Reciprocating, the beautifully worded greeting,
Blessings in Domino; whose Divine Person was truly born of his human
mother - through the hypostatic union!
Thank you being so alive and articulate to celebrate the Nativity of the Lord.
The title for Boxing Day is so prosaic The hours of the day are better signakised our "Christmas Octave."
 |
Nobility lies in the Magi,
standing
and kneeling,
|
Nobility lies in the Magi, standing
and kneeling,
as well-crammed into the space, yet
there expanding.
The outside dark is forgotten;
the inner light prevails
with such delicacy and depth.
The pigment - "king's
yellow"? -
is moulded to the forms of the
robe-hang
with shading and patterning,
heightened by the white of
ermine, Babe's body and the Virginal
face
with its calm, intense smile,
in which time and eternity are held
in adoration.
With every blessing for Christmas and
the New Year from fr Edward O.P.
Fr. Edward. O.P.
Blogspot :http://www.nunraw.blogspot.co.uk |
domdonald.org.uk
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: edward ...
To: Donald Nunraw
....
Sent: Monday, 24 December
2012, 20:11
Subject: Christmas Blessings
Dear Father Donald,
A very happy Christmas to you and the Community!
I am enclosing a Christmas Card home made with a poem
home composed
together with my Christmas letter, and my two
sermons for Christmas Day.
The letter explains why I shall be late with sending
Heather's card by
ordinary mail.
I hope that you would be able to pass a copy of the
card to her -
unless you are rushed off your feet, which is most
probable..
We have had some very mild days, and this evening the
snow has returned.
Blessings in Domino; whose Divine Person was truly
born of his human
mother - through the hypostatic union!
fr Edward O.P.
--
Father Edward Booth O.P.
Austurgata 7,
IS-340 Stykkishólmur,
Iceland.
Christmas Midnight Mass 2012
If we set
apart the personal gifts which we give and receive at Christmas, its
celebration does stir mankind's tradition of its celebration which means that we
are all being touched by the mystery of Christmas, which in thinking about we
are meditating, and at the heart of our meditating, there is a a real contact
with the mystery. This, in being celebrated, takes us nearer not to our
subjective memories and impressions, but the objective presence to us of the
birth of Emmanuel in the middle of the Jewish Kingdom, and in fact in the
middle of this world of people derived from the ancient pagan races, all of
which have by now received the message, which is also commemorated in the
Gospel. The Christian people is a people of rectified good will, and as an
historical people they are always poised to communicate the Gospel divinely
intended to be communicated to all men; here at the beginning of the third
millennium, already communicated to all the peoples of the world, sometimes
passing over the same territories more than once to navigate the communication
of the Gospel to where it had been earlier communicated, but had become lost in
wars and social changes. For the events of the gospel in their essential
reality always contains the eternal youth of the Gospel, deriving from the
eternal youth of God.
This Gospel
is not an abstract Gospel. It is communicated in this world through angels and
through men. It is a Word in the fullest possible sense: for its essence lies
in the divine conception through the Holy Spirit in Mary, on whom the high
secrecy of the divine schekinah had descended, in which the conception of the
eternally begotten Son and Word of God as a man took place in a chosen Woman:
she as the furnisher of his subsequent immortal manhood. She, the living
flesh-giver and the intermediary through whom God gave a human living soul. She
is therefore Flesh-Giver and Soul-Mediator to Emmanuel, “God-with-us”!
The scope of
this event is best appreciated from the position of Mary herself as “Mother-of-God”. Preaching on the birth of herself a Greek Archbishop of Crete,
Andrew, at the beginning of the eighth century and so contemporary with the
English Monk-Doctor of the Church, Bede, pointed out the linkage between the
Immaculate Conception and Birth of Mary herself, which he said was the
initiation of deiformity in this world, and the birth of Jesus at
Bethlehem. This was a double birth characterised by the heights of divine
purity participated by her. Certainly they show together the centrality of the
double event which took place within the body of Mary. That establishes Mary at
the centre of this divine giving birth. So ought we to empathise with Mary, and
together with her empathise with all of the physical and spiritual
consequences, which are all benefits for all men.
Meanwhile on
the bleak hill-tops a group of shepherds was guarding their flocks during the night, guarding them
from robbers and marauding animals. They were surprised by the breaking through
the beaurtiful heavens of the even greater beauty of the angelic creation, who
announced to them personally and meaningfully the birth in Bethlehem, telling
them to go down to the little town and
to see and worship the World-Saviour who had been born there, and their
annoucement passed into a song of Angelic praise, making the scene in the
heavens more beautiful still. The Shepherds were well-chosen, coming from the
town of Jesse and the birthplace of his exuberant and powerful son, David., who
himself was shepherding his father's sheep, when Samuel the priest was looking
for the man who would take over the kingship of Israel from Saul, who had
revealed great flaws in his character. As he was summoned to be inspected by
Samuel, so these shepherds were summoned to see and worship Emmanuel, bedded in
a manger. At the sight of Emmanuel and
his Mother and Guardian they could not be restrained from passing on their
angelic revelation, until the moment came when they must return to the
hilltops, totally consoled and glad. They were singing and their voices
were still heard from the increasing
distance as they returned with a spring in their steps and peace and joy in
their hearts, as the first visitors to the divine Child – humanly he may have
been asleep, but in his divinity he heard
and understood and accepted the praise of their hearts. Amen.
Christmas
Mass of the Day 2012
The beginning of the Gospel of Saint
John. It passes from the ultimate beginning to the appearance of John the Baptist, the prophet now emerging from a long
hidden stay in the Judean desert, and motivated to announce the coming of the
Messianic Saviour
The evangelist, Saint John (the
disciple “whom Jesus loved”) reduced everything as comiing from a creative
will, a will which accompanied its creation.
To describe this he chose the
simplest words. He kept the whole structure and reality of creation in a
creative movement. But creative movements in the cosmos must have defined
spheres to which they are related: with features that are either in movement or
are at rest, They announce themselves to the eyes of observers by relative
movements. The observers could be either angelic spirits and have their own
characteristic categorisation arising from their spirits. Man and the animals
have eyes whose task is to recreate the cosmos within themselves. Man had his
own collection of models of groups of stars; he could name these groups, these
constellations according to the knowledge which he had. Naming them meant
possessing them through knowledge. This was clearly a task by which he bonded
himself to the cosmos. But this was not the primordial origination which must
have drawn on a creative moment which must have had a model.
The universe must have been created,
It had aspects of unity and aspects of
plurality in the perception in which God saw it with his totally
comprehensive and simple knowledge. It was a concession to the most primitive
forms of life that God could see backwards through the evolving Universe into
the distant past. Here the observers' vista saw the closest things as the most
recent and then marking a receding The
most recent were the least evolved.
At least we can attribute to John
the desire to see things in their most ultimate and intimate state. He would
have expected to deduce from the characteristics of the things which had
emerged, a conception of their source; there should be a likeness which was
derived from a source.
But the conception of “Beginning”:
was it to be identified with God or was it a reality found within God? For in
one sense, in which God was conceived as being absolutely without beginning,
there could be no divine totality distinguished from God, existing in God.
And in another sense in which God is
conceived as Creator that postulates a source of creation, derivable ultimately
from God, John writes “[The Word] was in the beginning with God.” And John adds, “without him was not made
anything that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men.”
“This Life and Light” were in God. Already the possibility of the light being
opposed to darkness, in which case even if the “light shines in the darkness
the darkness does not comprehend the light”.
God sent into this world a man –
John the Baptist – who “came as a witness to the light”, without being that
light. From his presence among men they could be helped to be aware of this
light, shining in the world: a copresence of the light with John as its interpreter and as a communicator
of faith. The World was already homely by the spiritual presence of the Word,
fillimg it with beauty and with blessing.
But more was now given to it when
the Word was made flesh – from the flesh of the chosen Virgin Mary. That
arouses in all men a desire to be visited and enlightened by that Word. And in
that state the World remains, changed only by the advance of the Gospel message
over the centuries until the Word, now as the “Word made Flesh”, Emmanuel: God
with us, the Son of God and man's Redeemer, will return in all of his Glory at
the end of time, so that he like us and we like him will be taken into heaven
to dwell there for ever. Amen.
+ + + +
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