The silence of Christmas

The silence of Christmas...

"The House of God will be a sanctity of silence and adoration. The House of God will be a place of honor among men. " - Our Lady of the Roses, August 5, 1973

LifeSiteNews.com reported on December 23, 2008:

One of the most astonishing things about the nativity is its silence.

In my freshman history class our professor one day read aloud two stories - one relating the birth of Siddhartha Gautama (later to be known as the Buddha) and another the birth of Jesus Christ. The contrast could not have been more profound.

The first child was born in the midst of an almost hyperbolic opulence - in an aromatic orchard of blossoming trees surrounded by a thousand attendants, with gods and elephants and jewels and showers of rose petals and fabrics woven of precious metals and celestial perfumes that filled the air. And when Gautama was born he is said to have taken seven steps and proclaimed, "I alone am the world-honored one!" His birth seems (especially in comparison with the birth of the Christ) a riotous affair.

There is no need to retell the story of the birth of Christ, for it is familiar - indeed, much too familiar. It is so familiar that frequently Christmas comes and goes and we have not spent five minutes imagining what it was really like. But if we did we would surely be bowled over by the huge absurdity of the thing.

That, I suspect, is what our professor hoped to accomplish by his juxtaposition: to engender in us that awareness of the absurdity of the nativity. For the wise man knows that the surest way to reignite a flagging appreciation of the uniqueness of some one thing is to put it into contrast with some other, very different thing. And indeed, this sort of revelation through comparison works best when the two things being compared share some similarity, but then differ on the very thing that we wish to reveal, which then shines forth like a single star in a black sky. And so while the Buddha and the Christ were both believed to be saviors of some kind, in their first moments on earth one drew all of the world's attention to himself and declared himself to be "world-honored", while the Other covered Himself in a nearly complete veil of silence.

Certainly, we are told that following the birth of the Christ there were appearances by angels and even a chorus of singing angels, and in this sense the nativity bears some remote resemblance to the Buddha's birth. But, curiously, the angels of Luke's account of the nativity did not appear in the cave in Bethlehem, did not regale the Christ child with song; instead they appeared, in an almost irrelevant fashion, in the hillside outside the town, to a group of shepherds. It is almost as if the angels were under strict orders to keep quiet about the whole affair, but could not keep their promise out of sheer, exuberant joy: and so they broke their silence for one glorious moment, behind God's back (for indeed, for the first time in history God could be said to have a back).

It is as if God were the generous and well-loved mother of many children who has reached a noteworthy milestone (say, her 60th birthday), but who, in keeping with her lifelong habit of private self-abnegation strictly orders her children to promise not "to make a big deal" of it, and, certainly, not to throw a big and embarrassing party. The children may keep the letter of their promise out of respect for their mother's wishes, but they will still probably call up her closet friends, and remind them of the birthday and possibly suggest that they drop by on her birthday for tea as if "by accident." And by so many sly and underhanded and roundabout gestures they will ensure that their mother is made to know that it is a day of especial importance, and that she is the center of it.

This seems to me to be the attitude of the Christmas day angels, who, like that mother's children, sought out the Christ child's closest friends - the humble and simple shepherds - and seemed to say, "Well, we aren't supposed to make a big deal of it, but if you could drop by and pay your respects it wouldn't be a bad idea. After all, it is His birthday." On Christmas day the cave with the God-man in it was left completely unmolested, without any "to-do," except for a brief visit by a few close friends.

This particular aspect of the Christmas story reveals an enormous truth that our civilization seems hell-bent on forgetting; strangely, we seem most bent on forgetting it during the very season that celebrates it. It is the same truth found throughout the scriptures, and the same truth that all of the saints throughout history have repeated. It is simply this: that God is encountered in silence.

Indeed, without silence one will never come to know God.

This particular truth, it seems to me, is one that is especially important for those who work for, and who read LifeSiteNews to meditate upon. And there is no better time to meditate upon it than now. For it seems to me that those of us who are so concerned about the state of the world that we have taken upon ourselves the daily reading and writing of the news about the most important issues in the world, are playing with fire. The news is a noisy, busy, hectic, distressing, insistent, distracting thing. It fills our head with facts and consumes our thoughts, and, particularly at this juncture in history, can disturb our souls with a sense of despair for our civilization and our race.

Of course, this is not how it should be. Indeed, it seems to me that rather than disturbing us, all this reading and writing of the news, which is so necessary to inform and to be informed, as we ought to be, should continually drive us back to silence, most especially the silence found in meditative prayer. This is not only true for those stories of hope that we daily report on, where we see the culture of life breaking upon us like the dawn, and which fill us with gratitude, but also for those distressing stories that lead us to wonder if it is not merely a false dawn, to wonder if we are not merely entering a new and darker night.

In both of these cases we should be driven towards the silence of Bethlehem; in the first, in a positive way, by having discovered a piece of Bethlehem in the world, and in the second, through the via negativa, by having discovered what the world is like without Bethlehem, which should then lead our souls to fly to Bethlehem for refuge.

If we find in the writing for, or the reading of LifeSiteNews, that we are excessively disturbed and have lost our peace, it is a sure bet that it is because we have forgotten Bethlehem and all those other moments of silence and obscurity in the life of Christ, which allowed him to meet with an unshaken peace and hope not only the noise and insistency of the multitudes that followed him wherever he went, but also a violent and disreputable death.

And so, during this Christmas season, let us renew our resolution not to be disturbed by anything: to cultivate within ourselves, through daily prayer, the silence of Bethlehem, which will allow us to meet with resoluteness all challenges to this supernatural peace, which is, in a very real sense, a foretaste of heaven.

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Root cause of the war on Christmas...

"The children of God will face enslavement by the enemies of God, known as your world Christianity, unless you pray and carry the banner of Faithful and True to God the Father." - Our Lady of the Roses, September 7, 1974

LifeSiteNews.com reported on December 22, 2008:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why the war on Christmas exists:

“The root cause of the war on Christmas, which is conducted almost exclusively by well-educated white people in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia — the very same people who like gay marriage — has almost nothing to do with fidelity to law (the First Amendment in the U.S.): it has to do with ideology.

“The ideology is plainly an expression of left-wing secularism, and it is nothing if not anti-Western and anti-Christian. At its worst, it is driven by hatred; at its best, it is driven by a defensive posture, a deep sense of embarrassment over the legacy of Western civilization. There is no historical or moral justification for either. Moreover, those who are pushing this agenda generally lie about their work.

“When Patricia Short, the principal of Will Rogers Elementary in Ventura County, California, says of the school’s holiday choir that ‘We can’t have anything with a religious reference,’ she is flatly wrong: not only is there no law barring religious songs being sung in the public schools, the courts have affirmed just the opposite (see the 1980 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Florey v. Sioux Falls School District).

To show how duplicitous these cultural fascists are, consider that when a Jewish woman from North Carolina failed to get an elementary school to ban ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,’ she pushed to get a Hanukkah song sung. So it’s not religious songs that bother her, just Christian ones.

“Want proof that hate is driving this assault? The head of the ACLU in New Hampshire, Claire Ebel, advises that if crèches are allowed in parks, it is permissible ‘for a display of satanic ritual.’ And this hatred of Christmas is not exclusive to the U.S.

In England, Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary called Christmas ‘evil’ in a recent sermon. No wonder they are banning words like ‘bishop,’ ‘chapel,’ ‘monk’ and ‘nun’ from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. And all of this is being endorsed, if not promoted, by self-hating Christians, as well.”

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The war on Christmas, and Christ, is real...

The Roanoke Times reported on January 1, 2007:

It's amazing that the rantings of a lunatic can be passed off as good media. It's even more amazing that the lunatic making the rantings claims to be doing it for good or even noble causes. Such are the rantings of that well-known, or maybe not-so-well-known editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times, Dan Radmacher. Okay, so that was unfair, but your condemnation of Bill O'Reilly is of the same vein ("Christmas bullies manufactured this 'war on Christmas,'" Dec. 17).

No, I do not agree that O'Reilly manufactured the war on Christmas. There is ample evidence of its existence, and your diatribe is just a small scuff on the surface.

The war is plainly evident when stores block their employees from wishing Merry Christmas rather than allow the smallest possibility that shoppers be reminded the meaning of this season.

The American holiday is not St. Nicholas or Santa Claus day; it's not the Kwanzaa season; it's not the Official Celebration of Winterfest; it is not the End of Year Shopping Extravaganza Sale Season! It is in fact the celebration of the birth of the savior of the world, Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

We celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Emanuel, the promised one of God, the King of Kings! That is the meaning of the season. Only a bigot would decry the well-wishes of Christians who want to herald his coming and include all men and women in their joy at his birth and the fulfillment of the promise of God.

It is not insensitive to wish Merry Christmas any more than it is harmful and insensitive to wish someone a good day. It is wishing them happiness and a share in the joy of the season. Denying the right to say "Merry Christmas" is bigoted. I don't think it is harmful or insensitive if a Jewish person wishes me Happy Hanukkah, or a Muslim wishes happy Ramadan, or an atheist wishes me a good day. All are positive greetings and wishes.

The war on Christians has not ceased since the appearance of Christ at his birth, and so you should feel you are doing nothing worse than Herod or the Pharisees did in persecuting Christ and his church. But at the same time, that is not what humanity is called to, is it?

If you want to truly be progressive and open-minded, you should welcome the sharing of all cultures. In the great melting pot that America is supposed to be, it seems only radical liberals want to silence viewpoints. They claim openness, but their hypocrisy is astounding.

You may not feel called to visit a church this Christmastime, but you should feel welcome to do so if you like. Similarly, I would hope you would feel open to share your deeply held beliefs with anyone around you. Denying that to others is truly a shameful act, and I would hope you might change your tone regarding Christians who love their faith and want to share their joy.

Do not take it as an assault (though I know some zealous people do present it that way). Pope John Paul II used to say that "the Church proposes, it does not mandate." Faith to be true must be held in the heart. It is not something that can be forced upon someone the way communism is.

Love is a decision and a response to the love we received from God through creation and through human beings. It is not the irresponsible acceptance of perversions of the human condition. So your viewpoints should be open to be presented. However, in love it is not anyone's responsibility to accept your viewpoints as worthwhile or as good.

Discrimination is good, while prejudice is bad. It seems discriminating between good and bad is to liberals the gravest of sins. I guess for the godless it is the presentation and proof of truth and goodness which most infuriate them. I don't know their reasoning, but it seems the denial of all that is good and wholesome is the only road for those who deny God.

Anything else would point them inevitably toward God, who is the source of all goodness, and since they hate him because they can't be him, they can only choose to be his opposite.

Go figure.

"My children, I repeat, 666, known forever in the Book of life, the Bible, as the man of perdition, is not one man, but the forces of evil gathered like vultures to destroy the Christian and Christianity, to enslave the good and make powerful the bad, to make sin a way of life until each and every living creature of knowledgeable age must make the decision: Who is your master, man or God?" - Our Lady of the Roses, April 9, 1977

Directives from Heaven...http://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D87 - Divinity of Jesus Christ PDF
D266 - Persecution PDF

Articles…

Pope Benedict: "Birth of Jesus is not a fable, it is a story that really happened"
http://www.tldm.org/Christmas/PopeBirthOfJesusNotFable.htm

Pope Benedict: 'false prophets' are the ones fighting Christmas
http://www.tldm.org/Christmas/PopeFalseProphetsFightingChristmas.htm

Vatican newspaper cites "war on Christmas"; says people today want Christmas to be no more that "a simple festivity of easy pleasure"
http://www.tldm.org/Christmas/VaticanCitesWarOnChristmas.htm

Is there a war on Christmas? You betcha!, Jim Wildmon, December 19, 2006
http://www.tldm.org/Christmas/WarOnChristmasWildmon.htm

95% of shoppers happy with 'Merry Christmas'; 46% ticked by 'Happy Holidays'
http://www.tldm.org/News9/shoppersMerryChristmas.htm

The real meaning of the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas"
http://www.tldm.org/Christmas/12days.htm

The History of Christmas
http://www.tldm.org/Christmas/Christmas_history.htm

Meditations for the first Sunday of Advent
http://www.tldm.org/christmas/advent1.htm

Meditations for the second Sunday of Advent
http://www.tldm.org/christmas/advent2.htm

Meditations for the third Sunday of Advent
http://www.tldm.org/christmas/advent3.htm

Meditations for the fourth Sunday of Advent
http://www.tldm.org/christmas/advent4.htm

The Story of the Virgin Birth
http://www.tldm.org/christmas/virginbirth.htm

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