i’ll be awake through the hour and on into a few more. somebody has to cover the late night shift, even on an eve like this one, so perhaps the quiet of this empty-ish office will lead to an inspiration or two. in the meantime, consider the year-old words from a midnight mass led by the archbishop of westminster.
“There is a nice custom in churches in Eastern Europe whereby at the end of the Christmas Mass there is a ceremony called The Peace of God. People kiss one another on both cheeks saying, Christ is born. And the response is, Truly He is born, and the kisses are returned. Everyone in the community has kissed and been kissed. To me that symbolises how the love of God can change our hatreds to love and our weapons to kisses. Although you can kill people in crowds, you can only kiss them one by one…Let us open our hearts tonight to receive afresh this infinite love and forgiveness. Let us rejoice tonight and be glad because there is hope in our strange, wonderful, stricken world.”
our strange, wonderful, stricken world, ever and always needing tidings of comfort and joy.
