Come to the house of Christmas and God bless us everyone!
( with a reflection by Archbishop Fulton Sheen )
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Christ is born! Allelujah! May all of you be blessed this Christmas Day! The favorite of all days for Chesterton was Christmas. He loved Christmas because it “converted people“. He felt that even hidden in the outward celebrations performed apart from the worship of the birth of Christ there was something so incalculable that people would eventually come to realize why they were doing it.
“The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.“
G. K. Chesterton, On Christmas, All Things Considered, 1908
Each year the Chestertons celebrated Christmas with poems and plays. Frances herself, wrote a special poem each year. And there were always children at the Chesterton home even though they never had children themselves. Their home truly was a “house of Christmas“! May your home be the same!
THE HOUSE OF CHRISTMAS
by G.K. Chesterton
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.
This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
“Let earth receive her King! Joy to the earth her Savior reigns!
“The date is December twenty-fifth, but to the humble man, it is Christmas; the manger is a throne; the straw is royal plumage; the stable is a castle; and the Babe is God. He found Wisdom because he was foolish, Power because he was weakness, and the Infinite, Immense and Eternal God, because he was little – for it is only by being little that we ever discover anything big.
He needs milk to nourish Him, but it is by His hand that the birds of the heavens are fed; He lies upon straw on earth and yet sustains the universe and reigns in Heaven; He is born in time, and yet He existed before all time; Maker of the stars under the stars; Ruler of the earth an outcast of earth; filling the world, lying in a manger. And yet the proud man sees only a Babe. The humble, simple souls, who are little enough to see the bigness of God in the littleness of a Babe, are therefore the only ones who will ever understand the reason of His visitation. He came to the poor earth of ours to carry on an exchange; to say to us, as only the Good God could say: You give me your humanity, and I will give you my Divinity; you give me your time, and I will give you my eternity, you give me your weary body, and I will give you Redemptions; you give me your broken heart, and I will give you Love; you give me your nothingness, and I will give you My all.
The world misses the lesson because it confuses littleness with weakness, childlikeness with childishness, and humility with an inferiority complex. It forgets that great moral strength may be hidden in physical weakness, as Omnipotence was wrapped in swaddling bands; and that great Wisdom may be found in simple faith as the Eternal Mind was found in the form of a Babe. There is strength – strength before which the angels trembled, strength before which the stars prostrated, and strength before which the very throne of Herod shook in fear.
Thus the birthday of the God-Man is the children’s day, in which age, like a crab, turns backwards, in which the wrinkles are smoothed by the touch of a recreating hand, in which the proud become children, and the big become little, and all find God.” – Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Our Christmas Prayer
Let the just rejoice,
for their justifier is born.
Let the sick and infirm rejoice,
For their saviour is born.
Let the captives rejoice,
For their Redeemer is born.
Let slaves rejoice,
for their Master is born.
Let free men rejoice,
For their Liberator is born.
Let All Christians rejoice,
For Jesus Christ is born.– St. Augustine Ora Pro Nobis
Beloved, Joy to the world and all of you, my readers!
Reforming the Line 