The Christmas Message

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 51, 23 December 1925, Page 57

The Christmas Message

, x Easter Day is the dogmatic festival of •J all Christianityy as it is of historic Chrisv tianity, that is Catholicism. On that day the truth shines out that the Catholic Church is divine, for Jesus is God. This appeals to the mind, hence we may call Easter the intellectual or spiritual feast day of the Church. The foundation of the Christian religion is love. Even when the absurdities which Christian Science, Theosophy, Buddhism, and Spiritualism have wrapped around phases of Christianity are torn aside, we can see passing glimpses of the universal love, even in them. Love df God, love of God's image that shines in the veriest tramp or .scoundrel or blackguard, is not that the religion of the Master, while the whole Church's ministrations are but the golden means to this golden end? Like other Marthas, we forget in the unceasing turmoil of worldly care and changing thought that one thing is as necessary to-day as it was in the days when Magdala was consecrated by the footsteps of the Master. Love! Without this, Faith and hope are as nothing. Did not the great preacher of dogmatic Faith himself say, though inspired by the spirit of love, that " there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three, but of these the greatest is charity"? On this are built the Law aid Prophets of the Sion of old, and in this is built, too, the new Jerusalem, which is the Church of the Saints. *X Love in all its great and comprehensive plenitude is the sermon that is preached to us by the Infant Babe of Bethlehem. To love the little children, the poor, maimed and disfigured atoms of humanity that throng the streets and slums of the city for His sake— not this the first echo of Bethlehem's canticle God rest ye, little children; let nothing you affright, For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night. Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay, "When Christ, the Child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas Day! The Basic Creed. . The Divine Child has indeed given us ■the ample of love, a grander, a more beautiful, than which has never appeared in