Well its the last days of summer and the bees are still visiting tired flowers. Nevertheless, today's mail produced another supply of Christmas cards from competing Catholic religious orders eager to beat the other for your money. Sometimes it seems the orders should just be done with it and just change their names to Sisters of Hallmark or Gibson Brothers of the Holy Post. What started as a unique oddity has mushroomed into a card industry: Christmas, Easter, birthday, death, and illness keep a steady flow of cards to our homes. Sometimes they include medals, rosaries, and holy cards. Some even send coins and postage to stir your conscious. Today's mail came from the Maryknoll Order, once the great American missionaries of China now reduced to a trickle of vocations after truly embracing a liberal approach to Catholicism. It contained the usual manger scene cards. The envelope said, "Keep Christ in Christmas". Surely a nifty reminder in the hustle and bustle of summer Cristmas season. How many shopping days to Christmas, Father ? Perhaps we can begin to keep Our Lord in Christmas by having His Church get out of the card business and stop competing with malls decorating for His birth in September in the hope to make the most bucks. Fathers, Sisters and Brothers consider remembering what Chaucer said in the Canterbury Tales, "If the gold rusts what will the iron do"?
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