Christmas thoughts by St. Alphonsus Liguori

I hope everyone is having a good week preparing for Christmas. It is a happy time of year, but lets not forget that although we rejoice that our Savior was born, his life was one of suffering for our sins. Here is a quote from The Incarnation, Birth, and Infancy of Jesus Christ by St. Alphonsus.

Consider the painful life that Jesus Christ led in the womb of his Mother, and the long confined and dark imprisonment that he suffered there for nine months. Other infants are indeed in the same state; but they do not feel the miseries of it, because they do not know them. But Jesus knew them well, because from the first moment of his life he had the perfect use of reason. He had his senses, but he could not use them; eyes, but he could not see; a tongue, but he could not speak; hands, but he could not stretch them out; feet, but he could not walk;- so that for nine months he had to remain in the womb of Mary like a dead man shut up  in the tomb: I am become like a man without help, free among the dead.  He was free, because he had of his own free-will made himself a prisoner of love in this prison; but love deprived him of liberty, and bound him there so fast in chains that he could not move:  "Free among the dead! Oh great patience of our Savior!" says St. Ambrose, while he considered the sufferings of Jesus in the womb of Mary.