The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1923. CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 50, 20 December 1923, Page 29

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1923. CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS

fLADDEST season of the year, and also saddest, Christmas comes again to recall wayward men to the lesson of Bethlehem. Thousands of representations of the Crib will make vivid in the hearts of devout Catholics the story of the Nativity. More eloquent than the voices of preachers, old memories of days that are gone, subconscious callings from Christmas Days of youth or childhood, recollections that stir the heart like actual graces will arise in the Yuletide and compel even the hardest among us to think, be it ever so little, of the meaning with which the time is burdened. Ear away is the Eastern scene of the Birth, and far away in time the night on which the angels song announced His coming. But, as truly as then, the ‘‘world is His cradle and the stars His worshippers,” and the message of peace on earth is still for the men of good-will who bow down in heart and mind before the Child in the Manger. * Never more than now did the world need the lessons of Bethlehem. It is, for many, a lonely world to-day. The war has left us all poorer in every sense. Sordid things and ugly things have increased around us, and what was beautiful and ideal and lovable is rarer than a decade ago. It is nearly always so with wars. And this late war of lies and greed and lust has hung curtains of gloom across the horizons of most countries. Men are more heartless, women are less maidenly, children are no longer young in those qualities which made childhood delightful. Christ is farther than before from the souls of men, and His Mother’s image is harder to find in the hearts of their sisters. And home, and all that home stood for, means less than ever, so that we read in the papers from time to time a complaint too well founded that there is no longer any home life in the Dominion. You know' what lack of home-life means? What homes are left are Catholic homes, and thus, perhaps, we may not realise all the dreadful meaning contained in that sentence, “There is no home life.” No more good influence of father or mother; no more wise guidance for adolescent boys and girls; no sanctuary reflecting the virtues of the House of Nazareth; no place of comfort and refuge hither when lonely and bruised a son or daughter could always turn with certainty that

there at any rate would bo found a heart to rest upon; all that, and unspeakably more, loss of home-life means. Christ voluntarily suffered great humiliations at His birth. Notice that one of them was that of being homeless, as if lie v ished to teach us to value more and more our own homes, Iheie is another lesson in it, too : it is that even the homeless can find a home, if they be of good will, by turning to Him who was also homeless : •1 Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam; Only where lie was homeless Are you and I at home I * On a Christmas Day, many hundreds of years ago, pleaching in the Church of Our Lady, at Rome, St. Gregory reminded the Romans of the lessons of the Crib, oblivion of which has been the cause of the ruin of every Empire, and of every nation, and of every individual that was ever ruined. Unless ye become as little children ! Nay, unless we become as He was when a little child we shall not have that peace here and hereafter which He came to give the world. We must strive for the frankness we have lost, lor the beautiful candor of childhood, for the belief in the goodness of others begotten of goodness within ourselves, for the humility and subjection to authority which arc so hard to find to-day because old people are no longer young in heart, and even the young people have grown cunning and cold: Have a myriad children been quickened, Have a myriad children grown old, Grown gross and unloved and embittered, Grown cunning'and savage and cold? God abides in a terrible patience, Unangered, unworn. And again for the child that was squandered A child is born. ft * Why ought we desire to be as little children? Because for such is the Kingdom of Heaven hereafter, and the peace of Christ on earth. Wherefore let us hearken to the warning which St. Gregory gave the people of Rome, who knelt in the Church of Our Lady hundreds of years ago m sight of a Crib, exactly like the Crib we shall see in our own humble church this week: Let us. therefore, beloved brethren, beware of every sin, by which we might be mad© unworthy of that heavenly city, which God has prepared for us, as well as for the angels. Let us lead such good lives that they may correspond with our dignity. Avoid therefore, impurity and lust, and even every sinful thought. Let not wickedness soil the purity of your souls let not the poison of envy and hatred penetrate youi hearts. Keep jour souls free from covetousness and anger, and especially from the desire of tasting the sinful pleasures of this world. Remember that you have been called the sons of the Most High. Defend in selves the glory of God by avoiding sin, for God was made man in order to honor us and make us partakers of His eternal glory. Statesmen plan and scheme for the restoration of peace among the nations. Did they but take measures to make the peoples they represent understand the importance of these words of St. Gregory they would make real progressfor as the origin of the war, and of all wars, was in anger an l lust and greed, so there can be no real progress towards reconstruction until men realise that in the Divine Infant they are all brothers and sons of the Most High whose glory they will promote by avoiding sin.

Music is, in her health, the teacher of perfect order and is the voice of the obedience of angels, and the ♦companion of the course of the spheres of heaven.—Ruskin.