Let us rejoice!

I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! I will pray for all of my subscribers at Mass tonight, for all of your intentions, and for peaceful and happy celebrations in the coming days. I am so very grateful for all of your support over the last year.

God bless you all.

The Nativity of Christ - Giotto

This is a sermon given by St. Leo the Great. I’ll be reading at church during the carol hour before Mass tonight and it is so beautiful I wanted to share it with you all.

Dearly beloved,

today our Saviour is born;

let us rejoice.

Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life.

The fear of death has been swallowed up;

life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.
No one is shut out from this joy;

all share the same reason for rejoicing.

Our Lord, victor over sin and death,

finding no one free from sin, came to free us all.

Let the saints rejoice as they see the palm of victory at hand.

Let the sinners be glad as they receive the offer of forgiveness.

Let the pagans take courage as they are summoned to life.
In the fullness of time,

chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom,

the Son of God took for himself our common humanity

in order to reconcile it with its creator.

He came to overthrow the devil,

the origin of death,

in that very nature by which he had overthrown humankind.

And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy:

Glory to God in the highest,

and they proclaim peace to people of good will

as they see the heavenly Jerusalem

being built from all the nations of the world.

When the angels on high are so exultant

at this marvelous work of God’s goodness,

what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of people?

Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father,

through his Son, in the Holy Spirit,

because in his great love for us he took pity on us,

and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ,

so that in him we might be a new creation.

Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and,

as we have come to birth in Christ,

let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, remember your dignity,

and now that you share in God’s own nature,

do not return by sin to your former base condition.

Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member.

Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness

and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.
Through the sacrament of baptism

you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct

and become again a slave to the devil,

for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.