I hope you’re reading this in the early morning on this day.

It’s been my practice for years to wake up very early on the 24th, long before the sun, to add extra time to my prayers and meditation.

Some thoughts for your own meditation on this most holy of days!

Theologian Karl Rahner-
It is both terrible and comforting to dwell in the inconceivable nearness of God, and so to be loved by God that the first and last gift is infinity and inconceivability itself.
But we have no choice. God is with us.

Bishop Oscar Romero-
No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God—for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

Father Richard Rohr-
         God is not “out there.”

Jean Danielou-
Since the coming of Christ goes on forever—he is always he who is to come in the world and in the church—there is always an Advent going on.

God is hidden in these verses as much as God is revealed. God is hidden in Jesus as much as God is revealed in Jesus. God is hidden in you, in me, in us all, as much as God is revealed.

Let us, then, keep the feast! Tonight Judea and Jerusalem shall dance and sing for the Messiah has come!

Merry Christmas.

Questions for reflection: As you sing in candle light tonight, how might you wonder about God’s hidden nature and revelation in the Christmas story? As you open presents wrapped tightly, how might that act embody this hidden/revealed reality of God in Christ?