we then such ado for clothes? Our blessed Lord here is content with what comes next. But Lord! to see what ado have we about our apparel! this lace, and that trimming; this fashion, and that colour; these jewels, and those accoutrements; this cloth, and that stuff; this silk, and that velvet; this silver, and that gold; this way of wearing, and that garb in them; as if our whole life were raiment, our clothes heaven, and our salvation the handsome wearing them. We forget, we forget our sweet Saviour’s rags, his poor ragged swaddling-clothes and our garments witness against us to our faces, our pride, our follies, our vanities at the best.
Well, but though he was content to be wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and those none of the handsomest, neither, may we not look for a cradle at least to lay him in? No matter what we may look for, we are like to find no better than a manger for that purpose, and a lock of hay for his bed, and for his pillow, and for his mantle too. A poor condition, and an humble one indeed, for him whose chariot is the clouds, whose palace is in heaven, whose throne is with the Most High. What place can we hereafter think too mean for any of us? Stand thou here, sit thou there, under my foot-stool – places of exceeding honour compared to this. What, not a room among men, not among the meanest, in some smoky cottage, or ragged cell; but among beasts! Whither hath thy humility driven thee, O Saviour of mankind? Why, mere pity of a woman in thy mother’s case, O Lord, would have made the most obdurate have removed her from the horses’ feet, the asses’ heels, the company of unruly beasts, from the ordure and nastiness of a stable.
And what of us? Though there be no room for him in the inn, I hope there is in our houses for him. It is Christmas time, and let us keep open house for him; let his rags be our Christmas raiment, his manger our Christmas cheer, his stable our Christmas great chamber, hall, dining-room.
[O thou that refusedst not the manger, refuse not the manger of my unworthy heart to lie in, but accept a room in thy servant’s soul. Turn and abide with me. Thy poverty, O sweet Jesu, shall be my patrimony, thy weakness my strength, thy rags my riches, thy manger my kingdom; all the dainties of the world, but chaff to me in comparison of thee; and all the room in the world, no room to that, wheresoever it is, that thou vouchsafest to be. Heaven it is wheresoever thou stayest or abidest; and I will change all the house and wealth I have for thy rags and manger.]
29 December
A Reading from a sermon of John Henry Newman preached before the University of Oxford in 1843
Little is told to us in Scripture concerning the Blessed Virgin, but there is one grace of which the evangelists, in a few simple sentences, make her the pattern of faith. Zechariah questioned the angel’s message, but Mary said, ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’ Accordingly Elizabeth, speaking with an apparent allusion to the contrast thus exhibited between her own highly-favoured husband, righteous Zechariah, and the still more highly-favoured Mary, said, on receiving her salutation, ‘Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Blessed is she that believed for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.’
But Mary’s faith did not end in a mere acquiescence in divine providence and revelations: as the text informs us, she ‘pondered’ them. When the shepherds came, and told of the vision of angels which they had seen at the time of the nativity, and how one of them announced that the infant in her arms was the ‘Saviour, which is Christ the Lord,’ while others did but wonder, ‘Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’ Again, when her son and Saviour had come to the age of twelve years, and had left her for awhile for his Father’s service, and had been found, to her surprise, in the temple amid the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions, and had, on her addressing him, vouchsafed to justify his conduct, we are told, ‘His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.’ And accordingly, at the marriage feast in Cana, her faith anticipated his first miracle, and she said to the servants, ‘Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.’
Thus St Mary is our pattern of faith, both in the reception and in the study of divine truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she develops it; not enough to submit the reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zechariah, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolises to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms; and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator.
30 December
A Reading from a homily of Basil the Great
God on earth, God among us! No longer the God who gives his law amid flashes of lightning, to the sound of the trumpet on the smoking mountain, within the darkness of a terrifying storm, but the God who speaks gently and with kindness in a human body to his kindred. God in the flesh! It is no longer the God who acts only at particular instants, as in the prophets, but one who completely assumes our human nature and through his flesh, which is that of our race, lifts all humanity up to him.
How, then, you will say, did the light come everywhere, through one sole person? In what manner is the Godhead in the flesh? Like fire in iron: not by moving about, but by spreading itself. The fire, indeed, does not thrust itself toward the iron, but, remaining where it is, it distributes its own strength to it. In doing so, the fire is in no way diminished, but it completely fills the iron to which it spreads. In the same manner, God the Word who ‘dwelt among us’ did not go outside himself; the Word which was ‘made flesh’ underwent no change; heaven was not deprived of him who controlled it and the earth received within itself him who is in heaven.
Look deeply into this mystery. God comes in the flesh in order to destroy the death concealed in flesh. In the same way as remedies and medicines triumph over the factors of corruption when they are assimilated into the body, and in the same way as the darkness which reigns in a house is dispelled by the entry of light, so death, which held human nature in its power, was annihilated by the coming of the Godhead. In the same way as ice, when in water, prevails over the liquid element as long as it is night, and darkness covers everything, but is dissolved when the sun comes up through the warmth of its rays: so death reigned till the coming of Christ; but when the saving grace of God appeared and the sun of justice rose, death was swallowed up in this victory, being unable to endure the dwelling of the true life among us. O the depth of the goodness of God and of his love for all of us!
Let us give glory to God with the shepherds, let us dance in choir with the angels, for ‘this day a Saviour has been born to us, the Messiah and Lord.’ He is the Lord who has appeared to us, not in his divine form in order not to terrify us in our weakness, but in the form of a servant, that he might set free what had been reduced to servitude. Who could be so faint-hearted and so ungrateful as not to rejoice and exult in gladness for what is taking place? This is a festival of all creation.
31 December
A Reading from an oration
by Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople
What we celebrate today is the pride and glory of womankind, wrought in one who was both mother and virgin. Behold, earth and sea are the Virgin’s escorts: the sea spreads out her waves in calm beneath the ships; the earth conducts the steps of travellers on their way unhindered. So let nature leap for joy; women are honoured! Let all the world dance; virgins receive praise! For where ‘sin increased, grace has abounded yet more’.
Holy Mary has gathered us together in celebration, Mary – the untarnished vessel of virginity, the spiritual paradise of the second Adam, the workshop
