“Lord allow us today to celebrate Your true Nativity, of which
the present festival puts us in mind. This day is like Yourself: it is
the friend of man. Year by year it returns throughout the centuries,
growing old with the aged, renewing itself with the newborn child. Year by year
it comes to us, passes, then returns, full of the same grace. It knows that
human nature cannot do without it. Like You, it comes to the rescue of our
imperiled race. The whole round earth is thirsting for your Nativity, Lord. In
that one joyful day are contained the all the ages to come; it is one, yet it
multiplies itself to infinity. May it then resemble You again this year, and
make peace between heaven and earth.
All days bear the imprint of Your goodness, but today Your goodness
brims over. The other days of the year borrow their loveliness from
this one; the coming festivals owe to it all their dignity and luster. Your
Nativity, O Lord is a treasure great enough to pay the common debt. Blessed be
that day which gave back the light of the sun to us who were astray in the
dark, which brought us the sheaf of divine plenty and gave us that vine from
which the wine of salvation would be pressed...
"For a Child is born unto us, and a Son is given
unto us.” You Who are Your Father’s Son have become Your
mother’s child; in Heaven, infinite: here, tiny; abiding in Your Father’s
bosom, yet carried in Your mother’s womb. Changeless in
Godhead, peerless in Your humanity, because for ever One and the same in both;
in Your divine nature our Creator, and in Your humanity, our Redeemer.”
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