9:30 P.M. on Christmas Eve, and all is quiet in the house as the children are getting ready for bed. It’s the best part of Christmas for me, the quiet part of the Eve. Time to sit, and pray, and meditate.

No room at the inn.

That’s been gnawing at me for months. A young girl in labor, and a distraught husband desperate to find a place for his young bride to give birth. A little privacy and perhaps the assistance of an older woman from the community for the young couple far from home and reporting in for the Imperial Census. But there was no room at the inn, any inn.

Let that sink in.

In all of Bethlehem there was no room at the inn.

Of course there were rooms. Plenty of rooms. They were all filled, but there was nobody willing to give up their room for a young girl in labor. Not one.

Not one.

That was the darkness into which the Light of the World came that night over 2,000 years ago. It wasn’t that there was no room at the inn. There was no room in people’s hearts. How cold and hard those hearts must have been, every one of them, that they would consign a young girl in labor to the stable with all of its foul odor and indignity. Jesus had His work cut out for Him.

They had forgotten the core of the Mosaic Law, which was Charity and Mercy. They had forgotten Isaiah 58:

1 “Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
2 For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
3 ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.

4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

The Messiah, whose own mother was made to endure childbirth amidst the filth of livestock, would later return to Isaiah when He taught us the criteria by which He would judge us when He returns in glory. In Matthew 25 He tells us:

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

The boy born amidst filth and indignity that night so long ago would bring a light that burns so bright that it melts the hardest of hearts. That light is His word and the Church He founded to preach that word which lives in action. I’m so blessed and proud to have been born into that Church, and to have had a family that expected me to embrace that light.

They expected me to work with God’s plan for me to create an “inn” of my own, not just a room. Make your mark in service to the Church. Little did I know that my life’s work would begin, then come around again in middle age, with the latter day Madonnas of the Streets.

I began to see it when I started working with homeless teen mothers at Covenant House, Times Square, in 1983. It was there that I met Chris Bell, who would shortly leave and cofound with Father Benedict Groeschel his own group of maternity homes, Good Counsel Homes. Chris revolutionized the maternity home model by setting in place in-depth life skills training and education programs that enable women to be the providers for their families.

More than twenty-seven years later, Good Counsel is going strong and a new revolution in maternity homes is underway in Charlotte, North Carolina, at Room at the Inn.

It has been a blessing this year to become friends with RATI’s Director, Jeannie Wray. Catholic, and a cell biologist by training (what’s not to love?!), Jeannie has worked along with Abbot Placid Solari of Belmont Abbey and Dr. William Thierfelder, president of Belmont Abbey College, to begin a home on Belmont Abbey College’s grounds for college women who become pregnant.

This dynamic trio has taken the war on babies to the heart of academia with a fresh new concept. Contrary to radical feminism’s assertion that it’s a choice between a diploma or a baby, this team is showing girls that there is ample room in their lives, and in their hearts, for both.

Earlier this year I was so excited by this new development that I shared with Jeannie my belief the concept will spread like wildfire.

Room at the Inn, and in the hearts of countless thousands of benefactors.

Ground was broken in June of this year for the new house at Belmont Abbey College. The house should be ready in June of 2012 and already five colleges have asked Jeannie if they might come and learn from Room at the Inn.

This past October 27 it was my great honor to be the keynote speaker at Room at the Inn’s annual banquet in Charlotte. Whatever I said wasn’t all that important. What was inspiring was the gathering itself. Over 1,100 people turned out to revel in their fellowship, their faith, and to open wide their hearts and wallets for perfect strangers. Integral to this effort has been the unified efforts of my brother Knights of Columbus in North Carolina.

Because of this outpouring of love, young mothers will know the dignity of mentorship, of a clean and safe place to live before and after the births of their babies, a place to have their children and complete their educations.

A howling rebuke to the satanic consumption of the innocents by the radical feminists.

Ample Room at the Inn, flowing from hearts set afire by the boy born amidst icy indifference so very long ago.

To Jeannie Wray, Abbot Solari, President Thierfelder, Chris and Joan Bell, and the staff at their homes, you are all in my heart tonight as I contemplate nativities old and new. You have all brought so much light into the darkness, and are the unsung heroes of the pro-life cause. The blessings of the Christ Child upon you and your benefactors this Christmas Triduum.

Merry Christmas, all.

“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused–and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”

~Sigrid Undset

Merry Christmas to all here at Coming Home. May your lives be filled with Peace, and your homes with Love. Thank you all for dropping in, for reading, commenting, and for the care you show for one another. I hope Santa is good to all! For the past two years my stocking was filled with charcoal for committing repeated heresy by teasing the children with the claim that I am the one true Santa.

I’m on track for more of the same this year!

God Bless,

Gerry

A little explanation about the Hex Sign and its Christian symbolism:

Double Trinity Tulips

The stylized tulip with its three petals is a dominate feature in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art. It is referred to as the Trinity Tulip and it symbolizes the Trinity as well as faith, hope and charity. The heart in this sign (as well as other Pennsylvania German folk art) is not the heart of sentimental “Victorian” valentines. Rather, it is religious in its representation of the heart of God, the source of all love and hope for a future life. The colors in this heart are used to give them additional meaning. Red symbolizes strong emotion and blue is used to indicate strength, especially spiritual strength. The white background symbolizes purity and the solid black circle represents unity in Christ.

From his Christmas Address Urbi et Orbi (To the City and the World), Pope Benedict XVI:

“The Incarnation is the culmination of creation. When Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, was formed in the womb of Mary by the will of the Father and the working of the Holy Spirit, creation reached its high point. The ordering principle of the universe, the Logos, began to exist in the world, in a certain time and space.”

What beauty. Creation reaches its culmination when Jesus was formed in the womb, not at birth. Pope Benedict understands that creation of the human person is complete at fertilization, when in the zygotic stage a whole and complete human, in form and function, exists at the single-celled stage.

Creation is complete.

From that point on, the human person is engaged in its development, a process that exists on a continuum until death, and beyond.

Midnight. Burning the advent wreath down with the Christ Candle lit in the center. Listening to boys air choirs sing the psalms as we wrap presents and get the children ready for bed. They’re too excited to sleep, though that’s coming fast.

It’s the best part of Christmas for me. Looking at the Nativity set, and contemplating the Holy Family. How did sleep come to them that night? What did they make of the great Theophany, when Heaven opened onto earth and the angels sang? The great comfort, the fulfillment of the promise, but how? The Messiah born in a barn?

As I contemplate the Nativity, I contemplate the figures not there; those who refused a very pregnant Mary about to give birth. Why? What hardness of heart existed in that time, in that place, that a woman about to deliver was not welcomed in from the cold to a safe place, if only for the night? Where was compassion, empathy?

It wasn’t that there was no room in the inn. There was no room in people’s hearts. So the couple were shown the barn, and amidst the filth and odor, the indignity of all indignities, God came into the world as an untouchable. And as I contemplate the hardness of hearts then and now, I also see how far we have come.

I think of my son, and how in my own childhood, autistic children like him were sent away to institutions. Untouchables.

I think of the boys in his Boy Scout Troop who embrace him as is, and others like him. They’re growing up with special needs children in their classes, on their sports teams, in their neighborhoods, in their families. This has been made possible because the community of parents with autistic children have been militant. Because those who came before Joseph have demanded innovations in therapies, and plenty of services, the fields of speech therapy, occupational therapy, and special education have grown by leaps and bounds.

So has Joseph.

It’s not a miracle. We as a society just decided to do it.

We say “yes”, and God provides.

Just like a young couple so very long ago. They said “yes”, and were gifted with gold, frankincense, and myrrh for their long journey to Egypt.

My son has taught me more than I ever imagined about Divine Providence. All that God requires is a “yes.”

He makes the rest happen.

From today’s Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings

Reading

A Sermon of Pope Saint Leo the Great

Christian, remember your dignity

Dearly beloved, today our Saviour is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.

No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.

In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown mankind.

And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to men of good will as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvellous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?

Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.

“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused–and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”

~Sigrid Undset

Merry Christmas to all here at Coming Home. May your lives be filled with Peace, and your homes with Love. Thank you all for dropping in, for reading, commenting, and for the care you show for one another. I hope Santa is good to all! Last year my stocking was filled with charcoal for committing repeated heresy by teasing the children with the claim that I am the one true Santa.

I’m on track for more of the same this year!

God Bless,

Gerry

The Hex Sign

Double Trinity Tulips

The stylized tulip with its three petals is a dominate feature in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art. It is referred to as the Trinity Tulip and it symbolizes the Trinity as well as faith, hope and charity. The heart in this sign (as well as other Pennsylvania German folk art) is not the heart of sentimental “Victorian” valentines. Rather, it is religious in its representation of the heart of God, the source of all love and hope for a future life. The colors in this heart are used to give them additional meaning. Red symbolizes strong emotion and blue is used to indicate strength, especially spiritual strength. The white background symbolizes purity and the solid black circle represents unity in Christ.

Merry Christmas!

Bouguereau, Song of the Angels

Mary was put through quite a bit. The apparition of an angel who tells her that she is to be mother of the Messiah.

Her elderly cousin Elizabeth becomes pregnant, and her declaration that the babe of Mary’s womb is the Messiah.

Elizabeth’s husband, a priest, struck mute by an angel in the Temple.

The virgin birth, and Joseph wanting to divorce her quietly, until he had his apparition.

The great Theophany when Heaven opened and the angels sang.

The visits from the shepherds, sent by angels.

The visit from the Magi.

The declaration by Simeon in the Temple.

The murderous rage of Herod.

The flight into Egypt.

The Gospels tell us that Mary pondered all of these things in her heart…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFPHIK9ann8&playnext=1&list=PLE857E6241F18BC2A&index=8

“Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence is an ancient chant of Eucharistic devotion based on the verses taken from Habakkuk 2:20

taken from one of the books of the 12 minor prophets of Bible. The original was composed in Greek as a Cherubic Hymn for the Offertory of the Divine Liturgy of St James in the fourth Century AD, with local Churches adopting arrangements in Syriac. In modern times, the Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of a translation from the Greek by Gerard Moultrie to the tune of Picardy, a French medieval folk melody, popularized the hymn among Christian congregations that worship liturgically.”

Enjoy, and God’s Blessings this last week of Advent.

Carl Heinrich Bloch, "The Slaughter of the Innocents", Oil On Canvas

What would I have done? Would I have had the courage to stand against the tyrannical King who ordered the slaughter of innocents? Would I have helped Mary and Joseph, or any other mother and child escape the murderous wrath of a jealous King? I’d like to think that the answer is yes.

While there are far less severe dangers today, Herod has been eclipsed by an army of bloody tyrants who walk the corridors of power today. The Democrat party gives hundreds of millions of dollars annually to groups such as Planned Parenthood, who in turn lavish millions of dollars on… Democrats running for office. Of course, the agreement is that the price of power is babies must die.

Yes, I used the imperative.

No, it’s not melodramatic.

We have long since passed some academic right to choose abortion. The field of Obstetrics brings unrelenting pressure to bear on women who might be carrying a less than perfect child. Trisomic conditions are cause for summary execution. Women and men are brow-beaten, called selfish (and worse) for wanting to bring their special needs children into the world. If the baby is anencephalic, parents are called monsters for bringing the child to term.

No, it seems that there is a mandate now for abortion. And the list of those marked as unworthy of life continues to grow. Still, for some that’s not good enough.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Pregnancy Resource Centers are under assault in several states, with New York City being the most recent target. Chris Slattery started EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers 25 years ago and has over 38,000 confirmed saves between our 12 centers.

That will not be allowed to stand if NARAL, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and former PP deathscort and bill sponsor Jessica Lappin have their way. Their legislation is aimed at driving women away from our doors. Where to?

Right into the arms of our modern day Herods.

Choice? There can be no choice if abortion is the only option. By their own admission, Planned Parenthood only concerns themselves with contraception and abortion. They refer out for prenatal care (if the baby is lucky enough to make it out of PP alive). Choice died about 20 years ago. There is an imperative now, the growing movement to silence those of us who guarantee choice by providing viable alternatives.

Chris and I will be starting a petition drive this week that I hope all will take a moment to participate in. That’s the very least that each of us can do. It is how we can stand up to the Herods of our day and make our voices known. Like the One sought for death 2,000 years ago, these children are our salvation in so very many ways.

They ground us, make us face maturity by calling us to focus on their utter helplessness. They teach us the meaning of love. They teach us redemptive suffering. They save us from eternal adolescent narcissism, and draw us closer to God.

There is so much that we can do, and some of us are fighting this particular battle full time. But we need everyone’s help with the petition. In facing down Herod, the pen does quite nicely.

So as we begin to move closer to Christmas, to the timeless narrative of the Nativity, and the story of Herod’s evil, we should bear in mind that we are all called to do something about the slaughter of innocents in our day. The thousands who staff the more than 2,300 CPC’s and PRC’s save babies daily from the senseless slaughter unleashed on us by seven twisted men in 1973. They are the frontline shields between these babies and certain death.

I don’t know what I would have done then.

I do know what we are called to do now.

The petition is on its way.

This Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, and time for me to get going on printing my Christmas cards and start sending them out early for a change. So here is this year’s card, complete with cover graphic and message inside. The graphic is a Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Sign, with the description and explanation below.

I’m sending this early to all here at Coming Home to help keep this blessed and holy season in perspective. Here’s to an Advent of fruitful spiritual introspection followed by a Christmas filled with the love of those most dear to us.

“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused–and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”

~Sigrid Undset

The Hex Sign

Double Trinity Tulips

The stylized tulip with its three petals is a dominate feature in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art. It is referred to as the Trinity Tulip and it symbolizes the Trinity as well as faith, hope and charity. The heart in this sign (as well as other Pennsylvania German folk art) is not the heart of sentimental “Victorian” valentines. Rather, it is religious in its representation of the heart of God, the source of all love and hope for a future life. The colors in this heart are used to give them additional meaning. Red symbolizes strong emotion and blue is used to indicate strength, especially spiritual strength. The white background symbolizes purity and the solid black circle represents unity in Christ.

I only started reading blogs last January when I stumbled out of my cave and discovered the twenty-first century. I happened on Beliefnet.com, which led me to Jill Stanek, who along with Bethany and Carla are responsible for this blog coming to life. On Beliefnet, I became a fan of Rod Dreher who writes “Crunchy Con”, which is actually shutting down this weekend and reopening as “Rod Dreher” on Beliefnet.

On Rod’s site a commenter by the name of Erin Manning has also guest posted for Rod. Erin is as unapologetically Catholic as I am (refreshing), and ardently pro-life. I’ve linked her blog And Sometimes Tea in the blogroll. She, along with the others there, whom I’ll be referencing as well in the coming days, is a must read.

In the process of getting my blog up and running, I missed this gem that Erin guest-posted on Rod’s site on December 27. It’s extremely sobering food for thought when we get caught up in the War on Christmas vitriol later this year. I plan to forward this to all of my friends.

Here’s Erin:

Merry Christmas! Rod is graciously allowing me to join him and co-blog this week. This will be my last chance to put my opinions on this side of the comment boxes, so I’m grateful for the opportunity–as I have been for every time that Rod has let me participate here.

I don’t know how many of you had a chance to see this piece by Terry Mattingly of the Get Religion blog on Hank Stuever’s book, Tinsel, which Rod reviewed a while ago here. When I read Rod’s review, I wanted to read the book, and Terry’s piece on it has increased that desire–it sounds like a fascinating look at the paradox that is the modern American Christmas as experienced by the three Frisco, Texas families whom Steuver followed closely.

The Get Religion blog post highlights something I’ve been thinking about, not only about Christmas, but about the struggle to live as a serious Christian in modern America. Terry Mattingly writes:

“Stuever and I talked for more than two hours and it seemed like 20 minutes. I am, of course, a prodigal Texan who gets sweaty palms in shopping malls and, frankly, Stuever was much more patient and kind than I would have been trying to write about the material that he covered. He takes the people totally serious, even while lacing his work with large does of sarcasm and even cynicism when he deals with the culture in which they live.

“I would have jumped straight to anger, which would have sent me to my priest for confession over and over and over.”

We Christians are often–and I include myself in this, most definitely–suckers for the “us against them” narratives that are told in our culture. From our focus on stories of atheist Christmas displays to others featuring artful outrage over some (admittedly tasteless) ornaments on a tree at the White House to still other War on Christmas themes that crop up in the news at this time of year, we tend to fall for the idea that the greatest threat to Christian life is something outside of us, some threat that will make it much, much harder than it is now for us to live openly as Christians in America.

To be fair, there are aspects of modern American life that conflict with a serious pursuit of Christianity. Not all perceived threats to religious liberty are the products of fevered imaginations and conspiracy theories; it’s important to pay attention to the prevailing cultural winds. Large, heavily centralized governments are often not friends of Christianity, or of any other serious faith which sometimes puts citizens at odds with the values and principles of the State.

But as a book like Tinsel, or even our own experiences of Christmas in America, can remind us, the strongest enemies to a serious attempt to live as a follower of Christ are not the ones on the outside. They are the enemies within–they are the faces that look back at us from the mirror, as we put on our Christmas finery with little thought to the lives of the wretchedly poor people who probably made our festive clothing for pennies an hour half a world away. They are the weary sins that plague us, the hardness of our hearts, our ability to sing words of joyful good news while focusing all our mental energies on criticism of the decor chosen to adorn the sanctuary; they are the paradox of Christmas that has nothing to do with what other people are doing, and everything to do with our own thoughts and deeds.

What kind of War on Christmas is being fought, when within a family a pitched battle may rage over the burning question: white lights on the tree, or colored ones? What kind of War on Christmas is being fought when we find ourselves in debt, yet again, because we succumbed to the siren-song of materialism, and bought and paid for a false vision of piles of gifts under the Christmas tree? What kind of War on Christmas is being fought when people gather with relatives to coo and simper at each other, all the while looking forward to the delicious pleasure of rhetorically shredding each other on the way home? What kind of War on Christmas is being fought, whose generals are pride, envy, avarice, anger, lust, gluttony, and sloth?

That War on Christmas has been fought since the first Christmas, since the Light shone into the uncomprehending darkness, since Herod commanded the Magi to return to him with news of the Child, all the while plotting to kill Him. The darkness that lies buried in the hearts of men rises up each time our fallen natures get the better of us–which they do, when we are more furious over some perceived slight to Christianity miles away from us than over the injustice of hopeless poverty in our own town; which they do, each time we become so buried in the bustle and glitter each December that we forget to lay it all aside and ponder, for a handful of moments, the gift of the Incarnation, the astounding and astonishing reality that to save us from our sorry selves God Himself became Man, and dwelt among us.

And that, alas, is a War on Christmas that cannot be brushed aside as “us against them,” as something some wicked someone out there is doing to the shiningly innocent group of faithful Christians among whom we, perhaps presumptuously, count ourselves. That shining innocence is like the glitter of artificial lights on intrinsically dull tinsel, and we are too often the authors of our own wickedness to spend such an inordinate amount of time zeroing in with a microscope on the specks in the eyes of those who have not yet been granted a gift of faith.

LifeNews reports, Obama Admin Forces Americans to Pay for More Embryonic Stem Cell Research: “National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins approved taxpayer funding of 27 more lines of embryonic stem cells.”

Having overturned the Bush administration’s restrictions, we are headed in the wrong direction morally, but also scientifically. Embryonic stem cell research has consistently yielded tumors in lab animals, whereas adult stem cell research has led to hundreds of therapeutic applications in humans.

To be certain, Collins has set limits by funding an additional 27 lines of cells. Prudent caution? Consider this quote from former Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass, M.D., in Human Cloning and Human Dignity, The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics:

“We should not be self-deceived about our ability to set limits on the exploitation of nascent life. What disturbs us today we quickly or eventually get used to; yesterday’s repugnance gives way to tomorrow’s endorsement. A society that already tolerates the destruction of fetuses in the second and third trimesters will hardly be horrified by embryo and fetus farming (including in animal wombs), if this should turn out to be helpful in the cure of dreaded diseases.

“We realize, of course, that many proponents of cloning-for-biomedical-research will recommend regulations designed to prevent just such abuses (that is, the expansion of research to later-stage cloned embryos and fetuses). Refusing to erect a red light to stop research cloning, they will propose various yellow lights intended to assure ourselves that we are proceeding with caution, limits, or tears. Paradoxically, however, the effect might actually be to encourage us to continue proceeding with new (or more hazardous) avenues of research; for, believing that we are being cautious, we have a good conscience about what we do, and we are unable to imagine ourselves as people who could take a morally disastrous next step. We are neither wise enough nor good enough to live without clear limits.”

“Today we can dispose of vast material resources. But the men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart. That is why it is so important for us to open our minds and hearts to the Birth of Christ, this event of salvation which can give new hope to the life of each human being…

“The modern age is often seen as an awakening of reason from its slumbers, humanity’s enlightenment after an age of darkness. Yet without the light of Christ, the light of reason is not sufficient to enlighten humanity and the world…

“At Christmas we contemplate God made man, divine glory hidden beneath the poverty of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; the Creator of the Universe reduced to the helplessness of an infant. Once we accept this paradox, we discover the Truth that sets us free and the Love that transforms our lives. On Bethlehem Night, the Redeemer becomes one of us, our companion along the precarious paths of history. Let us take the hand which he stretches out to us: it is a hand which seeks to take nothing from us, but only to give.
”

Pope Benedict XVI
Christmas 2005

My nine-year-old, Elizabeth has had an other-worldly devotion to the Nativity since age two. It’s grace. To see it in action is to leave no doubt. Beth also loves Santa and all of the magic associated with being the target of another’s coming with gifts. Gradually, we are folding the Santa narrative into an understanding of what that first coming was all about. Hopefully, one day, the excitement and expectation over Santa will translate into an understanding of the reading from Augustine below this post. For now, Santa’s on his way!

Merry Christmas!