Today we will sing the hymns of Christmas and take the sacrament.

One of the several things a belief in and love of the supernatural does is increase one’s admiration for nature.

If nothing else, looking at the intricacy of nature as a divine handiwork makes one grateful for the gift the creator bestows by crafting the stars to look as they do; or planets and comets in their careers; or the rings of Saturn and his moons like Christmas tree ornaments; or snowy mountain crags; or thunderstorms at sea; stately oaks with crooked limbs;or hawks on the wing; or horses who race with manes like banners flying; or the look of a girl just turning her head to expose the line of her throat and the curve of her cheek; or the laughter of a child ringing; or the shapes of leaves of beech and ash and elm; the whisper of wind in wintery branches; the crash of the surf at the strand; the energetic dance of butterflies in a sunlit meadow; the ungainly speed of the ostrich; the whistle of birds at dawn; the twitch of a rabbit’s nose; the sweetness of honeycombs; the intricate mathematical beauty of crystals and chemicals; the abstract elegance of a noble helium atom.

If all this was merely the product of blind forces, it is certainly amazing, but the amazement is merely within our brains, and has no further meaning. If all of this is handiwork, it was made for you.

It is a gift, just as much as the child God sent to the Virgin on this day to redeem all these things from time and death.

And if it is a gift, then let us give thanks and rejoice, because gratitude is the only thing that makes life not just endurable, but joyful

-thus John C. Wright.

In hymns today we will rejoice with sound and lips and tongue and soul and feeling.  Spirit and flesh. 

On the sacrament table, symbol of all the material world–flesh, force, light, feat–and the material world–water, thought, vision, joy.  All creation is and will be his gift to us.  Family, titles, land, reign, laughter, happiness beyond worlds.

All these gifts are covered away from from our eager, expectant Christmas eyes.  But they are not beneath the tree–they are the tree, of life.

Uncover the gift, eat it, and see what thing, as frolicsome and pure as the sound of a trumpet, it unwraps inside your soul.

Old presents lose their thrill unless you remember the gift of them.  This Christmas gift is every week.  This is the morning of all the year.  It has no end.