From the Rector:  For many of us, our associations with Christmas are shaped by our childhood experiences.  I have memories of singing “Silent Night” in a way that was anything but silent.  Perhaps this is why I have come in the past few years to really treasure the Christmas Midnight Mass.  Here at low Mass in our little chapel in the darkness and candlelight, it really does seem possible that Christ is able to come down into our hearts this Christmas.  The stillness of the nativity scene is not simply the absence of sound; something far more profound is occuring.  “For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, Thy all-powerful Word leaped down from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of a lad that was doomed” (Wisdom 18: 14-15a).

This is the silence at the heart of the Christmas story; a silence that communicates.  This is the great Christmas paradox. “In the beginning was the Word” — Silence is in fact, God’s speech.  The miracle of Christmas is that God expresses Himself in a single Word: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (St John 1:14) Perhaps the silence of the first Christmas explains the curious quality of the silence that still attends Christmas, even in the midst of our noisy world.  It is as though the whole world were listening, waiting and straining like a new mother to hear the cry of child.

May this Child, come to bless you and your loved ones this Christmas and throughout the new year!