Here in the United States, St. Elizabeth Seton, our first native-born canonized saint, was both the founder of an American branch of the Daughters of Charity and the Catholic parochial school system. St. Elizabeth realized that the church needed to create a culture of faith in which young people would naturally grow into Catholic identity and discipleship. Her vision inspired the creation of the largest Catholic educational system in the world. We owe a permanent debt of gratitude to the thousands of religious, mostly sisters, who inculcated the Catholic faith into the minds, hearts and souls of generations of young Catholics who went on to contribute to the common good of this country and the flourishing of the church.

Despite all of the challenges of dwindling numbers, higher operational expenses and diminished resources, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee remains committed to Catholic schools, valuing them as an indispensable means of evangelizing, catechizing and forming our young people to take their rightful place in society and the church.

Through creative merging, effective collaborating and regionalizing of resources, our parochial school system may be structurally leaner but is stronger for the effort. In fact, this past year, our archdiocesan school enrollment increased by 1 percent! This may not sound like much, but it happily flies in the face of national figures of decline.

This strength is due to the dedication of everyone who serves any role in our Catholic schools, from the students and families to the principals and teachers, from the staff to our parishioners. We also thank Kathleen Cepelka, our archdiocesan superintendent of schools, along with her staff, for the remarkable leadership which is forming vision and excitement for the bright future of our local Catholic education. These folks put in long hours and drive many miles because they are passionate about what they do for our young people.

What difference does a religious culture make in the education of our children? I compare it to the experience of the men preparing for the priesthood in the seminary. Formation for priestly service in the church requires the transformation of the entire person. Intellectual knowledge, practical skills, spiritual growth, psychological maturity, emotional balance, excellence in virtue, the ability to love and relate to all kinds of people are just some of the qualitative areas of excellence that a man preparing for the priesthood must gradually exhibit.

Isn’t it the same for our youth? We want them to read and write well, to try out for sports, to get the new math, to know the history of our country, but even more than that, we want them to be good people as they mature.

We want them to believe in God and love their neighbor, to be courteous and to pray, to avoid drugs and promiscuity, to make morally good choices and choose wholesome friendships.

Catholic education has striven to do just that for generations and so God calls us to hand on what we ourselves received – an integrated, holy and wholesome formation as children of God. No wonder the focus of our recent Faith in our Future campaign was Catholic education, in the broadest sense of that term.

Please pray for and support our Catholic schools and formation programs. Consider volunteering your time, energy, money and support to continue this vast effort that began when a solitary young widow held a dream in her heart and opened a little school in Maryland. Catholicism seized the heart of Elizabeth Seton and her conversion to it was so life-changing, she wanted to hand on the gift. So do we!

There are many Catholics who will rightly proclaim adherence to the principles of social justice. When I am asked to respond to a social dilemma, be it the rights of workers, or issues of education or poverty, Catholics will often quote to me the words of various popes and explicate the applicable social principle.

The church has been and continues to be a world leader in protecting the rights of all men and women. It calls all individuals and nations to responsibility. They do not have to be Catholic. The church, interpreting “natural law,” reminds all men and women of their obligation to respect the moral rights of all persons.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade is so devastating because the highest court of our land afforded no protection to the most vulnerable among us, the unborn. If the weakest among us are not afforded the protection of the laws of our society, then our own rights are diminished. Our rights are only as strong as are the rights afforded the weakest among us.

The right to life is just not one of many rights; it is the right. Without life, all other arguments become meaningless. Unfortunately, since the Roe v. Wade decision, we have become calloused as a people. Abortion has become an acceptable practice by many in our society and the deaths of the unborn are ignored. We don’t see the unborn, we don’t hear the unborn and they don’t vote. But one can rarely disguise the truth and the truth is that this is LIFE.

It is this truth of LIFE that has motivated so many Catholics and the various pro-life organizations to take up the cause and be prophetic champions of the unborn. This witness is changing the attitudes of an entire nation.

In the beginning, pro-lifers were considered a fringe movement made up mostly of over zealous and pietistic Christians. They were dismissed by the general public as fanatics who wanted to invade the personal lives and decisions of women who were thought to be merely exercising their rights over their bodies.

However, there was another person involved and another body whose rights were ignored. These brave pro-life individuals wrote letters to their legislators, formed organizations, prayed in front of abortion clinics and weathered the criticisms of those who were pro-abortion and even those in their own communities who did not want to be involved.

But change has occurred and today most Americans consider themselves pro-life. Many advocate the overturning of the Roe v. Wade. But the most exciting aspect is that more and more young people understand the importance of the pro-life message and are willing to work for the eradication of these unjust laws.

Hundreds of thousands of people – many of them young people – will gather in Washington, D.C. and participate in the March for Life on Jan. 23. They will be largely ignored by the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court and the media. However, they are speaking out now and will do so in the future. They will be seen; they will be heard; and they will vote.

On Friday Jan. 20, 2012, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, through the ministry of the Nazareth Project (Lydia LoCoco) and Catholics 4 Life, will host “Ignite! Youth Rally for Life”

This title is taken from the Gospel quote of Jesus: “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing” (Lk 12:49). The event will begin with Mass at 5 p.m. for nearly 700 high school students and will include a blessing for those continuing on to Washington D.C. to the March for Life, and encouragement and support for those remaining in Milwaukee.

Bishop Donald J. Hying will preside at a rally from 7 to 9 p.m., which will feature eucharistic adoration. He will be joined by Vicki Thorn (Rachel Project) and 16 priests from around the state. This event required pre-registration and is full; please pray for those gathered for this rally.

On Sunday the deacons of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will provide a Holy Hour for Life. This will take place in nearly 90 parishes between 7 and 8 p.m. Through the deacons’ Holy Hour for Life, we will have the opportunity to be in solidarity with all who are seeking to protect the dignity of all human life. Check the Archdiocese of Milwaukee website, archmil.org, for the HHFL nearest you.

And on Monday, Jan. 23, as an archdiocese we will observe the National Day of Prayer and Penance. I invite you to a Respect Life Mass celebrated at St. Jerome Parish, 995 S. Silver Lake St., Oconomowoc at 7 p.m. The seminarians of Saint Francis de Sales Seminary will lead the recitation of the Rosary for Life at 6:30 p.m.

Many of us would like to participate in everything that is offered, but it is impossible. However, we can all do something. We can pray and put life issues on the agenda of our parishes. It is the church’s teaching. We all know that life is fragile. Life needs to be protected in order to have an opportunity to fulfill what God wills for us all. Jesus came among us and joined us in all things except sin. We see the face of Christ in the unborn and know that life is sacred.

As we move out of the Christmas season and into Ordinary Time, as we get back to the business of life, it is so easy to put away, along with the ornaments, lights and gifts, the prayer, joy and love that we felt during this holy time. But, we all felt something different this Christmas, didn’t we? Hopefully, the hectic pace stopped for a while, we celebrated with family and friends, we went to Mass and we prayed. Our worries, sufferings and fears receded just a little bit. The wonder of God made visible in Jesus, the infinite love of the Lord for us, the ancient story of a pregnant woman on a journey, a birth in a manger, with shepherds, astrologers and angels coming and going never fails to capture our hearts and stir our imaginations.

If we want to carry the peace, joy and love of Christmas into this new year, we must ponder a central theological truth: Just as Jesus makes God visible and present in this world, so the church makes Jesus public, present and visible. That is her mission and so it is ours as well as we are daughters and sons of the church. In proclaiming the Word, celebrating the sacraments and undertaking actions of charity and justice, the church continues the saving mission of Jesus. Each one of us must be a part of this vast, public undertaking of making Jesus tangible and real in the world.

Throughout Christian history, at particular times and for varied reasons, certain movements, theologians and communities have sought to so spiritualize the church as to make her invisible. Ecclesial realities like the Mass, saints, sacred art, ordained deacons, priests and bishops, icons, social engagement in the public square by religious believers, monasteries and convents, the writings of the church Fathers, religious garb, the obligation to create a just and merciful political and economic order, to name just a few, were seen by some, both within the Catholic church and those who left her, as merely human additions which sully the purity of Christ’s Gospel.

But for us as Catholics, the church must have a tangible, sacramental, “flesh and blood,” public presence in the world because Jesus did. While there exists an ever-present temptation to cling to the external form of religion without an interior life of prayer and conversion, this is not reason enough to reject the visibility of Christ’s Body. I wonder sometimes if we as Catholics have tried so hard to fit into the culture around us that we have become invisible, almost indistinguishable as practicing believers. Our faith must be public as the preaching, healing, Passion and death of Jesus Christ was public. How do we make our relationship with the Lord so real and tangible that both friends and strangers come to see Christ at work in our words and actions?

In reflection, I realize that all of the seemingly disconnected things rolling around in my head actually find an inner coherence as reflections of the invisible God made visible for us in Jesus Christ. Things as disparate as martyrdom, Christmas carols, cardinals, good friends, icons and acts of charity are all mysteries which point us to the luminous presence of the incarnate Christ in our lives and our world. The challenge of our Catholic faith is to increasingly allow the Holy Spirit to make us visible extensions of Jesus for others. When we dare to ask the Lord to use us in that way, we make Christmas last all year long.

We always see the shepherds, roughly clad yet respectful, forgetting that they were once viewed with distaste, and even contempt, by their more religious contemporaries because shepherds couldn’t follow all the prescriptions of piety when out in the fields day and night.

We may even overlook the fact that one or other shepherd might be wearing Bavarian lederhosen as a result of some German influence over the centuries. Sometimes crib scenes of Italian origin playfully place a woman making pizza somewhere in the background. The mystery of the Incarnation includes cultures as well as centuries. Maybe real American versions should have a barbeque pit or a hot dog stand.

Eventually we will see the Magi exotically clothed in imaginary oriental robes, standing beside a camel or two, holding their three precious gifts. We may not know that legend once had them 12 in number, or that only in about the 14th century did one become black. Racism is a more modern phenomenon, completely absent as such from the biblical psyche.

Perhaps we never realized that Francis had added the ox and ass because of a prophecy of Isaiah who complained bitterly that even the “ox and ass know their Master’s crib” (1:3), though the leaders of ancient Israel seemingly didn’t have a clue about their God!

An angel is almost always hovering over the scene, scroll in hand, proclaiming (in Latin, of course, which shepherds would hardly ever have understood) the heavenly antiphon of “Gloria in excelsis Deo!”A nativity scene is displayed in Aregua, Paraguay, Dec. 23, 2007, in this file photo (CNS photo/Jorge Adorno, Reuters)

No one, except perhaps the little children, seems to pay much attention to the sheep. They appear to be nothing more than an extra touch of realism.

As a matter of fact, however, they are very important for the message of Christmas. Jesus came “for the lost sheep of Israel” (Mt 15:24). Some sheep had to be present to make the point. Christians believe with profound certitude that Jesus himself was the full and final Paschal lamb who would die to free the world from the slavery of sin (Ex 12:1-17; 1 Cor 5:7). The sheep had to be present to remind us of this child’s destiny.

Jesus did not enter the world simply to magically take away all human pain, sorrow, disappointment or heartache. His divine heart was larger than that. He was sent to become one like us in all things but sin. Jesus was sent to walk with us through sickness, sin and death into the fullness of life. The sheep had to be there to signal the Paschal Mystery.

Unfortunately, post Enlightenment moderns tend to dismiss allusions to sheep as too docile, overly mindless, blindly obedient and patently stupid. No one wants to return to an age of uneducated Christian laity or clergy. We are called to be informed and intelligent partners in the work of the Gospel and in the transformation of the larger world. Nevertheless, the sheep remind us of the fact that the Incarnation cannot be separated from the Paschal mystery. The mission of Jesus and the call of his disciples always have a price. No one enters the Kingdom except through hardship (Acts 14:22).

So we shouldn’t ever overlook the sheep. They stand at the very heart of the mystery of God’s love!

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Allow me to add the titles of two books which caught my fancy in recent months.

First, there was the book selected for discussion at the annual ecumenical retreat of the Wisconsin Religious Leaders in Green Lake last month: Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: How Like-minded Communities are Tearing America Apart.” The book’s thesis is that contemporary Americans settle in neighborhoods of people who share the same perspectives.

They therefore choose political leaders who embody those values, only more so, and as elected representatives, feel themselves constrained to fight for the values without compromise in order to be re-elected. If one can get past the charts and graphs at the beginning of the book, the ideas are insightful and provocative.

Secondly, Madeleine Levine wrote an unsettling book titled “The Price of Privilege.” After 25 years of work with adolescents and young adults of affluent families in Marin County, Calif., she saw how often our young are driven to achieve by hovering and hard working, but all too absent, parents. Surprisingly, like central city teenagers, they also become empty and hurting at profound levels. She underscores something of great important for our nation and its future. Youth ministers could profit from this work.

P.S. Thanks for all the lovely cards and kind greetings at Christmas. To have so many friends and partners in the work of the Gospel is a great blessing to be cherished and never taken for granted.

(This column by Bishop Donald J. Hying originally appeared in the Dec. 22, 2005, edition of your Catholic Herald as a Scripture reflection. Because of its powerful message, we share it with you again during this blessed Christmas season.)

Because Christ entered into human history, the apostles proclaimed the Gospel to the ends of the earth, martyrs gave up their lives rather than their faith and a new philosophical understanding of the person emerged.

Because of Christmas, soaring cathedrals rose over Europe, universities and hospitals opened their doors and missionaries sailed across oceans in wooden ships.

Because of what we celebrate today, four churchwomen were murdered in El Salvador for their stance with the poor, a pope sold his fisherman’s ring to aid a slum in Brazil and a wrinkled woman in a sari lovingly pulled dying people out of gutters.

The church has never gotten over the wonder of the Incarnation, the startling truth that, in the person of Jesus Christ, this one specific human being living at one historical point in time in a precise geographical place expressed in the fullest possible way the union of God and human nature.

God had entered his own creation to redeem it and restore it from the inside. In his mystical theology, St. Bonaventure expresses this burning, passionate love of God who desires nothing less than complete identification with every human being.

Christmas changes everything! If God is one with us through the power of Christ’s Spirit, alive and active through the church, life is radically different for us. God is not out there somewhere, unreachable and unknowable.

In the tender vulnerability of Christ’s humanity, God has completely united his life with ours. This enfleshed Divine Word has become the language of our own human experience; Jesus explains us to ourselves.

How telling it is that Mary and Joseph could not find a room for the birth of Jesus. In a world of sin, violence, sorrow and selfishness, there was no room for this tiny, warm God who had come only to love and heal.

Is there any more room for God today? Is there space for justice and peace? Is there room for prayer and virtue? Does God truly hold center place in our lives and our global society? If we sometimes feel that God has been pushed into the corner, then it is to the corner that we must go.

There is a tendency within us to want to clean up the Christ story, to make it respectable, orderly and dignified. In so many ways, it was none of that. God was born of an itinerant mother in an animal shelter with smelly manure and dirty shepherds. God died on a bloody cross, scourged and rejected, cut off as one accursed.

We cannot romanticize the Christian narrative without decreasing its potent reality. God comes to us in all of the messiness and lunacy of the real world to save us as we are, not to redeem some idealized version of ourselves.

The Incarnation of Christ powerfully proclaims the humility and vulnerability of God. Setting aside the majesty, glory and safety of heaven, the eternal Word empties himself completely, assumes the radical limitations of our humanity and runs the terrible risk of being misunderstood, rejected and killed by his own creatures!

Divine Love gives itself away in a total act of self-donation. In the Christ event, we grasp the very essence of God, who pours himself out completely for us.

As disciples of this passionate, incarnate Christ, our lives, too, will be marked by humility and vulnerability. How else can we love others with this self-emptying divine life unless we leave our comfort zones and surrender our insulating pride? How else can we give birth to the Word unless we go to the dark corners of this world?

Yes, the manure will smell, the shepherds will be uncouth, the stable will be cold, the scourging will tear our flesh, and the cross will kill us. Often, the way of Jesus makes no rational sense at all, and we do our best to live the pieces of it that we can. But Christmas challenges us to go all the way. Have a blessed one!