The spiritual gift of Christmas floods the world with sound hope—a hope that bears perennial fruit. This is the insuppressible blessing of the promise of Christmas, quenching the wants and woes of the world with divine comfort. It invigorates our lives with an ideal so perfect and so momentous that we are swept up in its promise and beauty. Our experience of life itself is reborn through the divine Love heralded at Jesus’ birth.

Christ Jesus appeared in a world filled with barbarous political aggression, cruel civil codes, and religious corruption. But through his gentle yet powerful life, he forever destroyed evil’s claim to be able to dominate human endeavor and character. His preeminent example exposed the deceptive defects of a merciless material mind and gave to us all the spiritual knowledge of God’s, Love’s, indomitable mercy and goodness. 

Today, we continue to discover what belongs to this higher, sweeter sense of Life as God, good, which brings the tender comfort of infinite Love into human focus. It is neither too profound to be understood nor too incredible to be believed. In fact, in a modest way, each time a harsh resentment yields to kind forgiveness, we have felt the unmistakable touch of Christ. This gives us a hint of what it could mean to overcome all that is hateful and wrong and to truly live in the kingdom of heaven.