Take Joy! Praying without a license

My ever-more-ambiguous relationship with the Pope makes me feel I've lost my license to pray. But I love to pray, so now I'm doing it recklessly and without a license. Here's one of my favorites -- a Christmas wish, really. I discovered it in Tasha Tudor's children's Christmas book Take Joy.

Take joy!

Fra Giovanni

1513

I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in the present moment. Take Peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach is joy. Take Joy!

And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.