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The Nativity of Our Lord

Editor’s note: the Rev. James V. Schall, SJ,  joined Crisis Magazine as a columnist in January of 1983. He passed away in April. On this second day of Christmas, we honor him by republishing this timely and timelss column, which originally appeared in the December 1995 print edition of Crisis. Requiescat in Pace, Father Schall.

I once acquired from a bookstore a copy of The Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. I have the volume on the Sacraments, Rites, and Ceremonies, which contains the Christmas Service. This book was published in New York with no date. On the inside title page, however, a “Certificate” is signed by Horatio Potter, the bishop of New York, on April 8, 1969, stating that this text was compared with the Standard Book by “a Presbyter, duly assigned.”

I looked up the Christmas Service. It contained a Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, with the same readings that we Roman Catholics have in the Mass of Christmas Day; that is, passages from the beginnings of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Gospel of John. Both are accounts, not of the birth of Christ as in Matthew or Luke that appear in the earlier Masses of Christmas in the present Roman rite, but theological accounts of who Christ is. Reading them, I am again reminded of how attentive the Church is in feeding the mind while feeding the soul. I am also reminded of a beauty of language that we seldom have in the Roman English liturgy.

Praise the Lord

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