Professor Jeff Barker: "Come Back to Jesus"

A compelling take on the story of Jesus and the ten lepers by Professor Jeff Barker of the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies.

Christmas is the birthday of peace -- St. Leo the Great

Although the state of infancy, which the majesty of the Son of God did not disdain to assume, developed with the passage of time into the maturity of manhood, and although after the triumph of the passion and the resurrection all his lowly acts undertaken on our behalf belong to the past, nevertheless today’s feast of Christmas renews for us the sacred beginning of Jesus’s life, his birth from the Virgin Mary. In the very act in which we are reverencing the birth of our Savior, we are also celebrating our own new birth. For the birth of Christ is the origin of the Christian people; and the birthday of the head is also the birthday of the body.

Though each and every individual occupies a definite place in this body to which he has been called, and though all the progeny of the church is differentiated and marked with the passage of time, nevertheless as the whole community of the faithful, once begotten in the baptismal font, was crucified with Christ in the passion, raised up with him in the resurrection and at the ascension placed at the right hand of the Father, so too it is born with him in this Nativity, which we are celebrating today.

For every believer regenerated in Christ, no matter in what part of the whole world he may be, breaks with that ancient way of life that derives from original sin, and by rebirth is transformed into a new man. Henceforth he is reckoned to be of the stock, not of his earthly father, but of Christ, who became Son of Man precisely that men could become sons of God; for unless in humility he had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to him.

Therefore the greatness of the gift which he has bestowed o us demands an appreciation proportioned to its excellence; for blessed Paul the Apostle truly teaches: We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. The only way that he can be worthily honored by us is by the presentation to him of that which he has already given to us.

But what can we find in the treasure of the Lord’s bounty more in keeping with the glory of this feast than that peace which was first announced by the angelic choir on the day of his birth? For that peace, from which the sons of God spring, sustains love and mothers unity; it refreshes the blessed and shelters eternity; its characteristic function and special blessing is to join to God those whom it separates from this world.

Therefore, may those who were born, not of blood nor of the will fo the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God, offer to the Father their harmony as sons united in peace; and may all those whom he has adopted as his members meet in the firstborn of the new creation who came not to do him own will but the will of the one who sent him; for the grace of the Father has adopted as heirs neither the contentious nor the dissident, but those who are one in thought and love. The hearts and minds of those who have been reformed according to one and the same image should be in harmony with one another.

The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace, as Paul the Apostle says: For he is our peace, who has made us both one; for whether we be Jew or Gentile, through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Revelation: The power of prayer

I have had several requests to post the sermon on Revelation 8, which I preached last Wednesday during our mid-week service. So here it is, by popular demand. Be forewarned: I do have a little bout with a cough about midway through.

Midweek sermon, Wednesday, 22 October 2014

St. John Chrysostom: An Easter sermon

Are there any who are devout lovers of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Are there any who are grateful servants?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary from fasting?
Let them now receive their due!

If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their reward.

If any have come after the third hour,
let them with gratitude join in the feast!

Those who arrived after the sixth hour,
let them not doubt; for they shall not be short-changed.

Those who have tarried until the ninth hour,
let them not hesitate; but let them come too.

And those who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let them not be afraid by reason of their delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
The Lord gives rest to those who come at the eleventh hour,
even as to those who toiled from the beginning.

To one and all the Lord gives generously.
The Lord accepts the offering of every work.
The Lord honours every deed and commends their intention.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike, receive your reward.
Rich and poor, rejoice together!

Conscientious and lazy, celebrate the day!
You who have kept the fast, and you who have not,
rejoice, this day, for the table is bountifully spread!

Feast royally, for the calf is fatted.
Let no one go away hungry.
Partake, all, of the banquet of faith.
Enjoy the bounty of the Lord's goodness!

Let no one grieve being poor,
for the universal reign has been revealed.

Let no one lament persistent failings,
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death,
for the death of our Saviour has set us free.
The Lord has destroyed death by enduring it.
The Lord vanquished hell when he descended into it.
The Lord put hell in turmoil even as it tasted of his flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, were placed in turmoil when he encountering you below."
Hell was in turmoil having been eclipsed.
Hell was in turmoil having been mocked.
Hell was in turmoil having been destroyed.
Hell was in turmoil having been abolished.
Hell was in turmoil having been made captive.

Hell grasped a corpse, and met God.
Hell seized earth, and encountered heaven.
Hell took what it saw, and was overcome by what it could not see.

O death, where is your sting?
O hell, where is your victory?

Christ is risen, and you are cast down!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life is set free!
Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead.

For Christ, having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Christ be glory and power forever and ever. Amen!

++Rowan takes cue from Michael W. Smith

Preaching at a church in Rome after his recent meeting with the pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury challenged what he called the "religion factory" mentality of many Christians, addressing in particular those who have made the cross nothing more than a "religious decoration."

Sermon by Archbishop Rowan Williams


St Paul’s 'Within the Walls', Rome


11 March 2012

Lectionary: Exodus 20, Ps 19, 1 Cor 1.18–25; John 2.13–22

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Once again, let me thank you for your hospitality here. I know that your brothers and sisters in the Church of England would want me to convey the love and prayers that they feel towards the Anglican congregations in this great city, their fellowship with the bishops and the clergy here, and their gratitude for your witness in this place.

Reading the Gospel for this morning, I was reminded of visiting factories in South Wales when I was a bishop there, visiting the great steelworks not very far from the town where I lived. You entered this enormous space with deafening noise all around you – in fact, in some parts of the factory you had to wear ear plugs as well as a protective hat. Noise, activity; deafening and intense. That is what it would have been like to go into the temple in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. It would be more like going in to a steelworks than going into a nice tidy church such as we’re all familiar with.

And what were they making in this great ‘factory’ in the temple in Jerusalem? They were making religion. Just as a steelworks makes steel, the temple made religion. It made intense, busy activity, all day and every day; and especially at the seasons of the great festivals literally thousands of priests would have been at work every day, slaughtering the animals for sacrifice. They were making religion; they were making a product with which God would be suitably impressed.

And the theme of all three of our lessons this morning is actually the difference between ‘religion’ that we make in religion factories, and the true God – the love and service of the true God.

At the very beginning of the Ten Commandments, we are warned not to put anything in the place of the true God, and not to make satisfying pictures, ‘idols’, of God. We can so very easily fill up the space in our minds or in our prayers with the picture of God that keeps us happy, drawn from our own preferences, our own ideals, what makes us safe and comfortable. We can use that to plug the gap – we can produce something, we can make religion. And instead of the mystery, the terror, the beauty and the freedom of the true God, we draw out something from inside us, project it onto the screen of heaven, and fall down and worship it: the ‘religion factory’.

The same thing is what St Paul warns us against in the second of our readings. God’s wisdom and God’s power are so strange, so different from what the world thinks of as wisdom and power – how much easier to step back and say: we’ll settle for the wisdom and the power we can manage. ‘Some seek for signs and some seek for wisdom.’ In other words, some people look for demonstrations of God’s power in something very like magic, and other look for demonstrations of God’s wisdom in human philosophy, all of it making us feel safer and more comfortable.

Over against all that, once again, the mystery, the terror, the beauty, the freedom of the true God, who is made known to us in the suffering love of Jesus Christ. There is the challenge of our biblical readings this morning: idolatry or truth? The ‘religion factory’ or the cross of Jesus Christ? Our temptations are always going to be strong to go back to the religion factory. It may be noisy, it may be crowded and uncomfortable, but my word it makes us feel good. We know we’re doing something, we know we’re giving God a good impression, we know that God can really not refuse to love us and take us seriously if we are so busy.

And against that, ‘you shall make no idols’. No pictures just drawn from the world you understand. And you shall set aside what you think is power and success, and what you think is wisdom and common sense. Against that is the God who takes the immeasurable risk of stepping down into our world, living a human life in Jesus, dying a human death, simply to show that his love cannot be frustrated or turned aside by anything that we call failure, even by the worst violence that we can perform. God remains God on the cross of Jesus Christ, and because God is God at that moment, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

I believe that, during Lent, one of the tasks we all have to face is to look into ourselves and ask how far we are involved in the ‘religion factory’. Because in spite of all this, Christians have been quite good at religion factories in their day, and the cross itself has become a religious decoration – not a call to renewal of life, not a call into a new world, but another thing that religious people make and hang onto.

During Lent, perhaps that’s the time when we need to be surprised by the cross once again. Isn’t it interesting that during Passiontide, in the Church’s year, we drape veils over the cross in church? Surely that’s the time when we ought to be thinking about the cross most intensely. But doesn’t that tell us that the cross needs to surprise us again every year. We need to veil – to put away – what we think about the cross and just be brought up once again, starkly, against the reality of what the cross means: God in Jesus Christ, overturning all that we think about success and security, all that we think even about ‘religion’ as a nice leisure activity. Calling us away from the religion factory into faith; calling us into trust in that unbreakable, undefeatable love, the kind of trust that will motivate us day after day to go in service of the poorest and the most unsuccessful and the most forgotten people.

Because that’s where all this leads – away from the religion factory and into service: service, love, silence, receptivity to God, and activity towards the world. Not to win God’s favour, but to express God’s generosity.

Every Lent, we ought to be looking at the various ways in which we get involved in manufacturing the gods that suit us. Every Lent is a time to get that little bit further beyond the idolatry, that constantly keeps us prisoner and draws us back to the old world. When Jesus has cleared out the temple, when he has thrown out those people involved in manufacturing religion, there he stands with his friends in a great silence and a great space. And he says: this is the space where all people may feel at home; this is a space large enough for all to come because this is where God lives. This is where God is at home, and this is where all human beings may be at home.

When we come to worship God together, when we come as the body of Christ celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist, we come to that great space which Jesus has cleared. Here we stand – not busy, not anxious, not obsessed with what we’re producing and how we’re succeeding, but here we stand – still, listening, receiving. And we put out our hands, not to lay hold of something and manipulate it and squeeze it into our shapes. We put out our hands empty, to receive the gift of life and love, the body and blood of the Lord in the sacrament.

The temple, the true temple, is the space Jesus clears – the temple of his body, Jesus making room for all of us in his own presence and prayer before God the Father. As different as could be from the great pious steelworks of ‘temple religion’ – a religion which goes on not just in first century Palestine but in twenty-first century everywhere. This morning, let us look into our hearts to see just how busy we have been in ‘making religion’, and try a little bit of spring-cleaning, a little bit of that stillness and that openness, that open-handedness into which the miracle of life, God’s life, may come. The mystery, the terror, the beauty, the freedom, and above all the love that can never be defeated.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Peter Ould at Stand Firm sums up the archbishop's message succinctly:

Williams is calling us to genuine sincerity in wearing the cross. A sincerity that is seen not just in its wearing but in a cross-shaped life. To move beyond the “religion factory”, to genuine conviction. Rather than dismissing cross-wearing, he’s calling for what we might call genuine cross-living.

Admit it, folks. None of you ever thought you would see the day when the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams took his cue from Michael W. Smith!

++Duncan: Our Experience, Our Proclamation, and Our Mission

The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of North America, the Most Reverend Robert Duncan, preaches at St. Peter's Anglican Church, Tallahassee, Florida this past Sunday, January 31.



Our Experience, Our Proclamation, and Our Mission from St. Peter's Anglican Church on Vimeo.

St. John Chrysostom: Homily on Christmas Morning

Behold a new and wondrous mystery. My ears resound to the Shepherd’s song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn. The Angels sing. The Archangels blend their voice in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt His glory. All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised.

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side, the Sun of justice. And ask not how: for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed; He had the power; He descended; He redeemed; all things yielded in obedience to God. This day He Who is, is Born; and He Who is, becomes what He was not. For when He was God, He became man; yet not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of divinity became He man, nor through increase became He God from man; but being the Word He became flesh, His nature, because of impassability, remaining unchanged.

And so the kings have come, and they have seen the heavenly King that has come upon the earth, not bringing with Him Angels, nor Archangels, nor Thrones, nor Dominations, nor Powers, nor Principalities, but, treading a new and solitary path, He has come forth from a spotless womb.

Since this heavenly birth cannot be described, neither does His coming amongst us in these days permit of too curious scrutiny. Though I know that a Virgin this day gave birth, and I believe that God was begotten before all time, yet the manner of this generation I have learned to venerate in silence and I accept that this is not to be probed too curiously with wordy speech.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of Him who works.

What shall I say to you; what shall I tell you? I behold a Mother who has brought forth; I see a Child come to this light by birth. The manner of His conception I cannot comprehend.

Nature here rested, while the Will of God labored. O ineffable grace! The Only Begotten, Who is before all ages, Who cannot be touched or be perceived, Who is simple, without body, has now put on my body, that is visible and liable to corruption. For what reason? That coming amongst us he may teach us, and teaching, lead us by the hand to the things that men cannot see. For since men believe that the eyes are more trustworthy than the ears, they doubt of that which they do not see, and so He has deigned to show Himself in bodily presence, that He may remove all doubt.

Christ, finding the holy body and soul of the Virgin, builds for Himself a living temple, and as He had willed, formed there a man from the Virgin; and, putting Him on, this day came forth; unashamed of the lowliness of our nature.

For it was to Him no lowering to put on what He Himself had made. Let that handiwork be forever glorified, which became the cloak of its own Creator. For as in the first creation of flesh, man could not be made before the clay had come into His hand, so neither could this corruptible body be glorified, until it had first become the garment of its Maker.

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infants bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.

For this He assumed my body, that I may become capable of His Word; taking my flesh, He gives me His spirit; and so He bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of Life. He takes my flesh, to sanctify me; He gives me His Spirit, that He may save me.

Come, then, let us observe the Feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been ¡in planted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels.

Why is this? Because God is now on earth, and man in heaven; on every side all things commingle. He became Flesh. He did not become God. He was God. Wherefore He became flesh, so that He Whom heaven did not contain, a manger would this day receive. He was placed in a manger, so that He, by whom all things arc nourished, may receive an infant¢s food from His Virgin Mother. So, the Father of all ages, as an infant at the breast, nestles in the virginal arms, that the Magi may more easily see Him. Since this day the Magi too have come, and made a beginning of withstanding tyranny; and the heavens give glory, as the Lord is revealed by a star.

To Him, then, Who out of confusion has wrought a clear path, to Christ, to the Father, and to the Holy Ghost, we offer all praise, now and for ever. Amen.

Sermon for Fourth Sunday of Advent, 18 December 2011

Texts: 2 Samuel 7:4, 8-16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

It was, as Paul says, “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages.” But through the coming of Christ, it “has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith.”

A mystery—a genuine mystery, “ a truth,” says N.T. Wright, “whose parallel lines disappear behind God’s dark curtain, to meet in that infinity of truth where all is literal and all is metaphorical.”

Was it ever really God’s intention, was it ever really part of his perfect plan, for Israel to have a king? Consider God’s response to Israel’s request for a king in 1 Samuel 8:10-18.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day."

What about a temple? Was it really God’s intention for Israel to have one? Consider again what God instructed Nathan to tell David in today's Old Testament reading.

Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.'"

The underlying truth, so often missed in our all too cursory reading of the Old Testament, is that both king and temple are merely concessions on God’s part to Israel’s petulant desire to be like everyone else. “Give us a king like all the other nations. Give us a temple like the ones down the road.”

Ultimately, king and temple are not the solution. They are part of the problem. Although chosen by God to be a light to the nations, Israel was trying to borrow light from the nations—the kind of “light” that would lead them into darkness.

Kings become corrupt, and it didn’t take long for that to happen. Saul became arrogant and self-absorbed. David, for all his exploits, had a nasty habit of sleeping with other men’s wives. Solomon, for all his wisdom, was compromised by his overabundance of political marriages to foreign women. It just goes downhill from there.

Temples have a tendency to become ends in themselves. A religious elite grows up around them, leading to idolatry, abuse of the poor, and neglect of the weightier matters of the law.

It does seem, however, that without these things—king and temple—the history of Israel, as sad and tragic as it is, would be even more sad and tragic. It would be a story of unredeemed anarchy; of a people cut off from their God and a God forever distant from his people. That, above all else, would have been utterly contrary to God’s plan to redeem Israel and, through Israel, all the nations of the world. God’s desire is, and always has been, the relentless desire to be “Emmanuel,” God with us.

So, the true mystery, the true story of Israel begins to come into sharper focus. It is the story of the search for a king after God’s own heart; of the need for a temple that is somehow both movable and appropriate for the housing of the glory and majesty of God. David wanted to make God a house. God says to David, “I will make you a house. Your son will be called my Son. His reign on your throne will be established forever.”

David was talking about a temple for God that would rival his own house of cedar. God was talking about a King who would embody his glory. There is only one appropriate way for the eternal God to dwell in the midst of his people. A house of cedar would never be anything more than a temporary signpost. The real thing would come in the flesh; a human being bearing the image and likeness of God; a king embodying God’s perfect order, his new creation; a man after God’s own heart, whose heart would be broken by the sins of the world but who would, in that moment of heartbreak, render all man-made temples redundant and obsolete.

A mystery, hidden long ago, is now disclosed in the fruit of the womb of the one who “found favor with God.” If you’re not familiar with Israel’s history, if you don’t understand the reason why God permitted his chosen people to have a king and to worship in a temple, then you’re not going to recognize the images of king and temple being evoked in the words of the angel to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”

Make no mistake. Mary understood. She did not find favor with God because she was a pure and spotless virgin. Mary was a pure and spotless virgin because she found favor with God. For reasons known only to God, Mary was chosen before the foundation of the world to play this pivotal role in the unfolding of this great and holy mystery. From a very early age, we can surmise, Mary cultivated or, perhaps, was having cultivated within her a deep intimacy with God. In her was that favored place where God’s glory could find a home and be brought forth into the world through the birth of Jesus Christ. In Mary’s womb, king and temple came together once and for all. The Scriptures came to fulfillment in ways never imagined. God found his true home at long last. It wasn’t in the palace. It wasn’t in the temple. But it was in the Word made flesh.

Christ, by highest heaven adored; Christ the everlasting Lord, Late in time, behold him come, offspring of a virgin’s womb. Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity, Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.

In Jesus, offspring of a virgin’s womb, God revealed to all the world his unending love and his heart’s desire to be, always and forever, “Emmanuel,” God with us.

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels, their great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.

Advent sermon: Hope by R.W. Church (1885)

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three." -- 1 Corinthians 13:13

"Faith, hope, charity"; these, in St. Paul's analysis, are the characteristic elements of the Christian mind. In the technical language of the Church they are the three theological virtues in contradistinction to the purely moral ones. They have filled a large space in the philosophy and the poetry of ancient Christendom, as an exhaustive coordination of the distinctive qualities of Christian saintship. St. Paul, as we know, in enumerating them, makes one of them the greatest in order and in nature--"the great- [89] est of these is charity." But it is a first and foremost place among equals. All stand together, as nothing else does, in the front rank of the perfections which make Christian goodness. All are equally indispensable in those who would please God and follow Christ.

The question occurs to us sometimes, more or less consciously, why hope should be ranked so high, placed on a level with faith and charity. We can understand why faith should be so singled out; it is the foundation of the whole structure of religion; it is the bond between the creature and his invisible Maker and God; it is the special title of his acceptance; it is the ground of his self-devotion and obedience, of his highest and noblest ventures. Still more can we understand it of charity; for charity brings us near, in the essential qualities of character, to Him Whom we believe in and worship; [90] charity is the faint and distant likeness of Him Who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son to save it; charity must last and live and increase, under whatever conditions the regenerate nature exists, the same in substance, however differ-ing in degree, in the humblest penitent on earth and in the adoring saint or seraph in the eternal world. But hope is thought of, at first sight, as a self-regarding quality; something which throws forward its desires into the future, and dwells on what it imagines of happiness for itself. And hope, of all things, is delusive and treacherous; it tempts to security and self-deceit; it tempts us to dreams which cannot be realised, which divert us from the necessary and wholesome realities which do concern us: it is the mother of half the mistakes, half the fruitless wanderings, half the unhappiness of the world. How comes it that such a quality is [91] placed on a level with faith and love? What need of encouragement to what men are only too ready to do of themselves?

But it is not really strange that St. Paul should raise hope to a Christian temper of the first order. St. Paul was a student of Scripture and of the history of his people and of religion in the world. And what is on the surface of the Bible is the way in which from first to last it is one unbroken, persistent call to hope--to look from the past and present to the future. Its contents, we know, are manifold and various; the subjects which it treats are widely different, and it is different in different parts of it in its way of treating them; it is the record of enormous changes, of a great progressive advance in God's dispensations and of man's light and character, of the long and wonderful education of the Law and the Prophets; its story of uninterrupted tendency is strangely [92] chequered in fact; bright and dark succeed one another with the most unexpected turns--lofty faith and the meanest disloyalty, great achievements and unexpected failure, lessons of the purest goodness and most heartfelt devotion, with the falls and sins of saints, blessing and chastisement, the patience of God, and the incorrigible provocations of His people. In spite of all that is wonderful and glorious in it, it sounds like the most disastrous and unpromising of stories; and yet that is not its result. For amid the worst and most miserable conditions there is one element which is never allowed to disappear--the strength of a tenacious and unconquerable hope. Hope, never destroyed, however overthrown, never obscured even amid the storm and dust of ruin, is the prominent characteristic of the Old Testament. All leads back to hope--hope of the loftiest and most assured kind, even after the [93] most fatal defeats, of changes which seem beyond remedy. The last word is always hope. If ever it dies, it revives again, larger, more confident than before. It is implied in the very language and appeals of despair. Hope spreads its colours over the sacred Book, whose outlook and interest is always the future, which looks back to the past only as the ground and pledge of the great things to come. So has St. Paul described the purpose and effect of Scripture, for his words are as true of the New Testament as of the Old. It is to impress upon religion the temper, the obligation of hope. He may be said to have characterised Scripture as, above everything, the Book of Hope. "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope." Over all other voices in the Old Testament, voices of command, entreaty, [94] warning, rebuke, threatening, of triumph and gladness, of sorrow and desolation, rises dominant the voice of consolation, the instant call to hope even against hope, which elevates and strengthens as well as reassures: "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

Hope, I say--the temper and virtue answering to and embracing great and worthy things hoped for--elevates and strengthens and inspires. This is why it is one of the great elements of the religious temper; this is why it ranks with faith and charity. It is one of the great and necessary springs of full religious action. There may be a faith almost without hope; a faith which believes on, though it can [95] see nothing; a faith which refuses to be comforted, which will not let the distant picture of better things rise before it, but yet trusts, even in the darkness, to God's truth and goodness. It is the deep and awful faith of him who said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"--of the cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" It is the touching and childlike confidence of the prophet--"Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." But the human spirit can hardly stand long the strain of a hopeless faith; one or other of the elements will assert its supremacy. And hope is the energy and effort of faith; the strong self-awakening from the spells of [96] discouragement and listlessness and despair. What gives its moral value to hope, what makes it a virtue and a duty, is that in its higher forms it is a real act and striving of the will and the moral nature; and if any one thinks that this is an easy process he has yet much to learn of the secrets of his own heart. It is an act, often a difficult act, of choice and will, like the highest forms of courage. It is a refusal to be borne down and cowed and depressed by evil; a refusal, because it is not right, to indulge in the melancholy pleasure, no unreal one, of looking on the dark side of things. It is so that hope plays so great a part in the spiritual life; that it fights with such power on the side of God. For it not only receives, not only welcomes, not only trusts in God's promises, but it throws into them light and reality; they become to it not words but substantial things. It is on our wild and [97] wayward imagination that the forces play both of fear and hope; it is there that we conjure up dangers, that we allow ourselves to faint and be dismayed at the prospect and omens of coming trouble; it is there that we look forward and see all that we have loved and cared for come to nought. And on the other hand, hope, religious hope, is a deliberate counter-appeal to that mighty power which disposes with such mysterious influence of so much of human life. It is an endeavour to subject imagination to truth and reason and God. It is an exercise, it may well be, of self-mastery, to enlist imagination on the side of God, as the ally and enlightener and support of faith; to make it use its charms against dark dreams and terrors. And further, hope is a great instrument of spiritual and moral discipline. "We are saved by hope," says St. Paul. Long waiting, we know now, is God's ap- [98] pointed order for the generations of men. There was a time when men thought that all would soon be over; they mistook God's way. With all the ups and downs of earthly history the world holds on its course, and one after another men are born, and play their part, and die. All kinds of changes, all kinds of fortunes, befall His Church, befall us all who are going through our trial time. And we are often tempted to be tired and depressed, out of heart, and out of patience. Ah! my brethren, shall we answer to God's purpose, Who has bidden us hope, Who has given us ground for hope, so amazing, so blessed? Shall we let it make us what it was meant to make us--cheerful, calm, even-minded, large-hearted, generous? Shall we let its light and its brightness wean us from the dulness and heaviness of an unhopeful temper, rouse us to activity and the zest and gladness of charity, when we [99] are fretted by little troubles, or oppressed by great ones? This is the office of hope; this is what it contributes to Christian excellence. It is not little. If only we hoped in earnest to be what St. Paul and St. John hoped to be; hoped in earnest, as they did, for the future of righteousness and glory which they held up to their disciples and to the generations of the Church, we should know more than we do, not only of their joy, but of their strength and their goodness.

This temper of hopefulness is not only concerned with the great things of hereafter. It has to do with our feelings towards things here. There must often be much in the course of things which interest us now, to distress and alarm us: evils which seem without remedy, defeats which seem final, perplexities through which we cannot see our way, dark and gloomy clouds rising in menace over our familiar world. To hope [100] seems to us then like deluding ourselves; we call it optimism, an instinctive dislike to pain, a determination not to see the cruel truth. And yet how often has it appeared in the upshot of things that if in the darkest times any had been bold enough to hope he would have been amply justified? What must have been the feelings of Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries, when, just as Christianity seemed to have won its way into the Roman Empire, they saw the fierce northern barbarians break into it, and the heathen triumph over religion and civil order? Which would then have seemed the judgment of sober good sense--the despondency which only saw the frightful mischief, or the bold hope which saw in the barbarians the seed of a great Christendom? Yet, who would have been right and who wrong? Or again, in the tenth century, when open wickedness and ignorance filled the high places of the [101] Church, when all seemed so bad and so hopeless that men disposed of their goods as if the end of the world must come with the end of the century, if any one had looked forward, in spite of all, to Christians again recognising their high calling, again preaching peace and charity, and leaving all to follow Christ--to the return of a great intellectual tide of art and of thought, where now all was brutality and darkness--would he not have seemed a dreamer? Yet, who would have been wrong and who right--the dreamer or the despairing? And so of other times of confusion and corruption in the Church, when the powers of evil seemed impregnable, and the attempts of those who dared to cope with them seemed only to issue in disappointment, or new forms of mischief; amid the polished or superstitious godlessness of the fifteenth century, in the angry and heady disputations of the sixteenth, [102] in the tumults and revolutions, the atrocious wars of religion in France and Germany, in the fierce cruelty, the depravity, the plundering greed of the upper classes, the depression and helplessness of the poor, left without guide or friend, the insolent claims, the savage intolerance of rival systems and rival teachers, were there not ample arguments for despair? and would he not have been a bold man who could put his trust in the powers of self-correction and recovery, in the living gifts of the Holy Ghost, and hope that things would not always be as bad as this, that the days of peace and mercy would yet come? And who would, after all abatements, have been right? "It is come," wrote the soberest and also the loftiest of Christian thinkers in the last century, "I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length [103] discovered to be fictitious." The ominous symptom has not certainly grown less ominous; but could even the calm and large mind of Bishop Butler have embraced the thought that with this, not diminished, perhaps aggravated, there might also come a steady growth of energy and fervour and deepening practical purposes in the Church and religious men, such as certainly he had not seen, nor could look for?

We are but short-sighted creatures. We see and feel so clearly what is immediate and pressing that we leave out of account all the subtle and complex forces, mighty and ever active, though we do not discern them, that are, perhaps, in the long run more eventful and decisive than anything we can now see. It is almost proverbial how often the prophecies of the wisest and most sagacious--prophecies of evil and of good, calm and deliberate forecasts which seem to rest on [104] unanswerable reasons--are almost ludicrously falsified in the event. It is unsafe to prophesy; it is more than wise, it is our duty, to hope. God's mercy has never deserted us. It has allowed the darkest hours to pass over us, the severest trials, the keenest and bitterest sorrows. His returning mercy has come back, perhaps in a very different form from what we expected; it has not restored what was lost; it has not revived what had perished; but it has given us something to take the place of what is gone. He has varied the conditions of our service. But He has come back to us in mercy; come back to us in His bounty and quickening grace; come back to us in His manifold, His inexhaustible wisdom, bringing new good strangely out of surmised evil, compensating, refashioning, developing, adapting. Surely this is the wonderful experience of our most disappointing and disobedient and yet en- [105] during Christendom. We need not blind ourselves to facts; we have our part to do, and must deal as we may and as we ought with what is dangerous and hurtful. But the God of Hope calls to us out of the darkness; and we are unfaithful to Him if in our distress and fear we shut ours ears to His voice, and dwell despondingly on a future which is in His hands.

But to Christians all that here invites and demands hope is but little to that which is to be when all here shall have been passed and over. It is simply the most literal fact that God has set before us, in another state of being, the most wonderful future, which is within the certain reach of every single one of us: as much, as certainly within our reach, as anything that we know of, which we could obtain to-morrow. This is the plain, clear, certain promise, without which Christianity is a dream and delusion. The [106] life and destiny of each individual man runs up to this; this is what he was made for; for this he has been taught, and has received God's grace, and has been tried, and has played his part in the years of time. It is the barest of commonplaces; and yet, I think, to any one who has tried to open his mind to its reality and certainty, it must have come with a strange and overpowering force--new on every fresh occasion, like nothing else in the world. For it is one thing to look forward to some great general event, the triumph of the saints of God, the final glory of the great company of the redeemed; one thing to look at all this from the outside, as a spectator by the power of imagination and thought: and quite another, when it comes on your mind that you yourself in the far-off ages, you yourself, the very person now on earth, are intended to have your place--your certain and definite place--in [107] all that triumph, in all that blessedness, in all that glory; and yet surely, to any one that will, this is the prospect; this, and nothing less. You may put Christianity aside; you may say that such hopes cannot be for man; but, if you are a Christian, this in its utmost fulness and reality is what you are to hope for. Think of anything you most long for here; you see perhaps the day--weeks or months or years hence--when you shall have the great desire on which you live. So in all sober assurance and serious meaning the New Testament bids us look forward to that future which one day we are to reach. What will be those new conditions of our being, which are one day to be as familiar to man's perfected nature as the conditions of sin and suffering are familiar to him now, we cannot tell. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God [108] hath prepared for them that love Him." How could it be otherwise? How can we imagine that the experience of our short years in this life, strange and wonderful as it is, could be the measure of a state of being in which we are to be brought near to Jesus Christ, and are to share the life of immortality? It is shown in Scripture, in figure and emblem--figure and emblem which blind us with their glory, even while they transport us with rapture; yet only in figure and emblem could such things be presented to the mind of man. But some things are certain, which we can understand even now. Then, at last, we may dare to look forward to being sinless. Think of what you know of your own conscience, your own temptations, your own falls, your own struggles for forgiveness and restoration; and then think what it will be, to have left all that behind. Then, whatever be the [109] functions and employment of that perfect state, whatever work God may have for us to do, we shall have the will and the power to do it as the angels do. The divided service, the broken purpose, the double mind, the treacheries of the will, the blindness of self-deceit, the laggard indolence, all that now mars and cripples our sincerest obedience, will then have been purged away, and in all the fulness of truth we shall know how to serve Him with a whole heart. Again, the greatest and purest and most enduring happiness we can know here is in the exercise of the affections; there, in infinite measure, will be all that calls forth human affections, and there human affections will be raised to new power and strength--transfigured, purified, glorified. And then, in ways we cannot dream of now, we shall be brought near to Him from Whom we have our being, God our Father, the Ever-Blessed [110] and the All-Holy, and Jesus Christ Who loved and saved us, and that Holy Spirit which has been with us all the days of our wandering here. And those strange words shall be fulfilled which promise that "We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."

This, as no one denies, is what Scripture invites us to believe and to hope. These are no idle exaggerations of rhetoric or fancy; they are the bare words of truth and soberness. It is what we are living for, unless we are living in vain. And with such things before us, with such things showed to us, can we wonder that the Apostle places hope, the temper that embraces this and rejoices in this, on a level with faith and charity? Have such things been told us for nothing? Are they things to be without a meaning to us? Have we, as we have, the power, in some degree at least, of realising them, of projecting our very self, our character, our [111] feelings, our conscious being into this amazing future, reserved and waiting for us; of imagining how we shall feel there; and can we have been meant to live as if those things were not? Is it not simply a duty to hope; a sin against God's high goodness, a crime against the order of His teaching, not to hope? Is it not a duty, in solemn and quiet self-recollection, to put before our thoughts that unbroken and continuous line, which joins this very present moment with that hour which certainly is to arrive, when we must be changed, when we may be changed into the spotless blessedness of the saints of God? You--you yourself--with your trouble, your temptations, your sin, small or great, your conscious weakness, your insensibility and ignorance; yet you yourself are one of those of whom, if you will, all this wondrous future will, must, come true. There is no blessedness of the soul of man, no rest from [112] weariness, no refreshment after toil, no opening of the eyes to beauty never seen by mortal eye, no delight in goodness, no rejoicing in perfect love, no ineffable sense of the sweetness and tenderness of God's mercy--none of these that may not be hoped for; hoped for with all the warrant of the Almighty's promise, by each soul here present, with its identity unbroken, with that individual character which makes it what it is. And is that great hope to be practically all a blank to us?

It is not to be told how much we lose of strength, of gladness and enlargement of heart, of power to do God's service cheerfully and happily, by not realising and dwelling on the great hopes "set before us." We let ourselves be blinded, fretted, disheartened by the present, because we will not look up and see what is as certain as the present, in the not very distant future. Many of us, to-day, [113] remember with more or less regret that this is the last Sunday of the year; that another year has gone out of our tale of days. Its days are gone and will never come back; nor that which they brought, and took away with them; the pleasant times which those days gave us, the glad meetings, the sunny holidays, are gone; gone, with the happiness which its days wrecked, with the health that they have broken, with the old friends, the lives, some of them noble and precious ones, which they have taken with them into the past. Here, as at a deathbed, we feel the close of all earthly things, the inevitableness and the drawing near of death. With us the natural thing is to look back to the past; the word that naturally rises to our lips is, "Another year gone." It is natural with us: with St. Paul it is just as natural to reflect, "Now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed. The night is far [114] spent, the day is at hand." It is the last Sunday, and that must give us much to think of. But it is not only, it is not chiefly that. About us are the songs, and the joy, and the innocent gladness of Christmas. About us, as we are reminded to-day, are the "bright beams of light which God casts upon His Church" [1]--bright indeed to us now, but only the faint quivering of the dawn of that Eternal Day. We, at least, if we are not Christians in vain, can join the stern and awful thoughts that accompany the lapse of time--awful enough, indeed, to make the boldest anxious--with the deep and chastened sense of realities beyond it, certain, final, ineffable, over which time has no power, which are warranted to men. We can pass on to the great hope which from end to end fills the Bible--the hope which ennobles and gladdens our mortal life; such [115] a hope as carried St. Paul in strength and joy through the long "daily dying" of his Apostleship, and burst forth in such impassioned yet most reasonable conviction--"For I count," he says, "that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.... For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Sermon on the Magnificat by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

During a brief stint in London (1933 - 1935), Dietrich Bonhoeffer served two German-speaking congregations. As a record of that period of his ministry only sixteen manuscripts survive. Among them is a sermon from the Third Sunday of Advent, 17 December 1933, on the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). An excerpt, edited and translated by Edwin Robertson, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons, Zondervan 2005:

This song of Mary's is the oldest Advent hymn. It is the most passionate, most vehement, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here. None of the sweet, sugary, or childish tones that we find so often in our Christmas hymns, but a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of this world, of God's power and of the powerlessness of men. These are the tones of the prophetic women of the Old Testament: Deborah, Judith, Miriam, coming alive in the mouth of Mary.

Mary, filled with the Spirit and prepared. Mary, the obedient handmaid, humbly accepting what is to happen to her, what the Spirit asks of her, to do with her as the Spirit will, speaks now by the Spirit of the coming of God into the world, of the Advent of Jesus Christ. She knows better than anyone what it means to wait for Christ. He is nearer to her than to anyone else. She awaits him as his mother. She knows about the mystery of his coming, of the Spirit who came to her, of the Almighty God who works his wonders. She experiences in her own body that God does wonderful things with the children of men, that his ways are not our ways, that he cannot be predicted by men, or circumscribed by their reasons and ideas, but that his way is beyond all understanding or explanations, both free and of his own will.

Where our reason is offended, where our nature rebels, where our piety creeps anxiously away, there, precisely there, God loves to be. There, he confuses the understanding of the clever. There he offends our nature, our piety. There he will dwell and no one can deny him. And now, only the humble can believe him, and rejoice that God is so free and so wonderful, that he works miracles when the children of men despair. He has made the lowly and humble to be lifted up. That is the wonder of wonders, that God loves the lowly: "God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.

God in the "humble state" -- that is the revolutionary, the passionate word of Advent. First, Mary herself, the wife of a carpenter. We may say, the poor working man's wife, unnoticed by men -- but now, insignificant and in her humble state as we might see it, she is significant to God and appointed to be the mother of the Savior of the world. Not because of some remarkable human trait in her, not because of some great piety, not because of her modesty, not because of any particular virtue in her, but apart from any of these characteristics, only because God's gracious will is to love the humble and lowly, the insignificant. He chose to make them great. Mary, living in the faith of the Old Testament and hoping for her redeemer, this humble working man's wife becomes the mother of God. Christ the son of a poor working man's wife in the East End of London! Christ in the manger . . . God is not ashamed to be with those of humble state. He goes into the midst of it all, chooses one person to be his instrument, and does his miracle there, where one least expects it. He loves the lost, the forgotten, the insignificant, the outcasts, the weak, and the broken. Where men say, "lost," he says "found;" where men say "no," he says "yes." Where men look with indifference or superiority, he looks with burning love, such as nowhere else is to be found. Where men say, "contemptible!," God cries, "blessed." When we reach a point in our lives at which we are not only ashamed of ourselves, but believe God is ashamed of us too, when we feel so far from God, more than we have ever felt in our lives, than and precisely then, God is nearer to us than he has ever been. It is then that he breaks into our lives. It is then that he lets us know that feeling of despair is taken away from us, so that we may grasp the wonder of his love, his nearness to us, and his grace. "From now on all generations will call me blessed," says Mary. What does that mean? Mary, a maid of "humble state," called "blessed?" It can be no other than the miracle of God that he has astonishingly performed on her; Go has been "mindful of the humble state" of Mary and raised her up; God, coming into the world, seeks out, not the high and mighty, but the lowly; that we might see the glory and the mighty power of God making the down and out great. To call Mary "blessed" does not mean to build her an altar; but with her to pray to God, who is mindful of the lowly and chooses them, who has done great things -- holy is his name. To call Mary blessed is to know with her that God's "mercy extends to those who fear him," those who watch and consider his astonishing ways, who let his Spirit blow where it will, those who are obedient to him and with Mary, humbly say, "May it be to me as you have said."

Advent sermon by Phillips Brooks

As something of an addendum to my recent post on "O Little Town of Bethlehem," here is a sample of the preaching of Phillips Brooks, appropriate for the season, from a sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent. Reflective of the theology ascendant at the time, the elements of so-called Christian humanism are apparent, but it is, nevertheless, a stirring exposition on the Incarnation. You can read the full text of the sermon here.

"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God."—John I. 11, 12.

I cannot stop to tell you what I am sure that many of you must know—how real this belonging between God and humanity becomes to a man at the time of his own conversion. God stands far off from you, and you think that you have nothing to do with Him. You send Him duty-prayers as if you shot arrows into the darkness, toward a voice which you are not wholly certain that you hear. By and by that God comes to you; and the surprise of all surprises in conversion is to see how your heart knows Him and opens and lifts itself to take Him in. "My beloved is mine, and I am His," it says, with surprised and sudden recognition. Christ has come "unto His own."

But there is a yet closer and tenderer meaning of these words, I think. They mean that Christ came in answer to a most urgent and pressing call of need. That is what it signifies when it is said that "He came unto His own." For in a true sense everything is a man's own which needs that man; not everything which he needs, but everything which needs him. Do you not know what that is? Your child is yours not merely by the claim of birth and nature, but by the tie of continual dependence. He is most yours when he needs you most. He is never so much yours as when he requires your forgiveness for some sin. He ceases in part to be yours as he outgrows his most urgent need of you. So the charitable man or woman talks about "my poor." So the teacher talks about "my boys." Everywhere that is yours which needs you. I pity the man who does not know the responsibility and privilege of that high sort of ownership. It is a most sacred claim upon another to go to a poor helpless creature and say, "You need me. I will help you. You are mine." Now when it is said that Jesus came to His own, is not this at least part of the meaning? He came to those who needed Him; most of all to those who from the stricken earth held up to Him the deepest of all needs, the need of sin that craved forgiveness; and that was what made them His. Certainly no level-eyed intercourse of sinless man with sinless Christ could have wrought in us such a profound and precious sense that we belong to Him as this simple knowledge that we need Him. Need has its sacred rights. Because we want forgiveness and help, and He only can forgive and help us, therefore we are His.

How clearly this shines out in those typical men and women of the Gospel stories! How closely they became Christ's by merely needing Him! How He acknowledged their claim! The sinning woman who crept in and touched the hem of His garment was completely His; she commanded with a perfect freedom His sympathy and time and care simply because she was so wretched and could not do without Him. The poor man to whom He gave sight, and whom the Pharisees turned out of the synagogue, laid hold of Christ immediately, and Christ acknowledged him as one of His because he could not do without Him. And who among the apostles was more perfectly Christ's own than Simon Peter, whom Christ was always answering and saving in extremest need?

Need I say more about the meaning and the purpose of the Incarnation? Put these two ideas together. Jesus "came unto His ovm." To men forgetful of their godlike nature He came to tell them that they were the sons of God; and to men who could not do without Him He came because they needed Him. Oh, my dear friends, by what high warrants does the Saviour claim us for His own! Because we are His Father's children, and because we are so needy, therefore our divine Brother comes. He comes to you and says, "You called Me." And you look up out of your worldliness and say, " Oh no! I did not call. I do not know You!" But He says, calmly, "You did, although you do not know it. That power of being godlike which is in you, crushed and unsatisfied—that summoned Me; and that need of being forgiven and renewed which you will not own— that summoned Me. And here I am! Now wilt thou be made whole? If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." Just as all through the crowds of Jerusalem there must have been many who walked with a sense that they peculiarly belonged to the great Healer—one with his healed arm that once was withered, another with the new-given sight in his eyes, another witb his body yet missing the long possession of the demon who was cast out yesterday, each with some need which had been recognized and supplied—so through this congregation there are many who rejoice that they are Christ's. They needed Him and He owned their need. He took them, He forgave them, He holds them, and nothing shall pluck them out of His hands.

Sanctity of Life: The Acid Test

Hunter Baker posts "A Simple Sermon on Abortion" at Mere Comments.

I have called the sanctity of life an acid test because one of the distinguishing marks of the church throughout the ages has been its concern for the unborn and the newly born and its opposition to infanticide. In thinking this point through, it is useful to remember the kind of world into which the Christian church was born. The Greco-Roman world was not one that was kind to unborn life or even newly born life. For that matter, that culture did not value life at all unless a person was somehow very important. The world of the Roman empire was one in which men were forced to battle each other to the death in the gladiatorial games. Others were thrown into the ring defenseless with bloodthirsty lions or tigers. When children were born, they were only kept if the father wanted to keep them. A child who was unfit for any reason, including being the wrong sex would be discarded. There were places on the edge of the wildnerness where infants would be exposed to the elements or to the dangers of predatory animals. It was also common for women to seek abortions by various grisly methods involving poison or crude surgical procedures. But after the life, ministry, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the founding of the Christian church, things began to change. The Christians began to rescue the exposed infants and brought them into their families. They argued against abortion and protested the gladiatorial games. Despite the intense opposition they met from the world of that day and the persecution they experienced for their refusal to worship the emperor, it was their view that eventually prevailed. Both the early Christian writings and the law of the Roman empire and the west for many centuries prohibited the practice of abortion and characterized it as an unjust killing of the unborn child. The gladiatorial games were also outlawed. The Christians sought to curb the tolerance of the empire for needless bloodshed and succeeded to an admirable degree.

Despite this history, there are Christians today who will say we should leave behind this “political” issue of abortion and the sanctity of life. They recommend that we focus on our proper sphere of influence which is preaching the word and saving souls. I am always fascinated by this kind of argument. And by fascinated, I think I really mean irritated. First, why in the world can’t we preach the word AND fight against injustice AND protect the weakest among us? Second, why wouldn’t we want to emulate the example of the early Christians? Don’t we try to be like them? Don’t Christians all over the world argue for the authenticity of their brand of the faith by claiming that they are MORE like the early church than anyone else? Aren’t they the ones who have passed the acid test and have been tried like gold? The demands of our Christian lives are as nothing compared to theirs. If we cannot be troubled to speak for the unborn, I agree with Francis Schaeffer that the people of ages to come will be right to question whether anything we believed about our God was true.

Sometimes, we hide behind things like the separation of church and state. Too many southern preachers hid behind that idea to avoid preaching against segregation. At the end of it, they could make no larger claim than having been too cowardly to preach against a clear injustice. There is no reason I can think of for a Christian today to say that yes we should have preached and worked against racism and segregation, but no, we should not work to protect the unborn. You just can’t support that point of view.

I imagine that for the most part, I am preaching to people who agree with what I am saying. The problem is that we become numb to the horror of it. This current battle has been going on for about 40 years now. And we have not won it. We have made progress, though. The number of abortions per year has gone down. No one can any longer be taken seriously when they refer to an unborn child as a mass of tissue. We at least know what we are dealing with. Perhaps more important has been the change in the church, itself. For example, at Christian schools we have learned not to expel girls who get pregnant. We care more about the unborn life she carries than we do about appearances. It wasn’t always that way, was it? How many Christian parents arranged abortions because they couldn’t bear the shame of a pregnancy out of wedlock or they couldn’t bear the shame for their daughter? But what is shame compared to a human life?

In point of fact, while the Catholic church never wavered in its opposition to abortion, even conservative protestants weren’t sure at first whether they supported Roe v. Wade. The consistent witness of the Catholic church in this regard helps explain why the Christian church is closer today than at any time since the Reformation. We are beginning to unite in defense of the unborn.

Sunday Meditation: Man of Miracles or Man of His Word?

Texts: Jeremiah 2:1-13, Romans 1:16-25, John 4:43-54

Idolatry is born of the fallen human desire to see that in which we believe. It is so much easier to place our faith in a visible image created by our hands than it is to trust in the invisible God who created us in his image. One of the major themes in John’s Gospel is summed up in Jesus’ words to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Even though the “gods” we make in our image are, as Jeremiah points out, “no gods” and “worthless,” the human desire for a visible object of worship overcomes us more often than we would like to admit. The result, as Paul points out, is disastrous. We worship created things, we become like created things. We worship that which is worthless, we become worthless.

Jesus was certainly aware of this all too common human failing. When he began performing signs and wonders, John tells us, “many believed in his name.” But Jesus does not “entrust himself to them” because “he himself knew what was in man” (cf. John 2:23-25). That is, he knew those who were believing him because of the signs and wonders were believing in him for all the wrong reasons. So it should not come across as shocking or inconsiderate when Jesus says to the official who pleads with him to heal his dying son, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Was this a man, like so many others, whose faith was misplaced, or was there a depth to his faith which was lacking in those who merely wanted to see some miracle?

The man persists: “Sir, come down before my son dies.”

Jesus probes the depths of the man’s faith: “Go; your son will live.”

Had this man placed his faith in what Jesus did, or in who Jesus is? “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.”

Here, at last, is a man who is willing to believe without seeing, to walk by faith and not by sight. He “believed the word that Jesus spoke to him,” and without making any further demands, he “went on his way.” By the time he arrives home the next day, he learns the happy news that his son is well on his way to a full recovery, and that the healing began the day before, at the very hour Jesus had said, “Your son will live.” As a result, the man and his whole household put their faith in Jesus, not because he was a “man of miracles,” but because he was a man of his word.

To the Western mind, a “word-based faith” sounds much like legalistic fundamentalism. It connotes a hard rationalism with little use for the signs and wonders so often associated with what is often called an “experiential faith.” Yet, in this biblical context, the opposite is true. Those who place their faith in the signs and wonders are the hard rationalists who, like Thomas, refuse to believe without seeing. But this man who “believed the word that Jesus spoke to him” is the one who is able, ultimately, to have a faith so substantive and real that he can, in fact, see Jesus’ word fulfilled in the healing of his son.

Faith in the visible is a shallow faith which inevitably leads to idolatry. To be genuine, faith must look beyond the visible to the realm of the invisible; beyond this world and into the world to come. The signs and wonders Jesus performed were not ends in themselves. They were means by which he sought to draw attention to the Father, whose love for those he created in his image was so infinite that he would go to the extent of intervening in human history to save them through the sacrifice of his own Son, the Word made flesh.

Jesus’ signs and wonders were not “supernatural” events involving the temporary suspension of the laws of nature. That definition of “miracles” owes more to Enlightenment philosophy, which sought to de-emphasize them or explain them away. These signs were, instead, eschatological events bringing forward into the present God’s future promise to restore all things.

Faith in Jesus as a “man of miracles” is a faith misplaced in the present, where sin and sorrow, sickness and death still reign, but “miracles happen” to make us feel good about ourselves. Faith in Jesus as a man of his word is a faith which looks beyond the present, fallen state of things toward the day when, according to God’s infallible Word, sin and sorrow, sickness and death will forever be a thing of the past. This fallen world will be redeemed. This mortal body will be clothed with immortality. This is the promise which we believe without seeing because this is the Word of the Lord!

Benedict: Christmas is a Feast of Restored Creation

Here is the text of Pope Benedict's Christmas Homily. Note the theme developed from a classic homily by Gregory of Nyssa.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“The time came for Mary to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2:6f.). These words touch our hearts every time we hear them. This was the moment that the angel had foretold at Nazareth: “you will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:31). This was the moment that Israel had been awaiting for centuries, through many dark hours – the moment that all mankind was somehow awaiting, in terms as yet ill-defined: when God would take care of us, when he would step outside his concealment, when the world would be saved and God would renew all things. We can imagine the kind of interior preparation, the kind of love with which Mary approached that hour. The brief phrase: “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes” allows us to glimpse something of the holy joy and the silent zeal of that preparation. The swaddling clothes were ready, so that the child could be given a fitting welcome. Yet there is no room at the inn. In some way, mankind is awaiting God, waiting for him to draw near. But when the moment comes, there is no room for him. Man is so preoccupied with himself, he has such urgent need of all the space and all the time for his own things, that nothing remains for others – for his neighbour, for the poor, for God. And the richer men become, the more they fill up all the space by themselves. And the less room there is for others.

Saint John, in his Gospel, went to the heart of the matter, giving added depth to Saint Luke’s brief account of the situation in Bethlehem: “He came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (Jn 1:11). This refers first and foremost to Bethlehem: the Son of David comes to his own city, but has to be born in a stable, because there is no room for him at the inn. Then it refers to Israel: the one who is sent comes among his own, but they do not want him. And truly, it refers to all mankind: he through whom the world was made, the primordial Creator-Word, enters into the world, but he is not listened to, he is not received.

These words refer ultimately to us, to each individual and to society as a whole. Do we have time for our neighbour who is in need of a word from us, from me, or in need of my affection? For the sufferer who is in need of help? For the fugitive or the refugee who is seeking asylum? Do we have time and space for God? Can he enter into our lives? Does he find room in us, or have we occupied all the available space in our thoughts, our actions, our lives for ourselves?

Thank God, this negative detail is not the only one, nor the last one that we find in the Gospel. Just as in Luke we encounter the maternal love of Mary and the fidelity of Saint Joseph, the vigilance of the shepherds and their great joy, just as in Matthew we encounter the visit of the wise men, come from afar, so too John says to us: “To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12). There are those who receive him, and thus, beginning with the stable, with the outside, there grows silently the new house, the new city, the new world. The message of Christmas makes us recognize the darkness of a closed world, and thereby no doubt illustrates a reality that we see daily. Yet it also tells us that God does not allow himself to be shut out. He finds a space, even if it means entering through the stable; there are people who see his light and pass it on. Through the word of the Gospel, the angel also speaks to us, and in the sacred liturgy the light of the Redeemer enters our lives. Whether we are shepherds or “wise men” – the light and its message call us to set out, to leave the narrow circle of our desires and interests, to go out to meet the Lord and worship him. We worship him by opening the world to truth, to good, to Christ, to the service of those who are marginalized and in whom he awaits us.

In some Christmas scenes from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, the stable is depicted as a crumbling palace. It is still possible to recognize its former splendour, but now it has become a ruin, the walls are falling down – in fact, it has become a stable. Although it lacks any historical basis, this metaphorical interpretation nevertheless expresses something of the truth that is hidden in the mystery of Christmas. David’s throne, which had been promised to last for ever, stands empty. Others rule over the Holy Land. Joseph, the descendant of David, is a simple artisan; the palace, in fact, has become a hovel. David himself had begun life as a shepherd. When Samuel sought him out in order to anoint him, it seemed impossible and absurd that a shepherd-boy such as he could become the bearer of the promise of Israel. In the stable of Bethlehem, the very town where it had all begun, the Davidic kingship started again in a new way – in that child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. The new throne from which this David will draw the world to himself is the Cross. The new throne – the Cross – corresponds to the new beginning in the stable. Yet this is exactly how the true Davidic palace, the true kingship is being built. This new palace is so different from what people imagine a palace and royal power ought to be like. It is the community of those who allow themselves to be drawn by Christ’s love and so become one body with him, a new humanity. The power that comes from the Cross, the power of self-giving goodness – this is the true kingship. The stable becomes a palace – and setting out from this starting-point, Jesus builds the great new community, whose key-word the angels sing at the hour of his birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to those whom he loves” – those who place their will in his, in this way becoming men of God, new men, a new world.

Gregory of Nyssa, in his Christmas homilies, developed the same vision setting out from the Christmas message in the Gospel of John: “He pitched his tent among us” (Jn 1:14). Gregory applies this passage about the tent to the tent of our body, which has become worn out and weak, exposed everywhere to pain and suffering. And he applies it to the whole universe, torn and disfigured by sin. What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation? Anselm of Canterbury, in an almost prophetic way, once described a vision of what we witness today in a polluted world whose future is at risk: “Everything was as if dead, and had lost its dignity, having been made for the service of those who praise God. The elements of the world were oppressed, they had lost their splendour because of the abuse of those who enslaved them for their idols, for whom they had not been created” (PL 158, 955f.). Thus, according to Gregory’s vision, the stable in the Christmas message represents the ill-treated world. What Christ rebuilds is no ordinary palace. He came to restore beauty and dignity to creation, to the universe: this is what began at Christmas and makes the angels rejoice. The Earth is restored to good order by virtue of the fact that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light anew, and in the harmony between human will and divine will, in the unification of height and depth, it regains its beauty and dignity. Thus Christmas is a feast of restored creation. It is in this context that the Fathers interpret the song of the angels on that holy night: it is an expression of joy over the fact that the height and the depth, Heaven and Earth, are once more united; that man is again united to God. According to the Fathers, part of the angels’ Christmas song is the fact that now angels and men can sing together and in this way the beauty of the universe is expressed in the beauty of the song of praise. Liturgical song – still according to the Fathers – possesses its own peculiar dignity through the fact that it is sung together with the celestial choirs. It is the encounter with Jesus Christ that makes us capable of hearing the song of the angels, thus creating the real music that fades away when we lose this singing-with and hearing-with.

In the stable at Bethlehem, Heaven and Earth meet. Heaven has come down to Earth. For this reason, a light shines from the stable for all times; for this reason joy is enkindled there; for this reason song is born there. At the end of our Christmas meditation I should like to quote a remarkable passage from Saint Augustine. Interpreting the invocation in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in Heaven”, he asks: what is this – Heaven? And where is Heaven? Then comes a surprising response: “… who art in Heaven – that means: in the saints and in the just. Yes, the heavens are the highest bodies in the universe, but they are still bodies, which cannot exist except in a given location. Yet if we believe that God is located in the heavens, meaning in the highest parts of the world, then the birds would be more fortunate than we, since they would live closer to God. Yet it is not written: ‘The Lord is close to those who dwell on the heights or on the mountains’, but rather: ‘the Lord is close to the brokenhearted’ (Ps 34:18[33:19]), an expression which refers to humility. Just as the sinner is called ‘Earth’, so by contrast the just man can be called ‘Heaven’” (Sermo in monte II 5, 17). Heaven does not belong to the geography of space, but to the geography of the heart. And the heart of God, during the Holy Night, stooped down to the stable: the humility of God is Heaven. And if we approach this humility, then we touch Heaven. Then the Earth too is made new. With the humility of the shepherds, let us set out, during this Holy Night, towards the Child in the stable! Let us touch God’s humility, God’s heart! Then his joy will touch us and will make the world more radiant. Amen.

The Day Arrives

In Praise of Christmas
St. Ephrem the Syrian

Lord, give us leave this day to celebrate thy true birthday, of which the present festival puts us in mind. This day is like thyself: it is the friend of man. Year by year it returns throughout the centuries, growing old with the aged, renewing itself with the new-born child. Year by year it comes to us, passes, and then returns, full of the old magic. It knows that human nature cannot do without it; like thyself, it comes to the rescue of our imperiled race. The whole round earth is thirsting for thy birthday, Lord. In that one happy day are contained all the ages to come; it is one, yet it multiplies itself to infinity. May it then resemble thee again this year, and make peace between heaven and earth.

All days bear the imprint of thy goodness, but today thy goodness brims over. The other days of the year borrow their loveliness from this one; the coming festivals owe to it all their dignity and luster. Thy birthday, Lord, is a treasure great enough to repay the common debt.

Blessed be that day which gave back the light of the sun to us who were astray in the dark, which brought us the sheaf of divine plenty and gave us that vine from which the wine of salvation would be pressed. In the depth of winter, when the trees were stripped of fruit, the vine clothed itself with heavenly foliage; in that icy season a branch sprang from the tree of Jesse. In that month of December which holds deep down in the earth the seed that was entrusted to it, the bud of salvation unfolded itself from the Virgin's womb, where it was planted in the spring days when the lambs were skipping in their pastures.

TO GOD THE FATHER

Today the true sun is risen on the world, today a light has come forth in the midst of the darkened earth: God has become man, so I that man may become God in his turn; the Master takes upon himself the form of a slave, so that the slave may be converted to his Master. He who founded and dwells in the heavens has made his abode on earth, so that man, the earth-bound, may find a new home in heaven.

O day more brilliant than any sun! season for which all ages have longed! That which the angels were awaiting, that which the cherubim and seraphim and the ministering choirs of heaven knew not, has been revealed in our time. That which they viewed as a reflection in a mirror, we see face to face. He who spoke to the people of Israel through Isaias, Jeremias, and the other prophets, now speaks to us through his Son.

By thy favor, Lord, let the holy angel bring tidings of great joy to Christian people all over the world. Today in David's city Christ the Lord is born, the salvation of all, the eternal Savior; and in that city, which is the Church, he will reign for ever, guarding and guiding her until the end of time. Grant that his reign over her may be whole and entire, extending throughout the world, and causing her to partake of that eternity which belongs to the citizens of heaven.

Merciful and loving God, whose will and gift it was that our Lord Jesus Christ humbled himself to this end that he might raise up the whole race of men, stooping low to exalt the lowly, a God born of a Virgin to restore in man the lost image of heaven: grant that this people of thine may cleave to thee, and that those whom thou hast freely redeemed may ever give thee zealous and acceptable service.

Merciful God, prepare the minds of the faithful, and subdue unbelieving hearts, to welcome the surpassing mystery of thy Son's human birth.

TO THE INCARNATE WORD

This is the day on which the Savior of the earth, the Light of the world, shone forth. On this day the Savior of Israel came down from the pinnacle of heaven to set free all those whom the ancient enemy held captive by reason of Adam's fault; he came down so that blind souls might have light and deaf souls might hear. The mountains and hills leap for joy, the very foundations of the world break into song, thrilled by the great mystery of his incarnation and all the good it has brought.

For our part, let us humbly entreat our Redeemer to show us his love and mercy. May our souls, begrimed by sin, be cleansed by heartfelt contrition, so that his light may shine gloriously in and about us, and the bliss of salvation be ours to enjoy for ever.

For our sake a child is born, to our race a Son is given. Thou who art thy Father's full-grown Son hast become thy mother's baby; in heaven, infinite: here, tiny; abiding in thy Father's bosom, yet carried in thy mother's womb; changeless in Godhead, peerless in thy humanity, because for ever one and the same in both; in thy divine nature our Creator, and in thy human our Redeemer.

Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, God and Man; as God, infinite, yet from the beginning destined to become man; God before time was, Man in process of time; all-embracing, all-transcending; from whom all beings have life; thou who wast born for our sake, have mercy upon us.

Abiding still within thy own Godhead, thou showest thyself in our midst; self-centered, thou comest to our help; not lacking power from the Father to pass judgment upon us wretches, thou comest in mercy to save us; while filling the heavens, thou dost not abandon the earth. Without abating thy infinite majesty as Creator, complete in us, we pray thee, the work of a most kind Redeemer; and let that pity which led thee to pay our ransom move thee also to pardon our misdeeds.

We have had sight of thy glory, Lord, glory such as belongs to the Father's only-begotten Son: sole-born in Godhead, first-born in earthly rank; in heaven the only Son of the Father, here on earth the chief among thy brethren; there one with the Father, here the first among thy fellows; there abiding in the Father's bosom, his equal, here never deserting thy companions; there creating, here renewing. Give us grace to become partners of thy kingdom, since for us thou madest reparation on earth. Thou who camest into this world to redeem us, be our reward in the world to come.

God, who in putting on humanity didst of thy own accord become our partner in weakness; make us thy partners in the glory of thy heavenly kingdom.

Thou hast risen upon us, Jesus Christ, true Sun of Justice. Thou hast come down from heaven, Redeemer of mankind, and built for us a rampart of salvation. Thou, the everlasting Son of the Most High, born as man from the stock of David, as ancient prophecies foretold, hast been pleased to forgive thy people, and blotting out the record of our primal sin, hast opened a triumphal way to eternal life.

New therefore, we pray thee, let us behold the depths of thy mercy. Eternal Savior, rescue us from the devilish foe, make us zealous in holy living, keep us from straying into peril of death, and lead us, by the straight path of thy service, which is peace, 0 Savior of the world, who art God, living and reigning, and ruling with God the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

The Incarnation and Human Dignity
St. Peter Chrysologus

A virgin conceived, bore a son, and yet remained a virgin. This is no common occurrence, but a sign; no reason here, but God’s power, for he is the cause, and not nature. It is a special event, not shared by others; it is divine, not human. Christ’s birth was not necessity, but an expression of omnipotence, a sacrament of piety for the redemption of men. He who made man without generation from pure clay made man again and was born from a pure body. The hand that assumed clay to make our flesh deigned to assume a body for our salvation. That the Creator is in his creature and God is in the flesh brings dignity to man without dishonor to him who made him.

Why then, man, are you so worthless in your own eyes and yet so precious to God? Why render yourself such dishonor when you are honored by him? Why do you ask how you were created and do not seek to know why you were made? Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling? It was for you that the light dispelled the overshadowing gloom; for your sake was the night regulated and the day measured, and for you were the heavens embellished with the varying brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvellous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God’s new creation. And the Creator still works to devise things that can add to your glory. He has made you in his image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; he has made you his legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the Lord’s representative. Then in his mercy God assumed what he made in you; he wanted now to be truly manifest in man, just as he had wished to be revealed in man as in an image. Now he would be in reality what he had submitted to be in symbol.

And so Christ is born that by his birth he might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that he might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain for ever as he had created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature he had formed of earth he now makes heavenly; and what he had endowed with a human soul he now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way he fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, for all the ages of eternity. Amen.

Christmas is the Birthday of Peace

St. Leo the Great

Although the state of infancy, which the majesty of the Son of God did not disdain to assume, developed with the passage of time into the maturity of manhood, and although after the triumph of the passion and the resurrection all his lowly acts undertaken on our behalf belong to the past, nevertheless today’s feast of Christmas renews for us the sacred beginning of Jesus’s life, his birth from the Virgin Mary. In the very act in which we are reverencing the birth of our Savior, we are also celebrating our own new birth. For the birth of Christ is the origin of the Christian people; and the birthday of the head is also the birthday of the body.

Though each and every individual occupies a definite place in this body to which he has been called, and though all the progeny of the church is differentiated and marked with the passage of time, nevertheless as the whole community of the faithful, once begotten in the baptismal font, was crucified with Christ in the passion, raised up with him in the resurrection and at the ascension placed at the right hand of the Father, so too it is born with him in this Nativity, which we are celebrating today.

For every believer regenerated in Christ, no matter in what part of the whole world he may be, breaks with that ancient way of life that derives from original sin, and by rebirth is transformed into a new man. Henceforth he is reckoned to be of the stock, not of his earthly father, but of Christ, who became Son of Man precisely that men could become sons of God; for unless in humility he had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to him.

Therefore the greatness of the gift which he has bestowed o us demands an appreciation proportioned to its excellence; for blessed Paul the Apostle truly teaches: We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. The only way that he can be worthily honored by us is by the presentation to him of that which he has already given to us.

But what can we find in the treasure of the Lord’s bounty more in keeping with the glory of this feast than that peace which was first announced by the angelic choir on the day of his birth? For that peace, from which the sons of God spring, sustains love and mothers unity; it refreshes the blessed and shelters eternity; its characteristic function and special blessing is to join to God those whom it separates from this world.

Therefore, may those who were born, not of blood nor of the will fo the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God, offer to the Father their harmony as sons united in peace; and may all those whom he has adopted as his members meet in the firstborn of the new creation who came not to do him own will but the will of the one who sent him; for the grace of the Father has adopted as heirs neither the contentious nor the dissident, but those who are one in thought and love. The hearts and minds of those who have been reformed according to one and the same image should be in harmony with one another.

The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace, as Paul the Apostle says: For he is our peace, who has made us both one; for whether we be Jew or Gentile, through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.