Daily Archives: January 5, 2025

Flannery O’Connor on Christmas–“For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh”

To see Christ as God and man is probably no more difficult today than it has always been, even if today there seem to be more reasons to doubt. For you it may be a matter of not being able to accept what you call a suspension of the laws of the flesh and the physical but for my part I think that when I know what the laws of the flesh and the physical really are, then I will know what God is. We know them as we see them, not as God sees them. For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says will rise but the body, glorified. I have always thought that purity was the most mysterious of the virtues, but it occurs to me that it would never have entered the human consciousness to conceive of purity if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point of the law of nature.

–Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

Posted in Christmas, Theology

A Prayer for Christmas from a New Prayer Book

O Father, who hast declared thy love to men by the birth of the Holy Child at Bethlehem: Help us to welcome him with gladness and to make room for him in our common days; so that we may live at peace with one another and in goodwill with all thy family; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

-A New Prayer Book (London: Oxford University Press 1923)

Posted in Christmas, Spirituality/Prayer

From the Morning Bible Readings

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us,Selah
that thy way may be known upon earth,
thy saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise thee, O God;
let all the peoples praise thee!

–Psalm 67:1-3

Posted in Theology: Scripture