The Incarnation of Christ, celebrated in the liturgical season of Christmastide, takes on a richer significance for me with each passing year. The story of the Nativity is fuller, but undeniably more strange. It loses the saccharine quality of greeting cards and becomes complicated. Christmas becomes more intricately connected to Holy Week and I’m reminded that the miracle of the Incarnation … [Read more...]
Holy Time: Observing Advent Instead of Fighting Santa
Every year I hear folks bemoaning the secularization of Christmas and how commercialism has overtaken what used to be a Christian holiday. I read news stories about which retail stores are promoting “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and which groups and organizations are boycotting those stores for choosing to greet their customers in one way or another. People label it the “war on … [Read more...]
Holy Time: The Gift of the Liturgical Year
“The liturgical year is not an idle discipline, not a sentimentalist definition of piety, not an historical anachronism. It is Jesus with us, for us, and in us as we strive to make His life our own. It is goad and guide to the kind of personal spirituality that is worthy of the Jesus whose commitment to the Word of God led Him all the way to the cross and beyond it—to Resurrection.” (Joan … [Read more...]
