How can we sing of peace on earth?
What is there to celebrate in this darkness? Emmanuel means "God is with us," not that heaven appears on earth and peace and justice emerge instantly in our time. Instead, the promise of the Incarnation [is] that God is with us through it all, in illness, poverty, homelessness, repression, war, in the middle of the night in the most lowly circumstances. God is in all things. His shining light is not extinguished by Herod's dark deeds then or ours today. In a world of seemingly unending darkness, the miracle and wisdom of the Magi were that they noticed and followed the light at all. The heroism of the shepherds was that they recognized God among them, in the most inauspicious circumstances. In the bleating of our daily labors, in the groanings of the night, our challenge is similar: to follow the light no matter how deep the darkness, to recognize the Incarnation and to hear the cry of the tiny divine child.
- Maryann Cusimano Love
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