Quotes . Volume 07 | Issue 22

Christmas

“From the human perspective, when you compare [God] to the other gods of the other religions in the world, you have to say our God is really sort of odd. He uses the most common of people, people that aren’t any different from any of us here; he comes in the most commong of ways, when by his Spirit an anonymous young woman is found to be with child. And the strangest thing is that he comes at all–he’s not the Above-Us-God, too holy to come down. This God’s love is so immense that he wants to come down. And he has proven his love by the fact that he did come down and touch our ground.” – James R. Van Tholen, Where All Hope Lies

“Do you want to see the humility of God? Look in the manger and see him lying there. Surely this is our God. Seeing an infant, I wonder how this could be the wone who says, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” I see a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Is this the one who is clothed in the beautiful glory of unapproachable light?
     Listen! He is crying. Is this the one who thunders in the heaven making the angels lower their wings? Yes, but he has emptied himself in order to fill us.” – Guerric of Igny, Liturgical Sermons

“Now is the time to sing, envision, enact, and retell a story of God coming unexpectedly in the worst of times as a baby born poor, born homeless, born to die that all human life might be transformed and dreams made real. It’s God’s Good News–but only because we already know the story of Easter.” – John H. Westerhoff III, A Pilgrim People: Learning Through the Church Year

“Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked “No Entrance” and left through a door marked “No Exit.” – Peter Larson, Prism

“The heavens cannot contain him; a woman carried him in her bosom.” – Augustine, “On the Birthday of Our Lord Jesus Christ”