaries of God\u2019s mercy!<\/span><\/p>\n

Fr. Gordon Rees mccj. National PMS Director – <\/strong>SA, Botswana & Swaziland<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Pontifical Mission Societies SA-04-2015<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The greatest gift of God to us is Jesus Christ himself\u2014the Emmanuel\u2014God with us. The celebration of Christmas is all about God\u2019s love and mercy towards us as human beings. Jesus came to show us the merciful and loving face of the Father, in order that we might come to understand our dignity as sons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,28],"tags":[1059],"class_list":["post-7865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-publications","tag-newsletter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mafrsaprovince.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/pontifical-mission-societies-sa-04-2015-01.png?fit=1365%2C443&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mafrsaprovince.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}