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Feeding My Soul with Humility, Mercy, and Affirmation

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by Sister Alice Ann Pfeifer CSA

Feeding My Soul is designed especially for you—the catechist. It names a catechetical value and gives you the words of prayer for your personal time with the Lord.

With humility
I love the build-up to Christmas, Lord, but to be honest, I don’t love how busy this time of year can get. During the holidays I often fail to recognize and deal with my limits.

For instance, I can’t be a perpetual Santa Claus for the young people in my care. Sometimes I have to be the Grinch and say no to something they want. I can’t run to every Christmas sale with a fistful of dollars. I can’t take time to bake all the holiday cookies I wish I could bake. And I can’t put unlimited thought and effort into making this time of year special for the ones I love.

So, Lord, I come to you with this Advent prayer. During this holy season, please help me to focus on life’s most important tasks, all the while counting on you to make up for whatever might be lacking in my efforts. Help me to keep my cool whenever others are close to losing theirs.

Finally, help me to live these days of Advent in such a way that Christmas finds me ready to sing with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace!” Amen.

With mercy
“There is more difference between God and you,” a kindly old Capuchin once told a class of fourth-graders, “than between you and a worm—yet God became human like you!” He was trying to describe for his young listeners the great love that motivated the Incarnation.

Indeed, how great was your mercy, O Lord, in taking on our human flesh with all its temptations and limitations! Always walking gently upon the earth, you never despised those who were strange, odd, or different from you. You shared as freely with foreigners as you did with your own kind. You cured the children of Jews, Canaanites, and Romans alike. You fed the 5,000 without regard for anyone’s social, economic, or religious status. Without fear or disgust, you touched lepers. Without hesitance or worry, you listened to those who were burdened with darkness. Without harboring the commonplace biases of your day, you held intelligent discussions with women and took time out for little children who wanted to meet you and sit on your lap.

To call myself your disciple is a privilege, Lord Jesus—yet what greatness of spirit your example sets for me. Live in me, Lord, so that your mercy may inform all that I think, say, and do. Amen.

With affirmation
I praise you, O God in heaven, for this season of wonder now upon the earth. This is a good time to think of how clearly you affirmed the goodness of the world you created by sending your Son to become part of it.

So let me bless you for the wintertime, so clean and fresh and purifying in its north winds and hard freezes. Let me bless you for the warmth of the woolens we wear, the cheerful crackle of the fires we light, and the deep-down goodness of the friends and family with whom we gather for our holiday dinners. Let me bless you for the soothing scent of the evergreens and the bright sight of the holly and the poinsettias that we bring into our homes at this time of year.

Most of all, let me bless you for the gathering darkness of shorter days and longer nights, for without it, how could we begin to appreciate the brilliance of the Light you sent into the world when you sent us your only Son? Amen.

Sister Alice Ann Pfeifer, CSA, has been a Sister of St. Agnes for over 30 years and a religion teacher and writer for the past 20 years. She has a master’s degree in pastoral studies from St. Joseph’s College of Maine.

Source: CATECHIST Magazine, November/December 2009

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