Are you willing…
to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that men and women are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to own up to the fact that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds happiness-- Then you can keep Christmas. -Henry Van Dyke
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"The Christmas story reminds us once again it was not man’s idea that the Son of God should be born in a stable. And so the first thing we learn from Jesus’ birth is that the Lord will not always be found where we expect to find Him. We tend to look for Him in the nice, the clean, the warm. We expect Him to be in churches and in the Bible and in hymns of praise and in Christmas cards which have Scripture verses on them…And if these are the only places we search for the Lord, then we’re not looking in the stable."
-James F. Colaianni "Humanity's dream which began in the Garden of Eden – we want to be like God – is realized in an unexpected way, not through the greatness of man, who cannot make himself God, but through the humility of God Who came down among us in His humility, raising us to the true greatness of His being."
-Pope Benedict XVI "A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season is here; Then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before, And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for. He is less a selfish creature than at any other time; When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime." -Edgar Guest "O Father may that Holy Star
Grow every year more bright, And send its glorious beams afar To fill the world with light." -William Cullen Bryant What good is it that Christ was born 2,000 years ago if he is not born now in your heart?'
-Meister Eckhart I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good will to men! -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present."
-Edward Hays "A novice master once responded when asked about a life lived in Christian authenticity, said that to be a Christian was not to know the answers but to begin to live in the part of the self where the question is born.…He was speaking of an attitude of listening, of awareness of presence, of an openness to mystery."
-Wendy M. Wright |
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