        <div id="father_cummings_title">Father Cummings Homilies</div>
        <div id="father_cummings_excerpts">Excerpts</div><br/><br/>
        <div id="father_cummings_homily_title">Making God the Joy of Our Soul</div>  

        <div class="frcummings_content_paragraph">
      <p>In my God 
        is the joy of my soul. This line sums up all the sentiments that should 
        be in our hearts today. Great joy, because God is coming very soon to 
        enter into our souls. The Savior, by becoming man, united Himself to each 
        of us. This is what Advent is, a time of hope, a time of joy, a time of 
        purification. This joy of union with God depends not only upon the fact 
        that a Savior was sent, but that we have a soul that was made in the image 
        of God, and naturally seeks union with God. "Our hearts are restless 'til 
        they rest in Thee." (St. Augustine) </p>
      <p>Many today 
        have ceased to ask the question from the psalm, <i>What is man that Thou 
        art mindful of Him?</i> Our greatness lies in the fact that we alone, 
        of all visible creatures, have an invisible soul. We alone are enough 
        like God, to be made for Him. What a mistake it would be, therefore, and 
        what a tragedy it has been, to try to emancipate ourselves from God. This 
        is death to all that is noble in us. Ah, what a choice we have! We either 
        answer the call to be more than man is, to be elevated by grace, or we 
        sink back down even to the point of inhumanity. We are ordered to this 
        glory, but how to attain it? We need God to reach down from Heaven and 
        take us up to Himself. This is the joyful message, the wonderful enactment 
        that Christmas is about. A Savior is born to you who is Christ the Lord. 
        He is the Son of the Most High and yet His mother is one of us. And that 
        is the key to our liberation, that is the Incarnation. </p>
      <p>Christ, 
        therefore, opened the way to Heaven. His infinitely abject humility by 
        becoming man, mirrors the ascent that is our destiny. He poured out upon 
        the soul of all those who obey Him, His very own Spirit, His very own 
        life. God is not stingy with His gift of the Spirit but are we not often 
        lacking in generosity in return? We seek to be happy, and yet the only 
        source of happiness, the Heavenly Father, the infinite God, we tend to 
        ignore and disobey. </p>
      <p>So as Christmas 
        approaches, my brothers and sisters, Christ once again calls out, <i>Open 
        your hearts! I have come to cast fire upon the earth and how I wish it 
        were burning already! </i>The fire of Divine Charity in the souls of all 
        the elect! St. Paul reminds us, <i>your souls were made for higher things, 
        for converse with angels</i>, your ears were made for beautiful sounds, 
        not for vulgar things. Your minds were made to contemplate the mysteries 
        of God, to know things that are eternal, so why fret over things that 
        will be forgotten in a month. Grace gives life to your spirit. Do you 
        delicately protect it from every attack and seek to build it up? More 
        than simply protecting the gift that is within us, we have to stir it 
        up into a strong blaze. How do we do this if it is all a gift from God? 
        </p>
      <p>St. Paul 
        tells us,<i> Pray without ceasing.</i> Prayer is the answer. It's the 
        voicing of our hope for union with Him. It's the constant striving for 
        the things that are above. It's to gaze Heavenward like a fledgling bird 
        that can't yet fly on it's own. It's to raise up our heart and mind and 
        soul to God in earnest, longing to see His face. Never think of prayer 
        as a mere obligation, it's not a few words we owe to God. It's not words 
        at all. It's making God the joy of our soul. </p></div>