Sunday is still in my head. Winter Sundays, especially those around Yuletide are really a gospel of smells and senses. That makes enough sense, doesn’t it? This is the day of the week when more than anywhere else God is in the grape, in the bread and in the wine.
The smells of Sunday: sappy evergreen from the branches broken for wreaths, cocoa with the buttered rum, the scent of the lilac and the peppermint and the cinnamon candles burning at the altar and then the smell of Sunday dinner. The senses of Sunday: letting go, doing little, above all, the comfort of warm beds surpasses even the sound of the choir at High Mass. Another smell of Sunday: the incense during the procession up to the altar at the opening hymn.
Last night I hear a program and think I’ve heard it before. It comes on NPR and I once had that episode on tape. I had it for years. It contained two of my favorite musical pieces. But then the tape was destroyed by accident and I lost that music and for a long time I was very sad about that. I know I can get up and scavenge for a tape to capture what I’ve lost, but something speaks to me and says, “Just listen.” So I climb into bed and do just that, letting the music roll over me and go inside of me, note by note, not being able to capture, not knowing when I will hear again the notes that shock my heart and sting my tear ducts.
So what is the purpose of this catalogue of beauty? Just that. It was beautiful, wasn’t it? Hearing this? Our lives are filled with so much beauty, aren’t they? When our hearts have taken a beating, so does hope. This is largely what Christmas is about. A holy Child is being born in a cave, in a forgotten place. A child of wonder is about to start his journey in innocence and power. The miracle of incarnation is that the child about to be born to Mary… is you.
Do not let small mindedness, lack of hope, weariness and dullness of vision intrude on the holy gift of innocence, of birth that the Spirit would give….





Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man
be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
Kingdom of God…. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it wishes,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh, and whiter it goeth; so is everyone
that is born of the spirit...