Don’t miss this wonderful post about the magic of Christmas and listening to carols with new ears from recent convert Jen. I love the way Jen writes about her faith, a beautiful mixture of child-like awe and gratitude with a thoughtful, self-aware maturity. And she absolutely gets C.S. Lewis:
When I was a kid I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (we didn’t know C.S. Lewis was a Christian, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have read it). I was so enchanted by the idea of these children discovering that a dusty old wardrobe was a secret portal to another realm full of wonder. I wanted so much to experience something like that, to stumble across some other world different from the one in which I lived, a place of great thrills, adventure and mystery. Once or twice when visiting my grandparents I would be looking for something in one of their cluttered old closets, and I would reach back through the clothes…just in case. Though I was never surprised, my heart always sank a little bit when I felt the wall.
When I hear Christmas songs now, I feel the way I would have felt if one of those times that I reached to the back of the closet against all odds, I felt cool air and a snowflake fall on my hand. It was supposed to be a fairy tale. This story of a loving God who created these creatures who scorn and reject him over and over, yet made himself one of them to suffer for them, to die for them, to save them…it’s the best story ever told. And, to my astonishment, I discovered that it is true.
Don’t miss the rest of what she says. Read the whole thing here.
“Thinking today at mass, after receiving communion, about Mary carrying the infant Jesus in her womb and realizing that he is right now within me, real, living, present. Not in the exact same way, no, but just as present, just as real. That is what the incarnation means: God is with us.”
Wow, that is such a great point. I will remember this after I receive communion at Midnight Mass tomorrow.