Dear One and All,
“Love came down at Christmas; love all lovely, love divine; love was born at Christmas, star and angels gave the sign.”
– Christina Rossetti.
Dear One and All,
As I write this letter to you the season of Advent is almost upon us. Advent marks what is traditionally thought of as the Church’s new year and as a time of preparation and anticipation for the coming of Christ at Christmas.
Perhaps I am more an Advent person than a Christmas person, which doesn’t mean I am the Christmas Grinch either! I suppose I like the anticipation of Christmas as things are made ready. I remember my children and my grand-children’s excitement as Christmas loomed on the horizon. Wonderful whiffs coming from the kitchen, oh and mince pies and wondering what the Christmas cake would be like. Yes anticipation is great, sometimes the reality is not so fine.
Rossetti, to my mind, gets it right. In Advent we anticipate the gift of love. Love, a quality the poets have waxed lyrical about for generation. Love, the subject matter of musicals and plays, ballets and ballads, pop songs and operas. But this is love as the gift of God ‘love all lovely, love divine’. Mary, the mother of Christ, knows what love is and will know that love has a terrible cost. The preparation for the arrival of the Christ child is bitter sweet. A stable and a stall as a place for birthing, a refugee in a hostile world. Anticipation and reality, two sides of the same coin. Advent serves to remind us all that in Christ love is born afresh in all of us. Love which is resilient, love that is profound, love which dares to believe, love which transforms lives and transcends the world in which we live; love that is everlasting to everlasting.
Advent is also the time when most of my family will groan ‘oh no not again!’ My grand-daughter and I will watch ‘Love Actually’. The secular world speaks to the Church and Christians – love, actually, is what it’s all about. My prayer for you and for everyone is that the power of love finds a place in your lives and does what love can do. The angels bring the message of love given and shared, we become signs that love is given and shared still further. Every blessing this Advent and Christmastide.
Simon