Surfing: Maggie's Kitchen

While we encourage as many people as possible to make use of this blog, many people still do not know about us. So I have decided to begin a new feature, Surfing, in which I shall share gems and clunkers that I come across in my daily surfing. One gem I have discovered is Maggie's Kitchen, which I found on the website of an ACCC parish, St Michael's, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The following is an excerpt from Maggie's December column. All of it can be read at http://www.zeuter.com/~accc/accc/fredericton.htm#maggie

Of the feasts of the waning year -- Hanukkah, Kwaanza, Divali, Christmas, and no doubt may others -- only Christmas, the Feast of Christ’s Incarnation, is a Feast spread out for all people everywhere and at all times, for all creation visible and invisible, for all of heaven and earth. Christ didn’t become incarnate for a few followers, or even for millions of followers, but for all, friend and foe alike. It makes me wonder why we Christians are so apt to treat it as our feast alone, as if it had no real significance for Jew or Moslem or pagan. These would probably be just as happy if Christmas went away altogether. I imagine that to accommodate them we could “spiritualize” Christmas by sweeping away our material observances, the way some Christians “spiritualize” the Sacraments by dispensing with the outward signs. But those little matters of cookies and gifts, of festoonings of house and church, are little statements of our Lord’s Incarnation -- little reminders of the wonder of His coming into the world in human flesh -- little echoes of His Words of Institution which we will have still ringing in our ears from the Christ Mass. Little proclamations of the Good News.