out of pure love.

If you could somehow "jump into" any Christmas carol or song and actually experience what the lyrics say, which song would you choose?

There are a lot of good ones, but I think I would choose "Angels from the Realms of Glory."

I went to a lovely Christmas Handbell Concert last night. Accordingly, I had to have some handbells for my musical selection today.

Our incorporation into the mystery of Christ, the gift of divine life, is a pure demonstration of God’s love toward us. In this is love ‘that he hath first loved us….’ We were helpless, spiritually paralyzed, and he dwells infinitely far above us. We can never climb to him, he must descend to us. This is most important in the mystery of Advent – God’s descent to our lowliness out of pure love, not for any merit of our own. Divine mercy is most evident in tenderness with which the infinite God tempers the strength of his light to the weakness of our eyes and becomes a human being like the rest of us.

–Breakthrough to Joy by Thomas Merton

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.” When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Matthew 1:18-25

As I considered this section of the Christmas story in relation to the quotation from Thomas Merton, I was struck by how God tempered his light so that Joseph would no longer be spiritually paralyzed. Joseph was in the midst of the scandal of his fiancé’s pregnancy, but just one dim glimpse of the glory of God through the message of an angel gave him enough courage to brave the scandal and take Mary home as his wife. All that was needed to change a messy human situation was one faint reflection of God’s glorious light.