[Reposted]

CHRISTMAS, they say, is about the Incarnation of God — the mysterious, improbable and incomprehensible birth of God Himself as a human baby in a single moment of history.

But if you think about it for a minute or two, if you just think about it, you realize that if this is true then, well, Christmas must be about everything.

Christmas couldn’t just be about Christmas.

It couldn’t be just about a holiday with decorated trees and lights and carols and gifts. It couldn’t be just about Christmas prayers, as sublime and essential as they may be in their highest and most exalted manifestation, the ancient Christ Mass. It couldn’t possibly be just about these things.

No, Christmas must be, if it is what they say it is and if it was what they say it was, it must be about everything. Every single thing. Every single person. Every single moment. Every single place. Every single thought. Every single event.

Haven’t you sensed that already?

Haven’t you sensed on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day that something deeply personal was happening — something that was strangely and mysteriously about you? 

Well, even if you haven’t sensed that, it was. It had to be about you. And everyone who has ever lived.

It couldn’t just be this one divine Baby — it must be about every baby. It must be about people who have long since ceased to resemble the babies they once were.

It couldn’t just be about Bethlehem. It must be about San Francisco. It must be about Hong Kong and Moscow and — what’s that city in Saudi Arabia — Riyadh. It must be about Tulsa and Marseilles.

It couldn’t just be about the donkey Mary rode along those dirt roads. It must be about all donkeys and also all modes of transportation, including planes lifting off right this minute from teeming airports, freight trucks roaring down superhighways and baby strollers with their unpredictable passengers, adorable to be sure but not as holy as Jesus. (more…)

ZENO writes:

I am here right now in a very unfree country, with “vaccine passports” required to go almost everywhere, closed cultural spaces, canceled Christmas events, the threat of a new lockdown, and the debate about mandating experimental drugs on everyone including children. (more…)

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PENNY writes:

In your response to “Your Car’s Ready” you made this comment: “I doubt she would want to be a housewife. Nothing in her life would have prepared her for anything like that.” It brought to mind something the certified lay speaker (a young woman) said in the message in my church this past Sunday.

It was to the effect that when the Angel greeted Mary with “Hail, Favored One” Mary would have been thinking “How am I favored? I’m only fourteen and have nothing to look forward to in life but being married to Joseph, having his children, washing clothes in the stream and beating them with rocks. I’m not a princess.” (more…)

FROM Winter Watch:

Every man, woman and child in America is owed $65,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), according to a report published earlier this year by Michigan State University professor and economist Mark Skidmore. (more…)

MY husband and I went for a walk last night in the winter darkness. Many houses in the neighborhood were decorated with ropes of Christmas lights, as I'm sure they were where you live. On one house, the roof of a second-floor addition was lighted up and we wondered how the elderly man who lives there got the lights so high. He must have hired someone to do it. People go to extraordinary lengths and expense to hang lights. I know of one man who got up on the roof and ... well, maybe it wasn't worth it. These artificial lights are often festive and cheerful. But they are only outer lights -- inferior to the inner lights which appear one by one in the night of Advent. They glimmer and brighten as Christmas approaches. In the blackest black, in the dark so dark, beautiful balls of fire dangle from the roof of the soul. They illuminate lonely highways and byways. Seen, but unseen. Exert, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power and come, succour us by thy great might: that by the assistance of thy grace, thy indulgent mercy may hasten what is delayed by our sins: who livest and reignest God, world without end. [Collect from the Fourth Sunday of Advent]  

THAT super-scary “Patriot Front” march in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago was some of the most poorly-executed political theater I have ever seen in the news. The blogger Banned Hipster comments:

I’m guessing that Patriot Front will be holding a lot more demonstrations as the mid-term elections heat up. The Democrats have nothing to run on except for mandatory medical malpractice for children and Permanent Covid Lockdown.

So having a Cartoon Nazi group to run against makes it much easier. (more…)

A GREAT recording by Chanticleer of Franz Biebl's Ave Maria  can be found here.  

GOD permits darkness so that we, with our feeble and clouded minds, can better see the light.  Oh great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia!  

MEDICAL doctors who are honest and upfront about possibly terminal illness are generally not hated for the news they deliver.  Those who speak about spiritual ailments, however, are greatly disliked.

Please pause a moment and have sympathy for the messenger before reading this post. This is not fun, but since you have kindly granted this sympathy to me, I hereby grant you permission to resent me. Please know, however, that everything I say is not said on my own authority. It is said on the authority of those greatly superior to myself, whose words and teachings I have studied and to which I am bound.

If you are guilty of any errors mentioned below, I do not revel in your error or condemn you as a person. It is the awareness of my own mistakes and sins that motivates me. I want to spare you my wrongs.

Now for my subject:

In all the posts I did about “the pandemic,” I never lamented the fact that people were forced to stay home from church. Yes, the unconstitutional orders that closed those churches were wrong and treasonous. Yes, all congregations and ministers should have resisted those orders and kept their churches open.

But it was not a bad thing in itself that people were staying home and not going to church. There were potential gains in this.

Now that the churches are open let me outrageously say this: they should all be closed. Yes, every single church should shut down or revert to a place of authentic communal prayer (mentioned below) with no priests or ministers until the real crisis we are in passes.

This is an audacious and arrogant thing to say, or so it seems. In response, I remind you of these words of Christ:

But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth? (Luke: 18:8)

Given this prophecy of near-universal apostasy, and many other prophecies; given also the state of the world, you should at least admit the possibility that we are in the midst of that near-universal apostasy. Given that we live in a world so steeped in irrationality that the ineffectiveness of a new medicine is being blamed on the people who don’t take it, you should at least admit the possibility that there is a near-universal collapse in discernment and rational thought.

Could it be that we hear today of so much fakeness, so much fake news, so many lies, because the very thing that must be real, the reality on which all else depends, has been rendered fake?

Jesus goes on in Luke 18 to speak of the Pharisee and the publican:

The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. [emphasis mine]

Such important words for us to ponder! (more…)

NP writes:

I just went to my Subaru dealership to get my car ready for winter (I live in northern Connecticut).  The “girl” who scheduled things seemed quite knowledgeable.  She was pretty with nice hair, but had a nose ring and a tattoo on her chest.

What kind of world tells a woman to look like a tramp when if she was a little simpler in her lifestyle she could be a housewife to a successful  man? (more…)

 1. HARK! a gladsome voice is thrilling, Earth’s dim pathways wildly shaking: Lo! the ancient fane is filling With the glow, for day is breaking; Day is breaking, night-dreams vanish; Christ is coming, gloom to banish. 2. Christ is coming! from thy prison, Earth-bound spirit, spring with gladness! Rising with the Star, new risen, Health to shed on human sadness: Lo! the Lamb descends from heaven: Sinners, haste to be forgiven. 3. Yea! to grant a gracious guerdon, Once again he comes in glory: Mourners, freighted with your pardon, His right hand he lifteth o’er ye: Lord, when doom and death confound us, Be thine arm of mercy round us. ["Fane" means 'temple.'] "VOX CLARA ECCE INTONAT" is an Advent hymn from the Liturgy of the Hours for the hour of Lauds during Advent believed to date from the sixth century. This is a translation from the Latin by Cardinal John Henry Newman.  

JOHANNA writes:

I have loved the carol Gabriel’s Message, which you recently posted, since one of my singing groups began performing it about ten years ago. This was the final group out of four which I belonged to and had hoped would continue unmasked. Two were large choruses with orchestras which had classical repertoires (‘unjabbed’ may not even attend the performance); another was very small and visited nursing homes and such to provide a little cheer.

This final one was informal and went out into the community mainly during the Christmas season, but also occasionally in the Spring. It has started up again but masks are “strongly encouraged” for the first rehearsal so the writing is clear. The other three already put their mandates in place long before any directive from the powers-that-be.

So, thanks for the memories. (more…)