Yesterday maybe, or tomorrow, some monks will go out and look for a Christmas tree. A green tree, an evergreen tree, green for life, for hope. But a tree. And on it they will hang red apples, or a reasonable facsimile. Because this tree is three-fold, like the coming of Christ. Christ came in history, 1900 years ago: His first coming. He comes to me, to you, personally: the second coming. And He will come a third time, at the end of all. And our tree is three-fold too: it is the first tree in the garden of Paradise, in Eden, the tree on which hung the beautiful but forbidden fruit: traditionally, or popularly, an apple. And the second tree is this our green tree for the coming of Christ, to celebrate the Word of life, to speak joy in a sad time when all is dead around us, and dark. And the third tree is one on which this same Christ will die, on which He will hang as the fruit, red with His own blood. All three trees are in a way one, as all three comings are the one Christ.

And on this Christmas tree, beside the red fruit, we string lights. For Christ is light come into our darkness. He is the light of the world. He is the dawn in the east, the rising sun, the splendor of the Father. And born at the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year when the sun is lowest in our skies. The day when the sun ceases in its descent, pauses, and begins a return. The days now grow longer: it is the dawn of light. And Christ is that dawn.

One ought never explain symbols. In a sense, that spoils them. As one should never explain a fairy tale to a child. If the child does not get the point, wait a while. In a year he will get it at once. He has to be ready for it. The response must come from within. It is only when people are so removed from reality, so impoverished as to be out of touch with their own deeps, that we are reduced to manuals explaining every aspect of liturgy. All is interpreted, laid out in the open. It is itself a commentary on a time too rational, too practical, too sensible, whose depth is mere emotion and feeling, sentimental, undeveloped response. New Age spirituality, however inappropriate, is an over-reaction to a too intellectual religiosity. Yet, it is sometimes necessary to prime the pump and encourage a faith in ourselves and our resources. At least we can cultivate the love of quiet and of pondering.

People in Ireland some 3,000 years before Christ built massive mounds of stone, hills with a hidden, inner chamber for the dead. The blind entry passage had a slot over the barred door that admitted sunlight, sunlight which at Newgrange on December 21st, the winter solstice, would pass through the slot, go down the corridor and flood the inmost chamber with light. Once a year.

What an observant people! How carefully they watched the movement of sun and moon and stars. How shrewd in their ability to build a small hill and equip it with so elaborate a design. And much of the interior carved with intricate patterns.

What were they saying in all this if not expressing a hunger for light, not merely the phases of the sun's light, the moon's light, the light of the stars, but a different light that would never be overcome with darkness. Surely this is all prophetic, this the human heart dreaming of a Coming Day which would know no end, the perpetual light to which we commend our dead.

It is to be noted, of course, that all this is for northern latitudes, whose winter knows no green, enters into long nights and short days this season. It does not follow that lower latitudes and people on the other side of the world have no way of saying what we say. Christ is for all. For everyone, everywhere. And every people, every culture, can speak its own language, use it own symbols to express realities beyond words. So humans speak, so we relate, communicate. Poinsettias grow wild in the tropics, an appropriate Christmas flower. We need be constant against the perverse trend in the human to trivialize the sacred, to make the holy banal, common. We like to destroy the sacrament of our lives: there is no aspect of our existence that we do not cheapen, vulgarize. Shallow living means no respect for depth. But to travel in shallow waters is fatal. Soon or late we founder. Happiness lies in deep waters. In staying in touch with our deeps we truly live. And it is through the material that we express the spiritual. We know no other way.

All is holy. Because bread is holy, we have the Divine Bread. Because wine is holy, the Cup is sacred. Because this house is holy, every house is. The green tree, the rising sun, light out of darkness, birth and death are holy, touched with the Divine. His coming makes this so. And He is near. Very near.  Amen.