Christmas of the Heart is making the love of Christ our own. Contemplating Christ, we begin to understand what true love is. True love is not so much what we could do for others as what we could suffer for and from others. This is clearly seen in the life of Jesus. Jesus loved in deeds – countless good works for the people but his love excelled in suffering and dying on the cross for men – for the very men who led him to his death. He suffered from men and for men – for us. This is true love.

Mother Mary Michael’s Vocation Story:
 
Adolfine Tönnies, (later, Mother Mary Michael) took up a teaching course in Muenster, Germany for two years after which she qualified for a teaching job in a mission school in Rendsburg in which she excelled as a school teacher from 1881 to 1891. She was well loved and highly esteemed. The call to religious life developed slowly. For a long time she was not clear about what God wanted of her. She wrote to Arnold Janssen with candid openness: “This thought has preoccupied me for years but I never said anything about it.”