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Traditional Catholic Faith => General Discussion => Topic started by: sedevacantist3 on November 23, 2016, 05:45:45 PM
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I don't believe The Church knows for certain that the 25th December is Christ's birth date, but I read in my missal it was chosen to replace the pagan day. What about the theories that it couldn't be December because it would have been too cold for the shepherds
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December 25th did not replace any pagan holiday. The pagan holiday was the solstice, four days earlier.
As for the cold, please note that the average lows for December/January time in that part of the world are well above freezing. This would hardly be "too cold" for shepherds.
The Church chose December 25th because, it was always celebrated on December 25th. Do Jєωs celebrate birthdays? Perhaps it was common knowledge that Jesus was born on that day.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem#Climate
Average High is 14 degrees C, average low is 7 degrees C. Shepherds are a hardy lot and sheep have wool to keep them warm. No Problems!
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I don't believe The Church knows for certain that the 25th December is Christ's birth date, but I read in my missal it was chosen to replace the pagan day. What about the theories that it couldn't be December because it would have been too cold for the shepherds
‘The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son,
this day have I begotten thee.’ (Ps 2:7) and (Heb 5:5-6)
As we know, Christians celebrate the birth of Christ on the 25th December, a fixed 24-hour day set in the calendar, ‘whilst the whole liturgical Cycle has, every year, to be changed and remodelled to yield that ever varying day, which is to be the feast of the Resurrection.’ Abbot Guéranger goes on to say the four weeks of our preparation in Advent before they reach the 25th day of the month of December are in the image of the four thousand years that preceded the great coming of Christ (Genesis Creation to Christ). According to a sacred tradition, the creation of man took place on a Friday; Incarnation day, 25th March, also the day Christ died on the Cross to redeem mankind. He chose to rise from the dead after ‘three’ days, a Sunday, the day light was created, visible on earth.
Christmas day however, is different to others, it falling on all the days of the week in turn so that its holiness may ‘cleanse and rid them of the curse that Adam’s sin had put upon them.’ This of course applies to the whole universe, which, as St Paul told us, was also affected by Original Sin. ‘This day is referenced not to the divisions of time marked out by God himself, but to the course of that great luminary that gives light to the world, because it gives light and warmth. Jesus our Saviour, the Light of the World, was born when the night of the idolatry and crime was at its darkest; and the day of His birth, the 25th December, is that on which the material sun begins to gain his ascendancy over the reign of gloomy night, and show the world His triumph of brightness.’
“On this Day which the Lord had made,’ says St Gregory of Nyssa, ‘darkness decreases and light increases, and Night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when he shows himself in the brightness of his coming, which is the spiritual Life of the world. .. Nature seems to me to say; Know, O Man, that under the things which I show thee Mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? --- Abbot Guéranger: The Liturgical Year.
St Augustine had said ‘The day he chose was that on which the light begins to increase. It typifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior day by day. For the eternal Creator having willed to be born in time, his Birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of creation.’ Guéranger then addresses those who dare scoff at the divine plan as having its origin in the pagan feast of the sun on the winter solstice that occurs days earlier, on Dec. 21/22. ‘In their shallow erudition they conclude that a Religion could not be divinely instituted, which has certain rites or customs originating in an analogy to certain phenomena of this world; they deny what Revelation asserts, namely, that God only created the world for the sake of his Christ and his Church.’
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Frankly, I have never been able to understand the penchant many Catholics, even traditional Catholics, have for looking at ways to undermine the Catholic Church. This has been going on for years. Even the opening poster says that he read that December 25th isn't "really" the birthday of Jesus in his missal. No one ever presents real evidence that the Church of antiquity screwed up by picking the wrong date to supplant a pagan holiday.
There are many traditions that the Church clearly and admittedly assumed and Christianized from the pagans--the Christmas tree, for example. The Church doesn't hide those, but the Church has never claimed to have assumed Christmas itself from pagans.
I just wonder how these ideas get popularized.
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I don't believe The Church knows for certain that the 25th December is Christ's birth date, but I read in my missal it was chosen to replace the pagan day. What about the theories that it couldn't be December because it would have been too cold for the shepherds
The Church has passed down the 25th of December as being the Day being the birth of Christ through the sacred traditions of the Church....
Also, if this is not good enough for you... The Blessed Mother did verify all of this to Venerable Mary of Agreda as if mentioned in her book, The Mystical City of God, Volume II, The Incarnation... This book has been approved by the Church for about 400 years. :-)
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I don't believe The Church knows for certain that the 25th December is Christ's birth date, but I read in my missal it was chosen to replace the pagan day. What about the theories that it couldn't be December because it would have been too cold for the shepherds
The Church has passed down the 25th of December as being the Day being the birth of Christ through the sacred traditions of the Church....
Also, if this is not good enough for you... The Blessed Mother did verify all of this to Venerable Mary of Agreda as if mentioned in her book, The Mystical City of God, Volume II, The Incarnation... This book has been approved by the Church for about 400 years. :-)
I am a Catholic, I celebrate the 25th of December as the birth of our Lord, your statement "if this is not good enough for you " misses the point...when discussing these matters with non catholics I want to give the correct Church teachings....the reason I write that the Church doesn't have concrete info on the subject is from my 1955 missal..it reads on page 60
"This feast may have been instituted at this date to replace a pagan feast which honored the sun."
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What year is your missal?
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I don't know if there is any evidence of when Christmas was first celebrated and if it was always on December 25th. I just figured the date of Christ's birth was always known by the Church because either Jesus himself or the Blessed Mother told the apostles the day that Christ was born.
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....the reason I write that the Church doesn't have concrete info on the subject is from my 1955 missal..it reads on page 60
"This feast may have been instituted at this date to replace a pagan feast which honored the sun."
Which is why I wrote what I wrote above. Such comments have no place in a Catholic book--and this was a Missal from before Vatican 2. In fact, this has no place in any book since there is no evidence other than the fact that heretics and apostates just assume that it is true. This is just more evidence that Modernism was alive and well in the years before the Council.
Has the Church ever made an absolute declaration that Jesus's birthday was really December 25th? I don't know. But the Church has never made an absolute declaration that every person has a guardian angel either. But the fact is that both have been the common teaching since antiquity.
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Is it really that important, the point is Jesus was born and died for all of us. Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that all mankind was born to live but Jesus Christ was the only person born to die, and that is what is really important, not the date.
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It was Yom Kippur, the Jєωιѕн feast of Atonement that the priest Zacharia went into the Holy of Holies to offer incense when he encountered the angel who told him that he was to be the father of John the Baptist. Five and a half months later the angel went to Mary to tell her that she was to be the mother of Jesus. Nine months later Jesus was born. December 25 may or may not be the exact date of Jesus birth but it corresponds to what the Gospel of Luke tells us.
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It seems there is no REVELATION in the Scriptures that clearly states Jesus was born on Dec. 25th. Now there are no coincidences, mistakes or ommissions in Scripture. If God wanted He could have named the 25th December in his Scriptures but it seems He didn't. He ommitted this for a reason that we may never know.
Nevertheless His Church choose to celebrate it on the 25th based on reasons why that could well be the actual date, some of which I posted earlier. For me the Church got it right, and I reject all those websites, mainly Protestant, denying this. Tradition is next to revelation in infallibility. I do not need it defined as dogma, for me it is a truth based on faith.
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http://www.catholic.com/blog/jon-sorensen/why-december-25
The Reason for Choosing December 25
Although the date of Christ’s birth is not given to us in Scripture, there is docuмented evidence that December 25 was already of some significance to Christians prior to A.D. 354. One example can be found in the writings of Hyppolytus of Rome, who explains in his Commentary on the book of Daniel (c. A.D. 204) that the Lord’s birth was believed to have occurred on that day:
For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.
The reference to Adam can be understood in light of another of Hyppolytus’ writings, the Chronicon, where he explains that Jesus was born nine months after the anniversary of Creation. According to his calculations, the world was created on the vernal equinox, March 25, which would mean Jesus was born nine months later, on December 25.
Nineteenth-century liturgical scholar Louis Duchesne explains that “towards the end of the third century the custom of celebrating the birthday of Christ had spread throughout the whole Church, but that it was not observed everywhere on the same day” (Christian Worship, Its Origin and Evolution: a study of the Latin liturgy up to the time of Charlemagne, p. 260).
In the West, the birth of Christ was celebrated on December 25, and in the East on January 6.
Duchesne writes “one is inclined to believe that the Roman Church made choice of the 25th of December in order to enter into rivalry with Mithraism. This reason, however, leaves unexplained the choice of the 6th of January” (ibid., p. 261). His solution, therefore, was that the date of Christ’s birth was decided by using as a starting point the same day on which he was believed to have died. This would explain the discrepancies between the celebrations in the East and West.
Given the great aversion on the part of some Christians to anything pagan, the logical conclusion here is that one celebration has nothing to do with the other. In his book, Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI explains:
The claim used to be made that December 25 developed in opposition to the Mithras myth, or as a Christian response to the cult of the unconquered sun promoted by Roman emperors in the third century in their efforts to establish a new imperial religion. However, these old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and Cross, of creation and Christ’s conception (p. 105-107).
While these explanations of how December 25 came to be the date of Christmas are all plausible, we know one thing for sure: The evidence that this day held a special significance to Christians predates the proof of a supposed celebration of Sol Invictus or other pagan deities on that day.
That the Christians chose a date so close to the winter solstice is also not proof that this was done to mimic pagan festivals. The various pagan religions all had festivals spanning the calendar. Whatever month the early Christians might have otherwise chosen would still place Christmas near some pagan celebration, and oppositional theorists would still be making the same claims.
The solstice was important to everyone for agricultural reasons in the same way water is important to the survival of human beings, and so we see rituals involving water showing up in various religions. That doesn't prove that one borrowed the idea or theme from another.
#2 Michael Paul - Crook, Colorado
There doesn't have to be a pagan holiday that Christmas or other Christian feast days were intentionally replacing (though we know that Pope Gregory the Great told St. Augustine of Canterbury to co-opt pagan festivals and sacred space and make them Christian, so this practice did take place). For one thing, Romans had a holiday about every three days, so every saints day or event in the life of Christ would likely fall close to a Roman holiday and was not necessarily intentionally placed on that date to coopt a pagan festival. Secondly, St. John Chrysostom gave a homily on Christmas (in fact, five of his Christmas sermons survive) about 386 AD (Migne, Patriologus Graecae, vol. 49, cols. 351-362, esp. Section 5, col. 357) in which, by looking at the Gospel of Luke, he was able to argue that Christ was born in late December; he didn’t argue that it was merely an effort to replace a Roman or pagan festival. He argued that if Zachary was serving in the Temple "and all the multitude of the people was praying without" (Lk 1:10), it must be the greatest Jєωιѕн Feast of Tabernacles, which occurs in late September or early October. Zachary returned home, Elizabeth conceived soon thereafter, and the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary while Elizabeth was “in her sixth month” (not after six months), which would be late March, and Jesus was born nine months after that, in late December. So Christmas doesn’t have to be a coopted pagan festival.
December 19, 2013 at 8:13 pm PST
#4 J P Rodrigues - goa, Goa
Is there any thing wrong in the following straight forward answer based on Gospel of Luke?
"Jєωιѕн tradition use two kinds of calenders, one is
Civil calender which meant exclusively for kings, childbirth n contracts. The second was Sacred calender for religious festivals. Following are the months of Jєωιѕн Civil calender:
Tishri overlaps on Sept. to Oct. and is the first month.
Heshvan overlaps on Oct to Nov, Chislev overlaps on Nov to Dec. and so on; next is Tebeth, Shebat, Adar, Nisan,Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Ab and
Elul. Now Luke in verse 1:26 says that it was in the sixth month angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, meaning it was month of Adar which overlaps on Feb to March. If we take this as the time of Jesus' conception then we come close to Nov to Dec after nine months. So this is a strong biblical support for Christmas to be in December. Further Luke says at verse 1:36, that it is now sixth month for Elisabeth's pregnancy, meaning St. John the Baptist was born in the month of Sivan which is somewhere June and that is how we are celebrating his day on 24 th June."
March 12, 2014 at 12:00 am PST
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#16 Charles Jackson - Arlington, Texas
Dec 25th is 9 months from March 25 and March 25th is 6 months from Oct 25th. October 25th in the Jєωιѕн year of 3760 was the Day of Atonement. As you know, the Day of Atonement is the one day of the year the High Priest goes into the Temple to light incense, in atonement for his sins and sins of the Jєωs.
The year 3760 was the year Zechariah was chosen by lot to go into the Holy of Holies. There he was visited by the angel Gabriel and told his barren wife would have a child.
That day correlates to Oct 25 th Gregorian calendar. Six months from that time Gabriel visited Mary and headed to the hill country to visit Elizabeth. Count 9 months from 25 March and you have 25 Dec.
So in a sense you can say Christmas can be determined from Luke and Deuteronomy. 3760 + 2015=5775 which is the Jєωιѕн year we are in.
January 1, 2015 at 11:25 am PST
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I don't believe The Church knows for certain that the 25th December is Christ's birth date, but I read in my missal it was chosen to replace the pagan day. What about the theories that it couldn't be December because it would have been too cold for the shepherds
In Defense of Christmas
by Brother André Marie June 27, 2005
http://catholicism.org/defense-of-christmas.html
Today’s skeptics, who seem to reject something traditional just because it’s traditional, cannot sit still during the holy season of Christmas without mocking the notion that Christ would have been born on December 25th. If it were just the unbelievers who engaged in this mockery, it would be expected, since unbelievers, by their very nature, are not expected to believe. More troubling is the fact that, like evolution and all other modern atheistic fantasies, this one has seeped through the all-too narrow wall separating Catholics from the rest of the world. The anti-Christmas myth, which makes a myth out of Christmas, is being foisted on Catholic children as fact. To benefit these, and any Christian who respects piety, history, Scripture, and Tradition, we present our defense of Christmas.
Since there is no date for the Nativity recorded in Holy Scripture, we rely on the testimony of the Church Fathers and of history to get an answer to the question, “When did Christmas take place?”
First, let us see the essential significance of the Savior’s birth at the time usually attributed to it. The winter solstice, the astronomical event which recurs every year, is traditionally said to be the birthday of the Messias. To elucidate the meaning of this fact, we will turn to Saint Gregory of Nyssa (+ 385 or 386): “On this day, which the Lord hath made, darkness decreases, light increases, and night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when He shows Himself in the brightness of His coming, which is the spiritual Life of the world. It is Nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to them whose eye is quick enough to see it; to them, I mean, who are able to appreciate this circuмstance, of our Savior’s coming. Nature seems to me to say: “Know, oh man! that under the things which I show thee, mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had reached its height, by the accuмulation of every guilty device, is this day, stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward, its duration shall be shortened until at length there shall be naught but Light. Look, I pray thee, on the Sun; and see how his rays are stronger and his position higher in the heavens: Learn from that how the other Light, the Light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.” (Homily On the Nativity)
Saint Augustine, a Western Father, concurs with Gregory, the Easterner: “Let us, my brethren, rejoice, this day is sacred, not because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of Him Who is the invisible Creator of the sun. He chose this day whereon to be born, as He chose the Mother of whom to be born, and He made both the day and the Mother. The day He chose was that on which the light begins to increase, and it typifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior man day by day. For the eternal Creator, having willed to be born in time, His birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of creation.” (Sermon On the Nativity of Our Lord iii) Similar sentiments are echoed by St. Ambrose, St. Leo, St. Maximus of Turin, and St. Cyprian.
To further the beauty of this mysterious agreement between grace and nature, Catholic commentators have shown this to be a marvelous fulfillment of the utterance of St. John the Baptist, the Voice who heralded the Word: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Literally fulfilled by the ending of the Precursor’s mission and the beginning of the Savior’s, this passage had its spiritual fulfillment in the celebration of John’s feast on the 24th of June, three days after the summer solstice. As St. Augustine put it: “John came into this world at the season of the year when the length of the day decreases; Jesus was born in the season when the length of the day increases.” (Sermon In Natali Domini xi).
Lest anyone find all this Astronomy to reek of paganism, we remind him that in Genesis, it is recorded: “And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: To shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. ” Further, the Magi, those holy men from the East, who came to greet the Expectation of the Nations, were led thence by a star.
“But,” you may say, “the winter solstice is on the 21st of December, not the 25th.” Correct. But if, from the time of the Council of Nicea (325) to that of Gregory XIII’s reform of the calendar (1582), there was a 10 day discrepancy between the calendar and the actual astronomical pattern governing it, then it is entirely possible that a four-day discrepancy had occurred between our Lord’s birth and the Council. We illustrate this possibility as follows: The calendar that many of the Greek schismatics still follow (the Julian calendar), is presently fourteen days off from the Gregorian. This additional four day discrepancy from Gregory’s time has happened over about 400 years.
But now for the meat of the issue: when did it happen? According to St. John Chrysostom, the foundation for the Nativity occurring on the 25th of December is a strong one. In a Christmas Sermon, he shows that the Western Chruches had, from the very commencement of Christianity, kept the Feast on that day. This fact bears great weight to the Doctor, who adds that the Romans, having full access to the census taken by Augustus Caesar (Luke 2, 1) — which was in the public archives of the city of Rome — were well versed in their history on this point. A second argument he adduces thusly: The priest Zachary offered incense in the month of Tisri, the seventh of the Hebrew calendar, corresponding with the end of our September or the beginning of our October. (This he most likely knew from details of the temple rites which were transmitted to him by a living tradition, supported by Holy Scripture.) At that same time, St. Luke tells us that Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist. Since, according to the Bible, Our Blessed Lady conceived in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (the end of March: when we celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation), then she gave birth nine months later: the end of December.
Having no reason to doubt the great Chrysostom, or any of the other Fathers mentioned; in fact, seeing objections issued only by heretics and cynics, we agree with the learned Doctor and conclude that, by God’s Providence, His Church has correctly commemorated the Feast of His Nativity.
Further, as the continuity of the Old Testament with the New Testament was preserved in two of the principal feasts of the New: Easter corresponding to the Pasch and Pentecost to Pentecost (same name in both dispensations), it would have been unlikely for the Birth of the Eternal God into our world not to have had a corresponding feast in the Old Testament. Until the time of the Machabees, when the temple was re-dedicated after its desecration by the Greek Antiochus IV, Antiochus Epiphanes (see 1 Machabees 4). One hundred and sixty-seven years before Jesus, the commemoration was instituted according to what was written: “And Judas, and his brethren, and all the church of Israel decreed, that the day of the dedication of the altar should be kept in its season from year to year for eight days, from the five and twentieth day of the month of Casleu, with joy and gladness.” (I Macc. 4, 59) To this day, Jєωs celebrate the twenty-fifth of Casleu (or Kislev, as they say) as the first night of Hannukah. This year (5757 in the Jєωιѕн calendar), 25 Casleu was on December 12. Even though the two calendars are not in sync, Christmas and Hannukah are always in close vicinity. With the Festival of Lights instituted less than two centuries before Our Lord’s advent, the Old Testament calendar joined nature in welcoming the Light of the world on his birthday.
As for the objection, “Jesus couldn’t have been born in the winter, since the shepherds were watching their flocks, which they couldn’t have done in winter”: This is really no objection. Palestine has a very mild climate, and December 25 is early enough in winter for the flocks and the shepherds to be out. The superior of our monastery, Brother Francis Maluf, grew up 30 miles from Beirut, which has the same climate as Bethlehem, both being near the Mediterranean coast, and he has personally testified to this fact.
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Someone suggested I watch this:
Don't stop when according to this Jesus actually birth is suggested/prove, but watch till the end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnNI5Nv4EM
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This docuмentary, which I've seen aired on EWTN, makes the case
not only for the Bethlehem Star, but also for December 25th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO7Dz0uOMjM
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I don't think the scriptures say that the sheep were grazing. It stated that the shephards were keeping watch over their flocks... You better watch over your flocks because the wolves will. Yet, you just might see Christmas cards with shepards with their sheep grazing in grass.
Hm? Got to watch those communists, they are sly!
A Jehovah Witness tried this on me about when Christ was born and etc.
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It seems there is no REVELATION in the Scriptures that clearly states Jesus was born on Dec. 25th. Now there are no coincidences, mistakes or ommissions in Scripture. If God wanted He could have named the 25th December in his Scriptures but it seems He didn't. He ommitted this for a reason that we may never know.
Perhaps there's no REVELATION in Scriptures, but that is only PART of Divine Revelation, isn't it. I suppose God could have had Saint Luke write, "And it came to pass, that when they were there, her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son on the morning of December 25th, 1 BC." But no one would have understood that since that calendar hadn't even been invented yet.
Perhaps He omitted that date because he provided sufficient information in Scripture and Tradition so the Church would celebrate His birthday on the correct date.
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....the reason I write that the Church doesn't have concrete info on the subject is from my 1955 missal..it reads on page 60
"This feast may have been instituted at this date to replace a pagan feast which honored the sun."
Which is why I wrote what I wrote above. Such comments have no place in a Catholic book--and this was a Missal from before Vatican 2. In fact, this has no place in any book since there is no evidence other than the fact that heretics and apostates just assume that it is true. This is just more evidence that Modernism was alive and well in the years before the Council.
Has the Church ever made an absolute declaration that Jesus's birthday was really December 25th? I don't know. But the Church has never made an absolute declaration that every person has a guardian angel either. But the fact is that both have been the common teaching since antiquity.
The 1955 missal also has the Holy week changes of Bugnini.
People seem to think that martians dropped out of the sky at Vatican II and took over all the places of the bishops and cardinals from there on, like they didn't learn their heresies in the seminaries during the 1920-1950's.
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This docuмentary, which I've seen aired on EWTN, makes the case
not only for the Bethlehem Star, but also for December 25th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO7Dz0uOMjM
Interesting docuмentary. I still would go with March 25 as the day of the Annunciation and Crucifixion, and December 25 as the day of Our Lord's Birth based on other posts in this thread and Tradition, however.
http://www.catholic.com/blog/jon-sorensen/why-december-25
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The date of Christmas not only fits with the rest of the liturgical year (9 mos after the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25th, etc.) but it is of longstanding tradition through the centuries.
Modernists are wont to deny the value of tradition in general, and this is no exception. But in the Catholic Faith, Sacred Tradition is held in equal esteem as Sacred Scripture, and therefore the things not literally found in Scripture that the Church teaches may well be tantamount to being as certain as things that are found therein.
For a doctrine to be defined as infallible, it must be found literally in one or the other, either literally in Scripture or literally in Sacred Tradition. If the latter, then it also must be implicitly found in Scripture, that is, at least not refuted by some scriptural text. There is nothing in scripture that refutes December 25th as the Nativity of Our Lord.
Incidentally, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it was a fulfillment of prophesy; and from longstanding history at the time, Bethlehem was so named. But what is the literal meaning of "Bethlehem?" And how would anyone who had NAMED the city have been aware of the future significance of the name?
Bethlehem literally means "House of Bread," a prefigurement of the Holy Eucharist. And the manger in which Our Lord was laid was literally an eating trough for the cattle, goats and oxen. It might be all a mystery for us, but it was certainly no mystery for God, who knows all things.
We cry to God out of the depths of our ignorance and praise His glory forever.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
PSALM 129
(ENGLISH)
(to be said while processing to the refectory)
Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord: *
Lord, hear my voice.
Let Thy ears be attentive *
to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: *
Lord, who shall stand it?
For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness: *
and by reason of thy law, I have waited for Thee, O Lord.
My soul hath relied on His word, *
my soul hath hoped in the Lord.
From the morning watch even until night, *
let Israel hope in the Lord.
Because with the Lord there is mercy:
and with him plentiful redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel *
from all his iniquities.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
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How would one reply to the objection that a census wouldn't be possible in the winter time?
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What a wonderful thread. My thanks especially to you MyrmaM for your short(ish) video showing me the way God arranged 'signs in the heavens.' Also to Mark79 who rightfully said that the propaganda to portray Christmas day as a pagan celebration is an attempt to undermine faith in Christianity.
My how the enemies of Christ must be cringing now. This time every year across the world the name of Christ is dominant. Moreover isn’t it wonderful; that the world’s calendar is numbered by the years after the birth of Christ. These are two markers they will never get rid of.
All that is left for me to say to all our contributors is have a blessed Christmas Day tomorrow 25th December.
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I got a laugh. "All in the Family". Meat head, Michael says to Archie, prove there is a God/Christ asked at Christmas time. Archie says well that is easy! My job and many others are closed for this day and all the shops and the calendar says, it is Christmas on Dec. 25.