Let Us At This Season...

“Let us at this season approach him with awe and love, in whom resides all perfection, and from whom we are allowed to gain it. Let us come to the Sanctifier to be sanctified. Let us come to him to learn our duty, and to receive grace to do it. At other seasons of the year we are reminded of watching, toiling, struggling, and suffering; but at this season we are reminded simply of God’s gifts towards us sinners. ‘He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy’ (Ti 3:5). We are reminded that we can do nothing, and that God does everything. This is especially the season of grace. We come to see and to experience God’s mercies. We come before him as the helpless beings, during his ministry, who were brought on beds and couches for a cure. We come to be made whole. We come as little children to be fed and taught, ‘like newborn infants’ longing for ‘pure spiritual milk,’ that by it we may ‘grow up to salvation’ (1 Pt 2:2). This is a time for innocence, and purity, and gentleness, and mildness, and contentment, and peace. It is a time in which the whole Church seems decked in white, in her baptismal robe, in the bright and glistening raiment she wears upon the Holy Mount. Christ comes at other times with garments dyed in blood, but now he comes to us in all serenity and peace, and he bids us rejoice in him and to love one another. This is not a time for gloom, or jealousy, or care, or indulgence, or excess, or license, not for ‘reveling and drunkenness,’ not for ‘debauchery and licentiousness,’ not for ‘quarreling and jealousy,’ as says the apostle (Rom 13:13), but for putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, who ‘committed no sin,’ nor was guile ‘found on his lips’ (1 Pt 2:22).

May each Christmas, as it comes, find us more and more like him, who at this time became a little child for our sake, more simple-minded, more humble, more holy, more affectionate, more resigned, more happy, more full of God.”
~John Henry Newman (from Waiting For Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas)