Family in Feast and Feria

I mentioned before that I'm reading Love Does Such Things for Advent. I have had this book on my bookshelf for years. I bought my mother a copy, and she just loves it -- she's actually reading it again for Advent. But I haven't read it until now. And I can't believe I waited so long!

I'll give you a taste from the Foreword and I know you'll be hooked just like me:

"Joy," said Chesterton, "is the secret of the Christian." But not enough Christians know their own secret; and those of us who do know it, have kept it too long and too well. That is why our world is so sad. It does not know -- for we have not told it -- that all joy lies in the one word "Christmas." But that word must be heard from the lips of God, and understood in the language of God when He says to each human being: "A Merry Christmas to you!"

Oh yes, God says that. And He says it to you. What is more, He means it! If you have not heard Him you cannot possibly know what "merry" means, nor what "Christmas" is. For it is utterly impossible for anyone to have a truly merry Christmas until he has heard God greeting him -- and has returned His greeting....

Of course God has a language all of His own, but there is no one who cannot understand it. You must not strain to catch some sound: God speaks by silences. "While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy Omnipotent Word, O Lord, came down from Thy royal throne." Humans greet you with words; but God, with His Only Word, and while humans may favor you with gifts that are personal, God gives you a Gift who is a Person! Humans, at times, speak to you with animation and sincere affection, but God, at all times, speaks to you with a Love that became Incarnate, and in a Passion that was all incarnadined. When God greets you at Christmas, he is not speaking of a day, but of a deed. Any human being can wish you -- and even aid you to enjoy -- a merry Christmas day. But it is God alone who can will it for you, and through a divine Person obtain what He wills: A Christmas that is truly merry because it is recognized to be not a day, not a season, but Salvation!

There is the secret of Christian joy. And it is told completely in the word "Christmas."

At Christmas God gives more than a greeting: He gives you a Gift, a Gospel, and a Goal. When an angel spoke to shepherds and gave them the good tidings that "There is born to you a Saviour," he was but interpreting the language of God for human beings and telling those watchers of the flocks that God was greeting them. But what those men who "went over to Bethlehem and saw those things which had come to pass" could not understand then, you and I can realize fully now; namely, that on the lips of God and in the language of God "Christmas" is a compound word that tells of the Person and a Passion, that speaks of His eternal Word and that Word's ineffable work: that human-divine tragedy which was His and our triumph -- the Mass! You and I are in a position to know how true those lines are with which Saul of Tarsus opened his Epistle to the Hebrews: "God spoke of old to our ancestors through the prophets; at the present time,...he has spoken to us through his Son..." (Hebr. 1:1)....