Christmas goats? What about the sheep?! Hah!

You ever wonder why Jesus likened the last judgment to separating the goats from the sheep, with the goats tumbling down to hell while the sheep trundle up to heaven?

Well, it’s like this: goats really are cute, and that’s good. The problem is that they know it, and relish it, and flaunt it. That’s not good. All of a sudden it’s not so cute. They become terribly independent, apart from any flock, are troublemakers, destroying anything and everything, all the while, mind you, all the while putting on such an almost convincing façade of cuteness.

But then there are Christmas sheep, this time in the form of a young Joseph Ratzinger:

Pope’s childhood letter to Baby Jesus shows his faith – By Estefania Aguirre

A Christmas letter that Pope Benedict XVI wrote to Baby Jesus when he was seven years-old demonstrates his devotion to the Sacred Heart and his desire to be a priest.

The letter is on display this Advent in the village of Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, where he was born.

“Dear Baby Jesus, quickly come down to earth. You will bring joy to children. Also bring me joy,” he wrote in the 1934 letter, published on the Church-affiliated Italian website Korazym.org.

“I would like a Volks-Schott (a Mass prayers book), green clothing for Mass (clerical clothing) and a heart of Jesus. I will always be good. Greetings from Joseph Ratzinger,” he wrote in German cursive hard writing called Sütterlinschrift.

The letter, found during the renovation of a house that Joseph Ratzinger’s occupied when he was a professor in Regensburg, was published on Dec. 18. The message was discovered in the estate of his sister Mary, who kept the letter after the Pope’s house was converted into a small museum dedicated to him.

In Korazym’s view, the “letter was uncommon for a seven-year-old since he did not ask for toys or sweets, which were always in front of the Ratzinger family’s nativity for his three brothers.”

The first thing the Pope wanted was a Schott, one of the first prayer books with the missal in German and a parallel text in Latin. At the time there were two editions in the country, one for adults and one for children.

But little Joseph also asked for “green clothing for Mass.”

The Pope and his brothers used to play the “game of the priest,” and their mother, a seamstress, would help them by making clothes similar to those worn by priests, according to an “Inside the Vatican” interview his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, gave a few years ago.

He also asked for a heart of Jesus, referring to an image of the Sacred Heart, which his family was very devoted to.

His brother…  [read the rest at CNA]