The Day Off started last Saturday with phone calls coming in over other calls all in the middle of The-Priest-Sprint® that runs, so to speak, from about 4:00 AM Saturday morning until Sunday night when I collapse, having gotten up at 2:00 AM on Sunday. Those calls were weighing on me when texts came in with a request that would require bilocation all day on the Day Off. But I ain’t no Padre Pio. Ain’t gonna happen. I had to put that off for another Day Off, having found out that I had already been volunteered by higher-ups to make an intervention that would clock something between 500 and 600 miles on Sassy the Subaru on the Day Off. I haven’t yet recovered from that, with yet more phone calls requiring follow-ups for analogous situations. The Day Off started at 1:45 AM and didn’t stop until something like just before 10:00 PM.
The days are running together with The-Priest-Sprint® continuing more than just the weekend. Time runs together, melts into one time when past is future, future is past, a blur in the midst of the present. All a bit surreal. But then, the good Lord holds all time in His hands as just another creation of His. He was born in time that we might be borne up through, with and in Him into eternity. He was born to die that we might live. He was born upon the wood of the manger that when He would be lifted up on the wood of the cross He might, as He said, draw all to Himself, to heaven, but, on Calvary, right through all of hell broken out. He conquered the violence of Herod at His birth in Bethlehem. He conquered the violence of hell at our birth to life on Calvary. The disparateness of time is brought together in His Heart. And it is with His Heart that we find the Immaculate Heart of His dear Immaculate Virgin Mother. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Mary.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
Wishing you a Blessed Christmas and a joyous New Year! We thank God for the gift of you!
First, a joke, then sobriety;
Ackshually, Father, there ARE two Padre Pios, unfortunately, he is both of them.
Something about your final paragraph reminded me of an IMDBchannel movie (so error-filled as to religion that I almost stopped viewing it) called “REDBAD.” Throughout the movie, a Bishop and priest are portrayed in the most outrageous and uncharitable light imaginable, and any Catholic will be left wondering if the writer knew anything about Catholicism at all, as Mass was never shown to be said by either cleric, but instead was shown to be incensing a pool of water, several times, as something both superstitious and perfectly Catholic. I was left saying “what?”
But there was one, and only one, scene where words were allowed to be said by the Bishop that were actually right for any Catholic to say:
[A scene by the pagan’s sacred oak tree where the Bishop is trying to correct the practice of human sacrifice]
Bishop: You don’t have to sacrifice your daughters, because Jesus, the One True God, has sacrificed Himself for you!
Right after that, “soldiers” all dressed as knights of an imagined crusade rushed in and started brutalizing the people. Ugh. The end credits educated the viewer that “Redbad” had been forgotten in history while the evil Bishop was revered a Saint. Talk about rewriting history.
please take care of yourself and get rest when you can….we need you….merry Christmas….stay well
Yes we do need you, Father George. Merry Christmas.