In my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word, we come to the last of the Seven Great O Antiphons, which was sung on either side of the Magnificat on Christmas Eve, O Emmanuel, O God with us. This is the antiphon from which our lovely Advent hymn takes its name. It was also this final [...]
The poem I have chosen for December 17th in my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word is my own sonnet “O Sapientia,” the first in a sequence of seven sonnets on the seven great ‘O’ antiphons which I shall be reading to you each day between now and the 23rd of December. You [...]
In these uncertain times, we are constantly being urged to historicize Christ, as though He were merely a symbolic figure in a moribund and culturally discredited system of thought. But Advent reminds us of the deep promise of the Nicene Creed. He was, He is, and He is to come. In this Advent, we await [...]
Winter may only be a symbol to some, but it is a symbol that has been universal in its influence on the Christmastime imagination to this day. Winter, for many of us, signals the end of the year. It is a time when we reflect on our labor, what we’ve achieved, what we haven’t achieved, [...]
In this Advent season, we wait in expectation, we hope for the coming of the Lord Who has come and Who is coming and Who will come again. We remind ourselves of His absence from the lives of so many in the world today, and we pray that graces may come to cure us of [...]
T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi” is as sincere a conversion poem as one can have it: No fancy light shining down from the heavens or a thunderous call to holiness; just one small event that left a Magus perplexed by a new worldview that was unsettling and strange, for it put into question [...]
There is something essentially comic about vanity. I ran into the phenomenon recently at the local fitness center where I have a membership. Everyone, I suspect, has seen the type: he lifts weights, often with a lot of noise, and he scorns machines like the treadmill or the elliptical trainer, much less — are you [...]
Even the secular symbols of Christmas—the evergreen tree, holly and mistletoe, Santa Claus the great Gift Giver—all point to the divine presence. Which I suppose is one of the main lessons of this season: If you want to find the Everlasting Man, look where he is hidden. Of late I’ve grown rather cool toward Christmas. [...]
Advent has only just begun but many of us are already thinking of Christmas. In one sense, this is fair enough. Advent is a time of preparation for our celebration of the birth of Christ and it is appropriate that we should be looking forward expectantly to the coming of Our Lord. In another sense, [...]
In the 1820s, Washington Irving was credited with inspiring the romantic revival of Christmas in America. His Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman relayed sentimental tales of the British holiday with all its romance and traditions. The five Christmas tales were later published in 1875 as a separate collection titled Old Christmas.* Having lived in London and its surroundings [...]
Nothing breaks through melancholy like a baby. During Advent, we wait for that moment of absolute newness that we need within but cannot muster, that moment when the whole of the divine nature, the whole meaning of universes beyond number, lies helpless before us. On Monday of this week, students met with me in the new [...]
The challenge for the soldier at Christmas is to question his agency, and to reflect upon the birth of the Christ child as both the pronouncement of demise for those who intend to make war, and of salvation for those who suffer its symptoms. In the beginning, God. In the beginning, God created. In the [...]
"King Lear" reminds us that only a love that cracks our hearts through loss can truly reveal the gift of the Incarnation. When John Henry Cardinal Newman writes about Advent in one of his sermons, he meditates on how this season of expectation falls at the end of the year. “All is past and gone, [...]
The best way of seeing the joy of Advent and Christmas is through the eyes of a child, which ideally should be our own. We should see the time of expectation, which is Advent, through eyes which are pregnant with wonder. We should see the Babe who is born again on Christmas morn with eyes [...]