Twas much,
that man was
made like God before,
But that God should
be like man
much more
–John Donne (1572-1631)
“The Adoration of the Shepherds,” by El Greco (1614).
Merry Christmas! 🎄🎁🎅🪅 pic.twitter.com/GAdqE5NkOR
— Federico N. Fernández 🌎🇪🇺 (@fn_fernandez) December 25, 2022
Listen to it all.
The message of the Christian faith is two edged. It is both kinds of comfort.
It is the resolute message of God’s enduring support for us, right in the midst of the fragility and transience of human life, its difficulties, its challenges and its horrors, a reminder of God’s commitment to the world. It is tough love and tough comfort.
And then it is a message of such sweetness, such sublime tenderness, such understanding of our humanity because in Christ God has climbed inside our humanity and God is like a Shepherd who feeds his flock and gathers the lambs in his arms.
It is this message we receive at Christmas.
It is this message we are called to share.
This Christmas feels harder than ever. Our world feels fragile. There is war in Europe. A cost of living crisis is hitting the poorest disproportionately. Our health service seems to be creaking at the seams. Public sector workers feel forced to strike. The impact of climate emergency ever more visible and pressing. In parts of East Africa, they haven’t had any proper rain for nearly three years. In Northern Kenya, an area I know well, 80% of their livestock has died.
I am not here to offer political analysis. But I do want to offer hope.
God is coming among us as one of us: this is the great Christmas proclamation; God’s word made flesh in Jesus Christ. Read my sermon from today’s Eucharist @York_Minster https://t.co/aSAnkDLtuq
— Stephen Cottrell (@CottrellStephen) December 25, 2022
One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles–because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends–you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation. Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you again have indigestion). Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once.
–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Today's art: The Adoration of the Shepherds – Hugo van der Goes https://t.co/4qNPRSKb3d pic.twitter.com/zCZyQGHwZn
— Art and the Bible (@artbible) December 28, 2022
Merciful and most loving God, by whose will and bountiful gift Jesus Christ our Lord humbled himself that he might exalt mankind; and became flesh that he might restore in us the most celestial image; and was born of the Virgin that he might uplift the lowly: Grant unto us the inheritance of the meek, perfect us in thy likeness, and bring us at last to rejoice in beholding thy beauty, and with all thy saints to glorify thy grace; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
A very merry Christmas to everyone. I hope everyone has a peaceful day 💜🌲 pic.twitter.com/9bylVSztBs
— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) December 25, 2022
O ALMIGHTY God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths; Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
On this Feast of the Holy Innocents, collected 16th Century glass at Erpingham, Norfolk. One of Herod's soldiers kills a child in the foreground while the Holy Family escapes into Egypt beyond. The donkey is a later restoration. pic.twitter.com/lUes4I9Glm
— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) December 28, 2022
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people,
and will have compassion on his afflicted.
But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me.”
“Can a woman forget her sucking child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.
Your builders outstrip your destroyers,
and those who laid you waste go forth from you.
Lift up your eyes round about and see;
they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, says the Lord,
you shall put them all on as an ornament,
you shall bind them on as a bride does.
“Surely your waste and your desolate places
and your devastated land—
surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants,
and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
The children born in the time of your bereavement
will yet say in your ears:
‘The place is too narrow for me;
make room for me to dwell in.’
Then you will say in your heart:
‘Who has borne me these?
I was bereaved and barren,
exiled and put away,
but who has brought up these?
Behold, I was left alone;
whence then have these come?’”
–Isaiah 49:13-21
Wandering the winter Wyre Forest. @StormHour @bbcmtd #Wyreforest #forests #waterfall #sun #trees pic.twitter.com/lhaB8KEcl2
— SAB Photography (@sabphotos69) December 28, 2022