A Short Christmas Meditation: Rejoicing in the Image and His Images

Christian art was born on December 25th; come let us adore Him with it!

Note to readers: Due to having a house full of family and special celebrations that claimed all of my time, I did not publish a “Weekly Roundup” last Friday. I wish you and yours a holy and happy Christmas! - PAK

Two very special events occur on the twenty-fifth of their respective months. On March 25, we bow before the most awesome mystery that has ever taken place in the created universe: the Incarnation of the Word of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Nine months later, following now the rhythms He inscribed into the cosmos, the child then conceived emerges, on the 25th of December, into the light of day—or rather, the darkness of our night, illumined by the faith and love of His mother and His foster father, the sun and moon of His little universe, surrounded by the stars of shepherds, the ox and ass and sheep, the hay, the hoarfrost, welcomed by the human, animal, and vegetable kingdoms of the world.

Everything God did for Adam after his fall, for the patriarchs and prophets, for each laboring man and woman, was done with a view to the accomplishment of this supreme mystery, the enfleshment of the Word and His revelation to the world. Everything that happens in time after it refers back to it, whether for glory or for shame. It is the axis on which all of reality hinges.

That is why Christian civilization has always arranged its calendars with “B.C.” and “A.D.”—“before Christ” and “Anno Domini” or “year of the Lord,” counting from His entry into this world of time, to deliver it from slavery to sin and death.¹