Paul Bayes God With Us
The Anglican Communion News Service has compiled a list of Christmas messages from Anglican Primates.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Ecumenical Christmas Letter 2017
Jonathan Draper Afterthoughts Praise Be!
Giles Goddard ViaMedia.News 2018 – A Year for Vigorous & Positive Action…
Sam Wells Evening Standard Be more material this Christmas; your spiritual side can wait
Eve Poole Church Times Saintly St Francis versus secular St Nicholas?
“Christmas offers a chance to reclaim the theology of desire which has been captured by consumerism”
Giles Fraser The Guardian Tidings of comfort and joy can’t take the pain out of life
“When my son can’t sleep and I offer reassurance I am reminded that, as a priest, that’s my job”
[Photo of the crib referenced in Giles’s column]
Catherine Fox Church Times Eternity wrapped in a span
“Catherine Fox finds it a struggle to grasp the magnitude of what happened in the Bethlehem stable”
Aren’t both St. Francis and St. Nicholas batting for the same side then?
Catherine Fox hits upon Charles Wesley’s most wonderful hymn that begins:
Let earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made Man.
The other verses are every bit as good, reeking of patristic theology and the doctrine of theosis. Why is this hymn not better known?
Nice one Sam Wells.
At this time when we celebrate the Incarnation of the Word, I reflect on one of the prayers at Mass:
“By the Mystery of this Water and Wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ – who humbled himself to share in our humanity”
This prayer should be followed by a great “Amen”.
A Joyful Christmas everyone at T.A.
Thank you, Father Ron, for the reminder of this extraordinary mystery of God’s coming to dwell with us and share in our humanity, calling us as well to share in the presence of divinity, to share with each other, with our poor neighbour, with the lonely person on the street, and with the household of the holy Trinity. ‘Come’ said Jesus again and again. Jesus who was born in the back streets, who invites us to come to him in the back streets of our cities and the back streets of our own hearts. Jesus who longs for us to… Read more »
Amen to that Fr Stanley! It is Charles Wesley at his best, and I have rarely sing it outwith the Methodist tradition, except when I have included it in a Christmas service. And not a bad tune by W H Havergal!
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Thanks to people who post or read here for your sometimes fractious (I’m an offender) but I think basically loving fellowship (not our doing but orientated to something good by the name we invoke or imply). Anyway happy Christmas, and especially to you who run this site or work in any kind of service. Thanks for sharing this and offering a place where some of us can still feel like we are part of a church.