{"id":30127,"date":"2011-12-30T18:32:16","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T18:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/father_patrick_allens_christmas_day_2011_homily\/"},"modified":"2011-12-30T18:32:16","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T18:32:16","slug":"father_patrick_allens_christmas_day_2011_homily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=30127","title":{"rendered":"Father Patrick Allen&#39;s Christmas Day 2011 Homily"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;in all of our giving, even in our best gifts, there is always, to a greater or lesser degree, there is always a gap \u201d\u201c a gap between the sign and the thing signified, between the gift and the giver.  We say &#8220;it&#8217;s the thought that counts&#8221; because we have to, because the thought and the gift can never be identical.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing.  Again, here is Christmas:  God does not give us something external to himself; God gives us himself.  In this child born unto us, that gap between the Gift and the Giver has disappeared.  That baby is not a gesture.  In this Gift, it really is the thought that counts, because in this gift the Thought, the Heart, the Logos, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.holycomm.org\/posts\/11070\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;in all of our giving, even in our best gifts, there is always, to a greater or lesser degree, there is always a gap \u201d\u201c a gap between the sign and the thing signified, between the gift and the giver.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=30127\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,54,575,187,435,184,439],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-life-church-life","category-south-carolina","category-christmas","category-church-year-liturgical-seasons","category-ministry-of-the-ordained","category-parish-ministry","category-preaching-homiletics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}