PLEASE  WRITE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Sixth Day within the Octave of Christmas  is, “Please Write.”

Last night I got that thought after reading today’s first reading from the First Letter of John 2: 12-17

We heard in today’s first reading 6 times “I am writing” or “I write to you.”

So an obvious message for a short reflection this morning is, “Please write.”

THE OTHER NIGHT

On Thursday night I caught a Book TV program in which Charles Gibson, the old Television guy, interviews David McCullough.

They began talking about how the writing of diaries - memoirs - journals has sort of disappeared.

McCullough asked: “Do you want to last forever?  Do you want to be historic? Keep a journal and when you finish, get it into an archives and people will be reading you for ages to come because you’ll be it - the only thing written.

Then McCullough - in talking about his research when  writing his historic books on John Adams and Harry Truman and others - how wonderful it was to read countless diaries and memoirs and journals and letters, about the times and places and situations people  found themselves in.

Each diary takes one into a different era and a different place.

What would it be like to be living in a small house in Ohio or Indiana in 1790? If we read diary entries about that period, we’ll read about what was going on in people’s lives and minds.

GOSPELS AND LETTERS

Well, thank God people wrote down the sayings and stories of Jesus - like today’s gospel from Luke about Anna the Prophetess - telling everyone in the temple in Jerusalem who were awaiting redemption - here he is - our redeemer.

And we noticed in Matthew the other day that the holy family headed for Egypt - and Luke has them going back to Nazareth - and because of that written discrepancy we know what kind of writing Luke and Matthew were giving - especially that Jesus was seen as the New Moses - and had to get him to Egypt - to connect Jesus with those writings.

And thank God we have all these letters from the Early Church that tell us what was going on then.

PLEASE WRITE

Get a good ball point pen and a good spiral pad and write your life - whom you met - what you saw.

David McCulllough the other night said that John Adams or someone in that time wrote, “I went into this room yesterday to think.”

He then implied in his writings we don’t do enough of that ourselves.

I think we do - but we don’t write down what we think - or we do on twitter and facebook - and it’s stuff we really don’t think out.

And to contradict myself, I keep reading that everything on the internet lasts - but there is no access  - unless Robert Mueller  and his team will be investigating us.