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Fr. Benedict Kiely: Christ the Winter Fire – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

Fr. Benedict Kiely: Christ the Winter Fire

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Nativity with a Torch by the Le Nain Brothers, c 1635-40 [private collection]

Fr. Benedict Kiely, The Catholic Thing, December 5, 2025

Fr. Benedict Kiely is a priest of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. He is the founder of Nasarean.org, helping persecuted Christians.

Friends: We’re getting near the close of our end-of-year fundraising period.  And we’re also getting close to the goals that will keep The Catholic Thing and all the other things we do going strong in 2025. So let me simply ask: Do you value what you come here for daily? If so, and if you haven’t made your donation to this work, please, don’t delay further. In order to plan our upcoming year, we need to know that we have the resources we’ll need. You are, quite literally, those resources. Enough said. Support TCT. Today. – Robert Royal

“O God be gracious and bless us and let Your face shed its light upon us.” So begins Psalm 68, often said in the Daily Office, or Breviary, at the start of the day. In St. John’s Gospel, Philip says to Jesus, “show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus responds, “Philip, to have seen Me is to have seen the Father.” The light shining from the face of Christ is the light of the Father. The blessing of seeing the face of Christ is the gift we will soon celebrate at Christmas: God has become man, and we can look upon Him.

This is why we can revere holy images, and in a special way icons, because of the Incarnation. We do not worship the images, but they become a window, or portal, in which we can enter into the mystery of the divine and have, in a very real sense, an encounter with the One portrayed. A holy icon of the face of Christ, for example, is a way that we can gaze into the sacred humanity and divinity of the Lord, and feel the blessing, warmth, and light of His face. …

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