It is in the child Jesus that we see most clearly the defencelessness of God's love. God comes without weapons, because he does not want to conquer from the outside but to win us over from within and to transform us from within. If anything can conquer the arrogance, the violence, and the greed of man, it is the utter vulnerability of a child: and God has taken on this vulnerability in order to conquer us in this manner and to lead us to himself.
~ Pope Benedict XVI, The Blessings of Christmas
Salutation to a friend
ReplyDeleteI am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much that, while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
Spring Lake Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.
Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.
And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
Fra Giovanni, Christmas Eve, 1513
Merry Christmas to all our readers.
And a very Happy Christmas to you and yours, Zen.
ReplyDeleteAnd to you all. Even a grumpy old Presbyterian can agree with Pope Ratso on this one.
ReplyDeleteEven for the non-believer, it's a good symbol. Merry Christmas, all.
ReplyDeleteEven to the non-believer, Merry Christmas my friend .
ReplyDelete