Merry Christmas!!! The Carol:
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six geese a laying,
five gold rings
Four calling birds,
three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
Today is the 6th celebratory day of the Octave* of Christmas and the only one of the eight days not to be shared with any other feast-day!
Since it is an otherwise 'unencumbered day' of Christmas, we are simply invited to use it to reflect more deeply on the profound mystery of God's incarnation and the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus.
The season of Christmastide as a whole - in most ecclesiastical traditions - lasts until Twelfth Night (5th January) on the feast of the Epiphany, when decorations and tree are traditionally taken down.
(*An Octave is a period of eight days wherein a feast of the Church is celebrated for that whole period as though it were all the same day. e.g. some of the prayers and antiphons this morning at Mass say, “Today is born our saviour, Christ the Lord.”
Jesus, like all Jewish boys, was circumcised by his parents eight days after his birth according to the Torah and he rose from the dead on the eighth day of the week, Sunday. Hence the 'Octave' of eight feasting days of Christmas and also the reason why baptismal fonts are octagonal!
The Octave Day of the Feast of Christmas is January 1st, New Years Day)
Jesus, like all Jewish boys, was circumcised by his parents eight days after his birth according to the Torah and he rose from the dead on the eighth day of the week, Sunday. Hence the 'Octave' of eight feasting days of Christmas and also the reason why baptismal fonts are octagonal!
The Octave Day of the Feast of Christmas is January 1st, New Years Day)
"God is your beatitude. The things of time are toys. You are eternity's child and your eternity has already begun! There is a compelling urgency to every day and every hour of the day. In it we are to witness to the truth — that God greeted and gifted us at Christmas.".
(— Love Does Such Things, by Rev. M. Raymond, O.C.S.O.)
"God became Man. Utterly incomprehensible is this truth to our puny human minds! That the eternal God whom heaven and earth cannot contain, who bears the world in His hand as a nutshell, before whom a thousand years are as one day — that this eternal, omnipotent God should become Man! Would it not have been a tremendous condescension if for the redemption of mankind He had simply sent an angel? Would it not have proven His loving mercy had He appeared for a mere moment in the splendor of His majesty, amid thunder and lightning, as once on Sinai? No, such would have shown far too little of His love and kindness. He wanted to be like us, to become a child of man, a poor child of poorest people; He wished to be born, in a cave, in a strange land, in hostile surroundings. Cold wind, hard straw, dumb animals — these were there to greet Him. The scene fills us with amazement; what other can we do than fall down in silence and adore!"
(— The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch)
(— Love Does Such Things, by Rev. M. Raymond, O.C.S.O.)
"God became Man. Utterly incomprehensible is this truth to our puny human minds! That the eternal God whom heaven and earth cannot contain, who bears the world in His hand as a nutshell, before whom a thousand years are as one day — that this eternal, omnipotent God should become Man! Would it not have been a tremendous condescension if for the redemption of mankind He had simply sent an angel? Would it not have proven His loving mercy had He appeared for a mere moment in the splendor of His majesty, amid thunder and lightning, as once on Sinai? No, such would have shown far too little of His love and kindness. He wanted to be like us, to become a child of man, a poor child of poorest people; He wished to be born, in a cave, in a strange land, in hostile surroundings. Cold wind, hard straw, dumb animals — these were there to greet Him. The scene fills us with amazement; what other can we do than fall down in silence and adore!"
(— The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch)