Balthasar seemed to know just what I was feeling: Christians, he said, often feel like a foreigner forced to speak in a language whose rules they have never learned, or a stuttering child who wants to say something but cannot.

When I think about the Holy Family I remember other holy families as well, the ones who brought me up in the faith, who showed me how to love and who taught me how to celebrate Christmas.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has suffered cardiac arrest in recent decades.