I don’t think I ever heard this carol until today. I was checking out the YouTube channel of Clamavi De Profundis, guessing that I might find good Christmas music there. I was happy to see that they have recorded several Christmas pieces, including this one: “See Amid the Winter’s Snow”:
Category Archives: Nativity
Tea and stollen for the whirled.
Early this morning I waved good-bye to the last Christmas guests as they drove off toward home in Colorado. A few minutes later I was back in bed, and soon after that had fallen asleep while listening to Jonathan Pageau’s podcast on “Christmas: The Anchor of Reality.”
Now it’s afternoon, I just finished breakfast, and decided to try one of the new teas I received recently from Tea Runners. The grandchildren who just departed liked this one, called Winter Wonderland Rooibos. I added half and half, and served up a slice of the stollen Soldier gave me for Christmas.
I was arranging my stack of Christmas books and realized that I have not read Winter Fire during either of the Christmas seasons since I got it; it is subtitled Christmas with G.K. Chesterton, and is compiled by Ryan Whitaker Smith. So I opened its pages and browsed a little, and remembered that it is arranged as somewhat of a 30-Day Advent collection. Yet for myself I think it will be a good read in the next few days, as winter has only begun here, and I could use more meditation on the Incarnation, as I process all the events large and small that have whirled around me of late.
There are so many things I want to write about, to highlight here, of our splendid Glad celebrations over the last ten days, but at this point my head is still spinning a bit too crazily, and my heart just wants to go to church, light a candle on St. Basil’s Day and The Circumcision of Christ, and give thanks for all that God has done.
Becoming Christmas
It is a great blessing that some of my family are still here with me during Christmastide. This morning after breakfast, while I was listening from around the corner in the kitchen, my son “Soldier” taught his children a little Bible lesson, and I think he mentioned the passage that includes the words, “all things pertaining to life and godliness,” because when I read an article online just now, that line jumped out at me, as being a theme of his message.
The article is “Keeping Christmas All the Year,” by Mark Dooley; here is the first paragraph:
“We have just celebrated the sacred feast of Christmas and are embarking upon yet another new year. But why talk about Christmas when, as many may remark, it is over and done with? This question reveals a profound misunderstanding about the nature and meaning of the birth of Christ. The fact is that we do not so much celebrate Christmas as become it. The wonder of this divine intervention in human history, is that the separation between man and God was bridged through the Incarnation of Christ. Not only were we reconciled with our Creator, but, through his “divine power,” we have been granted “all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Indeed, as the Apostle Peter writes, we have “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”
And Dooley continues to gather up many such uplifting passages from scripture, such as:
“Put simply, Christmas is neither day, a feast, nor a celebration—even if that is how the world perceives it. Rather, it is a transformation of life from “being alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,” to being “reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.”
Truly, this event of Christ’s birth, the Incarnation, empowers us to live an exalted life:
“Becoming Christmas means realising that we have died and been reborn in Christ. It is coming to terms with the revelation that ‘God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.’ It is living in the knowledge, as St. John writes, that ‘as he is, so also are we in this world.'”
Read the whole article here: “Keeping Christmas All the Year”
A woman without man has begotten man.
I don’t think many of us will be reading blogs on Christmas morning, so I offer this meditation a little early, from a Christmas homily of very long ago:
It was fitting that the Giver of all holiness should enter this world by a pure and holy birth. For He it is that of old formed Adam from the virgin earth, and from Adam without help of woman formed woman. For as without woman Adam produced woman, so did the Virgin without man this day bring forth a man. For it is a man, saith the Lord, and who shall know him [Jer. 17:9]. For since the race of women owed to men a debt, as from Adam without woman woman came, therefore without man the Virgin this day brought forth, and on behalf of Eve repaid the debt to man.
That Adam might not take pride, that he without woman had engendered woman, a Woman without man has begotten man; so that by the similarity of the mystery is proved the similarity in nature. For as before the Almighty took a rib from Adam, and by that Adam was not made less; so in the Virgin He formed a living temple, and the holy virginity remained unchanged. Sound and unharmed Adam remained even after the deprivation of a rib; unstained the Virgin though a Child was born of her.
+ St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), “Homily on Christmas Morning”
Do you wonder where Joseph is? Orthodox icons don’t show him in the typical western setting of the birth of Christ. You can find out about any unfamiliar elements of this picture from Iconreader in his post about the Nativity icon.
Gladsome Lights 