Bishop Peter Christensen: Christmas Message

Bishop Peter F. Christensen, far right, takes advice from his mother on how to blow out candles on his sixth birthday in 1958. (Photo courtesy of Bishop Peter F. Christensen)

By Bishop Peter F. Christensen

Each year a new Men in Black calendar, featuring Idaho priests is printed and sold offering the proceeds to help support our seminarians and priests.

Mary Lou Molitor, the publisher of these calendars, once again, asked me to participate in the 2026 edition. The theme for this year was to submit a photo which included 12 priests with their mothers. Thus, I submitted the above photo for the month of December.

The photo tells the story of my sixth birthday when my mother was teaching me, with the “help” of three of my four siblings at the time, how to blow out candles.

Obviously, it doesn’t happen with mouths wide open. My mother is giving instructions on how to pucker my lips and then blow out while aiming at the lit candles. I finally got it, and my sixth birthday was then celebrated with a wish, a slice of her home-made birthday cake and lots of laughter. What patience she had, as I now recognize the many sacrifices, she made that can only be understood today as simple acts of love!

On the second Sunday of this Advent, I was invited by one of our priests to visit his extended family at an open house gathering. After making the invitation, he asked if I’d be willing to anoint his elderly father at the same event. I gladly agreed to do so. Prior to attending, I offered this prayer in my heart for both his parents: “Lord, if there is anything you want me to mention to this couple, please give the words to say.” I had hardly finished, when these words came to my heart: “Tell them that I know the many sacrifices you have made for others during your lives.

Some of these are known, however, many not fully recognized by those for whom they were offered. I also know the many sacrifices you have made on behalf of others which are no longer remembered by you.”

When I had finished saying these words to the couple there was the audible sigh. The kind of sigh that comes when knowing you have been blessed – in this case a sigh including eyes filled with tears.

The words given to me then: “Some of these are known, however, many not fully recognized by those for whom they were offered,” continue to resonate deep within my heart today as I reflect back on my sixth birthday December 24, 1958.

Just think, my mother had five of her eight children by that time and at this moment expecting her sixth. It’s the day before Christmas, with gifts to be wrapped, meals to be prepared, probably laundry to be done, a cake to bake and a birthday to be celebrated. All the while, she’s patiently and joyfully teaching her fourth child how to blow out his six birthday candles. What a loving sacrifice she was making. And, at the time, I had no real understanding of all she must have been going through in order to make this event so special and memorable for her child.

Perhaps the same words spoken in my heart for the elderly couple could be spoken to her as well: “I also know, (Ann), the many sacrifices you have made on behalf of others which are no longer remembered by you.”

I believe it’s important that we remember today that an act of love made in sacrifice for the well-being of others, does not go unnoticed by Our Lord, nor can they be forgotten even if we forget.

As a child I knew I was cared for, but as I have grown older, even decades later, I have come to see these sacrificial moments as touchstones of grace that touch deep within the heart. These moments are commingled with Divine Grace reminding me that I am known and loved by God.

My brothers and sisters, when we experience a taste of pure, selfless love by another, it is then that we are brought to realize, in an even deeper way, that Our Heavenly Father does indeed care for us; for human love touches on the eternal. With the experience of such love we touch upon a love that we have been created to receive from the beginning of time. When we receive and when we share sacrificial love from and for another, we share in a taste of God’s eternal love for us.

This flow of Grace is what we celebrate each and every Christmas as we remember how deeply loved we are as seen by Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem, and His life which follows here on earth. So many sacrifices made, some recognized, some unknown, and some yet to be revealed. They will be revealed when we have eyes that are opened and Blessed to see as children of God just how Loved we’ve been for all eternity.

Merry Christmas!