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>> MONSIGNOR DANIEL SULLIVAN: One of my favorite Christmas Carols is
“Angels we have Heard on High”. Having been to the Holy Land I can tell you that it
does get cold at night, especially during the Winter months, and the stars seem so close
you feel you can reach out and touch them. I can easily imagine the lonely life of shepherds
2000 years ago in Bethlehem huddling together and watching over their sheep
praying at night for dawn to come quickly. If you go to Israel and travel to Bethlehem you will
see a section called “Shepherd’s Field”. This is a small outcropping of rock that allows
you to look down into the fields of Bethlehem where the shepherds would have been. I ventured
there one night and sat there and tried to imagine the night-time Israeli sky being ignited
with Godly light as the angels announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds.
This year I need you to be angels to children who might not have a Christmas without your help.
Father Peter Konteh, who administers Saint Mary’s Home, in Sierra Leone, Africa, has sent me
an urgent appeal for help for his children. They call it Saint Mary’s Home since they
treat every parentless child there as family and the word orphan is never used. Here in
America we think of an orphan as a child who has no parents or no family. However, these
children are more than orphans, they are also innocent victims of the recent civil war in
Sierra Leone, Africa. These orphans of Saint Mary’s Home have been through more horror
in their short lives than any of us here in America can imagine. During the civil war
the vast majority of these children saw the rebel forces break into their homes, ***
and kill their mothers, torture and eventually kill their fathers and then they themselves
were threatened with mutilation or death if they ever identified the murderous rebels.
One case in particular still bothers my heart and that is of a young boy, five years old
who saw his mother and father killed in front of him. When his uncle found him three days
later he was nestled in between his dead mother and father and would sit for hours wiping
his dead parent’s brows and kissing their foreheads. These are the children of
Saint Mary’s Home who need you to be their Christmas angels.
For a $25 donation Father Peter can buy 12 toys for a child.
For a $50 donation Father Peter can buy a child 12 toys and enough new clothes for a year.
And for only a $125 donation, Father Peter can buy 12 toys, clothe the child and
provide meals each day for a full year. When I go to the grocery store I can
easily spend $125 and the food that I purchase certainly does not last me a year. Even though
our nation is undergoing tough economic times we can all afford in one way or another to
be an angel to these children who have no one. The children of Saint Mary’s Home need
joy, they need to feel they are loved, they need hope and they need you to be their 2011
Christmas angel. I cannot imagine a child at Christmas going without any gifts.
I am pleading with you to help Father Peter and his children celebrate this Christmas.