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Life's Joyful Mystery
A Catholic Retreat in Your Inbox
James Berigan
December 20, 2024
An email newsletter produced by Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center in Brighton, Michigan.
If you are not already subscribed to “Life’s Joyful Mystery”, please click the button below! We publish every Friday, and did I mention that it’s FREE?! We’d love to have you join our community!
How to get in touch:
It is very important to me that we create a community around this newsletter. I want you to know that I am a real person sitting at this keyboard!
If you would like to reach out and communicate with me, please feel free to do so.
There will be plenty of times in the near future, where I will be asking you, the readers, to share your ideas, thoughts, questions, and concerns with me.
So, the best way to get in touch is by email. My address is:
Get to know us! Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center
St. George Shrine - the chapel of Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center
As we have previously identified, this e-newsletter is produced by Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center. Our mission is to provide Catholic retreats for youth and adults in Brighton, Michigan.
However, we are not a stand-alone entity. We are a ministry of the Chaldean Catholic Church of the United States of America, which is centered in Southfield, Michigan and led by Bishop Francis Kalabat, who serves as Eparch of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit in the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Our retreat center serves the Chaldean parishes in this diocese, as well as Roman Catholic churches and schools in the Archdiocese of Detroit and several other dioceses in the Midwestern US.
Our Chaldean lineage gives us a unique perspective and personality to host retreats. Not only do we have the Roman Rite to pull from, but we also have the rich history and traditions of the Chaldean Church to share with our guests.
The Chaldean Diocese of Detroit is growing and thriving. New parishes and schools are being built, and the Lord has blessed us with several seminarians who are preparing for priesthood. There is also a dynamic core of young women who are preparing for sisterhood.
As this newsletter grows, you will continue to see the many ways our Chaldean heritage flavors and forms our spiritual work!
St. John the Baptist Lake at Our Lady of the Fields. Our dining hall is in the background.
FEATURE ARTICLE: Aluminum Christmas Trees, The Peanuts Gang, & Me
I am of the generation that was greatly formed by television. I fondly remember several special events where my family and I gathered around the technicolor glow of our vintage 1970s RCA Wooden TV Console that sat proudly on our burnt orange shag carpeting. I also remember that with this particular TV, I was the family’s remote control. Can anyone relate to that?
Of particular note in my carousel of memories was the annual Charlie Brown Christmas Special.
If you have lived anywhere except under a rock for the past 5 or 6 decades, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The key take-away from this Christmas classic, at least in my mind, centers around Charlie Brown’s choice of Christmas tree.
The most famous Christmas tree… maybe ever.
You know the one. That frail, humble, worst-on-the-whole-lot tree did a lot of metaphorical heavy lifting in this 30 minute cartoon. Perhaps most notably, it symbolized the birth of the Savior in Bethlehem and how that event is so often overshadowed by the focus on material gifts. There’s also the message that the tree's transformation from a bent-over, seemingly dead “stick” into a beautiful tree symbolizes Jesus' resurrection.
Even as a kid, these messages weren’t that hard to noodle out.
Two for the Price of One! Catholic Vocab Word(s) of the Week - “Acedia & Zeal”
It would be pretty easy to randomly open up a Catholic dictionary, point an index finger down on whatever arbitrary word just happened to be on that page, and simply choose THAT as my Catholic Vocab Word of the Week.
But, here at Life’s Joyful Mystery, we don't take the easy way out! No, sir! No, ma'am!
We scroll through hundreds, nay, thousands of words and phrases until we feel a divinely inspired tap on the shoulder that THIS is what the Lord wants us to share.
And this week, it’s a “two-fer”: “acedia” and “zeal”. These two words kind of go together, but not in a complimentary way, like peanut butter and chocolate do (in my very strong opinion). In this case, one of the words - acedia - is a problem, and the other - zeal- is the solution.
Webster’s Dictionary defines acedia as “apathy or boredom”.
In a spiritual sense, a more precise definition would be that acedia is a spiritual state of sloth or laziness that can lead to a person distancing themselves from God. In the Catholic Church, acedia is defined as the belief that spiritual tasks are too hard.
Here is acedia being used in a sentence:
“The monk struggled against the acedia that often overcame him during long periods of solitary prayer."
We Wish You a Merry “X-Mas!”
I know that I am guilty of a bah-humbug or two when I see the term “X-mas” written out during this holy time of year. Come on! Are you too lazy to write out “Christmas” for Pete’s sake?!
However! I just recently learned that this is NOT some kind of blasphemous dis on our Lord and Savior, but it actually has a historical meaning!
It seems that around the middle 1500s, Christian publications started using this abbreviation to save paper and reduce costs. Chi (X) is the first letter of Christ in Greek Χριστός (Christos).
That means that the “X” in the well-known Christian symbol ☧ is the very same “X” from “X-mas”! WOW! 🤯 (MIND BLOWN!)
Huh! Who knew? (Probably everyone except me!)
Thanks to https://jacobrcrouch.wordpress.com/ for the tip!
Suggested Links You Might Enjoy:
Fruits from the Fields video podcast on YouTube, which is also produced by Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center and features great Catholic content.
Song of Mary - a new music ministry that some folks at OLF have recently started. Song of Mary has just published a Christmas “Album” called “A Savior is Born”. Please listen to it HERE!
If you like what you see at either one of these sites, I encourage you to please subscribe to their YouTube channels, so you can see all of the new videos!
To learn more about the mission and the needs of Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center, please click the link below.
See you next week!
If you enjoyed this first issue, please make sure to subscribe to “Life’s Joyful Mystery - A Catholic Retreat in Your Inbox” by clicking the button below.