A child’s birth brings new light to a home, illumines the hearts of parents, strengthens their bond of love, makes them more ready for service, sacrifice, sleepless night, vigils and makes it possible to be gentle and tender to one who is innocent and helpless. Rabindranath Tagore said that the birth of a child is an unmistakable sign that God had not abandoned humanity and the world in spite of its indifference, or even hostility.

The return of Christmas every year and the transformation into wonder and *Simplicity of distracted human hearts is indispensable for the renewal of the world’s hope in the very midst of seeming futility. This is why, although Christmas is about the birth of a divine child in a stable from ..a human mother, it isn’t primarily about the happiness of children. It is adult, mature joy, re-creating childhood which children catch from their adults. The Christmas story is too real and fascinating to be neglected. The crib is a fairy tale that assumed reality. It is a tragedy to deny ourselves and our children the renewed opportunity to gaze on the Bethlehem scene with its star, the animals, the kings, all focused on Mary, Joseph and the child. It is a story that sustains and renews our youth with its wonder, amidst meaninglessness and desperation, long after toys are broken and cast aside because we have outgrown them. It is the enchantment of the crib that heals a broken world and reminds us that the world is permeated with grandeur and potential.

Evelyn Woodward in her book "Poets, Prophets and Pragmatics" (Collin, Dove) asserts in the words of Thomas Clark ("A New Way of Reflecting on Experience") that true prophecy is "dynamic, combining criticism of the oppressive present" and "graced remembrance of the past" suggesting "alternative futures to convert potentially destructive energy into the saving waters of life." Prophets proclaimed at the risk of their lives, and from isolation. What they proclaimed, in contrast, was energetic, beautiful and hopeful. Isaiah, in Chapter 7, proclaims his Messianic prophecy:

Intergrity and justice shall replace violence and destruction: a new vision presented even to the indifferent and faithless. According to Evelyn Woodward, "Poets live with eyes and ears wide open to the nuances of life, sensitive to the almost gentle breezes that signify the movements of the human spirit." It is this "heightened awareness" that poets writing about Christmas, arouse in our penetrative consciousness. St. John of the Cross, for instance, evokes the power of the pregnant Virgin with an originality of vision. It inspires our contemplation, stillness and centering prayerfulness in an empathic experience that illumines the mystery of our own pilgrim journey. It promotes conversion of heart and a new impulse to take Christ into our fractured lives:

- St. John of the Cross (Tr. Roy Campbell)

It is power packed in an amazingly compact expression . In simpler expression but no less inspiring, G. K. Chesterton provokes us to contemplation and insight in his poem "There fared a Mother driven forth".

More philosophically and with deeper complexity, T. S. Eliot writes:

This of course, embodies and explores poetic unpredictability and paradox. He looks beyond immediacies to deeper realities, calling us to "silence in the face of reality, to contemplation". As Thomas Merton says, "We are ministers of silence that is needed to cure all victims of absurdity who lie dying of contrived joy". The world holds out to us artificial, superficial "contrived joy" which melts even as it comes. Lasting joy comes of a kind of mystic exploration of repeated realities like Christmas and its profound meaning.

We can revisit the crib and see with a new enchanted wonder what we first saw as children. We are ending where we begin. With the poets we might say that the shepherds experienced the "insecurity" of living when they left their flocks in instant response to the angels’ message. Like Mary, they entrusted their future to a vision. It is said that Peter realized through his near despair after his denial that he was also a sinner whom Jesus came to redeem, because of the penetrative look of Jesus even while the cock crowed. In his desperate cry, "To whom else can we go?", he recalled the "seventy - times seven", the moving story of the prodigal son and the numerous times Jesus had rejoiced in the return of "one repentant sinner". He remembered the one lost sheep and the lost coin and the many times Jesus had forgiven notorious sinners. Unless we number ourselves among the receptive though non-conformist shepherds and the searching though pagan wise men, we cannot experience the fascination of the Christmas story: the story that binds children and adults in a bond only God can make. The prophet, the evangelist and the poet seek meaning in commonplace happenings, because love Changes and permeates everything.

We are called, then, to recognize falsehood and injustice, challenge stagnation and selfishness and believe in "a simple, silent living of the innocent life in the midst of guile and manipulation." Christmas calls us to believe in prophecy, to be sensitive to depth like the poets and to be uncomplicated like the shepherds, wise and enterprizing like the wise men. This is what it means to accept the double witness of an innocent life and the power of the Word. We have to be persons of silent contemplation aware of our own "finitude and fallibility" but, even amidst self-doubt, to respond to faith and seek ultimate meaning.

Incarnation" (TS. Eliot).