Merry Christmas!
Blessed and Merry Christmas!
Christ is born for us!
Let us rejoice and be glad!
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Dearly beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.
No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.
In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of Godtook for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown mankind.
And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: ‘Glory to God in the highest’, and they proclaim ‘peace to his people on earth’ as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men? (from the Second Reading of the Office of Readings, Liturgy of the Hours, for Christmas Day, from a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, Pope [Sermo 1 in Nativitate Domini, 1-3; PL 54, 190-193]).
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Art: Song of the Angels, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1881, PD-US published before January 1, 1923, Wikimedia Commons.
