This night bestowed peace on the whole world

This night bestowed peace on the whole world; 
    so, let no one threaten; 
This is the night of the Most Gentle One – 
    let no one be cruel; 

This is the night of the Most Humble One – 
    let no one be proud. 

Now is the day of joy – 
    let us not revenge; 
Now is the day of good will – 
    let us not be mean-spirited. 
In this day of peace 
    let us not be conquered by anger. 

Today the Bountiful impoverished Himself for our sake; 
so, rich one, invite the poor to your table. 
Today we received a gift for which we did not ask; 
so let us give alms to those who implore us and beg. 
This present day cast open the heavenly door to our prayers; 
let us open our door to those who ask our forgiveness. 

Now the Divine Being took upon Himself the seal of humanity, 
in order for humanity to be adorned by the seal of Divinity.

St. Isaac the Syrian

Now the angels honor us as friends

The Angel announces that a King is born, and the choirs of angels unite their voice with his, and rejoicing all together they sing:

“Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.”

Before the Redeemer was born in the flesh, there was discord between us and the angels, from whose brightness and holy perfection we stood afar, in punishment first of original sin, and then because of our daily offenses. Because through sin we had become strangers to God, the angels as God’s subjects cut us off from their fellowship. But since we have now acknowledged our King, the angels receive us as fellow citizens.

Because the King of heaven has taken unto Himself the flesh of our earth, the angels from their heavenly heights no longer look down upon our infirmity. Now they are at peace with us, putting away the remembrance of the ancient discord ; now they honor us as friends, whom before they beheld weak and despised below them.

St. Gregory the Great, Homily 8 on the Gospels, 25 December 590

The true gain and fruit of the angel’s message

When I die I shall see nothing but black darkness, and yet that light, “To you is born this day the Savior,” remains in my eyes and fills all heaven and earth. The Savior will help me when all have forsaken me. And when the heavens and the stars and all creatures stare at me with horrible mien, I see nothing in heaven and earth but this child. So great should that light which declares that he is my Savior become in my eyes that I can say: Mary, you did not bear this child for yourself alone. The child is not yours; you did not bring him forth for yourself, but for me, even though you are his mother, even though you held him in your arms and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and picked him up and laid him down. But I have a greater honor than your honor as his mother. For your honor pertains to your motherhood of the body of the child, but my honor is this, that you have my treasure, so that I know none, neither men nor angels, who can help me except this child whom you, O Mary, hold in your arms. If a man could put out of his mind all that he is and has except this child, and if for him everything—money, goods, power, or honor—fades into darkness and he despises everything on earth compared with this child, so that heaven with its stars and earth with all its power and all its treasures becomes nothing to him, that man would have the true gain and fruit of this message of the angel. And for us the time must come when suddenly all will be darkness and we shall know nothing but this message of the angel: “I bring to you good news of great joy; for to you is born this day the Savior.”

– Martin Luther, Sermon on the Afternoon of Christmas Day, December 25, 1530 AE 51:214

Friday

We nailed the hands long ago,
Wove the thorns, took up the scourge and shouted
For excitement’s sake, we stood at the dusty edge
Of the pebbled path and watched the extreme of pain.

But one or two prayed, one or two
Were silent, shocked, stood back
And remembered remnants of words, a new vision,
The cross is up with its crying victim, the clouds
Cover the sun, we learn a new way to lose
What we did not know we had
Until this bleak and sacrificial day,
Until we turned from our bad
Past and knelt and cried out our dismay,
The dice still clicking, the voices dying away.

Elizabeth Jennings

Tossed and Shaken by the Tempests

Meanwhile, the ship which carries the disciples, that is, the Church, is tossed and shaken by the tempests of temptation; and the contrary wind, that is, the devil her adversary, rests not, and strives to hinder her from arriving at rest. But greater is He who makes intercession for us. For in this our tossing to and fro in which we toil, He gives us confidence in coming to us, and strengthening us; only let us not in our trouble throw ourselves out of the ship, and cast ourselves into the sea. For though the ship be in trouble, still it is the ship. She alone carries the disciples, and receives Christ. There is danger, it is true, in the sea; but without her there is instant perishing. Keep yourself therefore in the ship, and pray to God. For when all counsels fail, when even the rudder is unserviceable, and the very spreading of the sails is rather dangerous than useful, when all human help and strength is gone, there remains only for the sailors the earnest cry of entreaty, and pouring out of prayer to God. He then who grants to sailors to reach the haven, shall He so forsake His own Church, as not to bring it on to rest?

St. Augustine, Sermon 25 on the New Testament

The Country Clergy

I see them working in old rectories
By the sun’s light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men’s hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.

R. S. Thomas

The Other

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.

R. S. Thomas

In a Country Church

To one kneeling down no word came,
Only the wind’ s song, saddening the lips
Of the grave saints, rigid in glass;
Or the dry whisper of unseen wings,
Bats not angels, in the high roof.

Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long
And saw love in a dark crown
Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree
Golden with fruit of a man’s body.

R. S. Thomas

The Wicked Fairy at the Manger

My gift for the child:

No wife, no kids, home;
No money sense.  Unemployable.
Friends, yes.  But the wrong sort –
The workshy, women, wimps.
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases.
Poll tax collectors, tarts:
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it 
public, prolonged, painful.

Right, said the baby.  That was roughly
what we had in mind.

U. A. Fanthorpe

Praise

I praise you because
you are artist and scientist
in one. When I am somewhat
fearful of your power,
your ability to work miracles
with a set—square, I hear
you murmuring to yourself
in a notation Beethoven
dreamed of but never achieved.
You run off your scales of
rain water and sea water, play
the chords of the morning
and evening light, sculpture
with shadow, join together leaf
by leaf, when spring
comes, the stanzas of
an immense poem. You speak
all languages and none,
answering our most complex
prayers with the simplicity
of a flower, confronting
us, when we would domesticate you
to our uses, with the rioting
viruses under our lens.

R. S. Thomas