Have you taken down your Christmas decorations yet? If not, that's ok! It's still Christmas through this Saturday, January 5. (January 6 is the Epiphany, and the beginning of the Epiphany season, which lasts until Ash Wednesday.) I have a suggestion of how to use one of the Christmas cards you may have received -- for prayer.

I recently came across a reference to Catherine of Sienna (1340-1380), who was a great teacher of prayer. The essayist writes this: "Catherine invites us not only to know about God with our heads but also to allow the truths about God to sink deeply into our hearts, the fiber of our inmost being. She plots a way to savor and be enlightened by the truth of God's goodness through constant humble prayer. A practical way to discover the truth is to gaze with fidelity and love into the face of God. Over time, we are to become the image we see in God's loving face and to notice the divine truth in the faces of our neighbors."

I've been thinking about the words, "to gaze with fidelity and love into the face of God." One centuries-old way of doing that in prayer is to pray with icons. No, I'm not talking about computer icons, but instead those depictions of God or Jesus or Mary or one of the other saints. It's a way of prayer that we are invited into by our brothers and sisters who are Eastern, Orthodox Christians. Using an icon of Jesus, for instance, a person stares into the eyes of the Christ, with prayerful contemplative openness. Through the prayer, s/he finds herself looking into the eyes of God! And here's something else that happens: in the prayer, s/he finds that God is looking back, as well! It is communication through eye contact.

It could be that you have an icon that you use for prayer. But it could be that you received a Christmas card that will work just as well. I'm not talking about one of the cards featuring Rudolph or Frosty the Snowman, wishing you "Happy Holidays." It has to be a card depicting the Christ child, staring out at you. Did you receive one like that? I've pulled out one such card. (On the back of the card I read, "Madonna and Child painting by Sister Gregory Ems (1869-1954), Monastery of the Immaculte Conception.")

I sit still, looking into the loving eyes of the Christ child ...