At Last (Editorial)

Man, having found himself, went searching for the One who had made him: and it was an idol, and it was gods, and then it was an idea.

And the Creator looked down from His heights upon His creature and murmured: "The time has come for this creature to find its Creator!" And from His eyes two tears poured down: a tear of love, and a tear of tenderness... And nine months passed. Behold, a virgin star, such as the heavens had never known before, blazing in the East, above a lowly village of these lands pregnant with the Biblical promises — the promises of the hoped-for, long-awaited coming...

And so it was that the Idea took flesh as a man in full form, and eternity entered into history. Thus history came to have a meaning: it was no longer a closed circle spinning man round by fate and destiny — spinning him round, that is, with no hope of salvation and no expectation of grace — but became a line, with its beginning at the creation, and its end at the Nativity...

Yet man hates nothing and fears nothing so much as he hates and fears the end. Poor wretch! He laid hold of this "End," dressed it in crime, and led it, crowned with thorns, to the cross.

And man heaved a sigh of relief, as though he had rolled a mountain off his shoulders: had he not crucified the "End" that he hates and fears more than any other fate? Indeed he had! Let him return, then, to continuance — to this continuance, however wretched and mean it might be.

In vain! Behold the "End" trampling down death and rising on high. Some saw it; nay, they put their fingers into the print of its nails...

And the glad tidings of the Resurrection and the Ascension went forth... and Christianity was born.

And so the "End" was deferred, and its coming was hung once more upon faith in it — a faith untouched by doubt.

O Lord! O Lord of the Feast... we are a flock lost and astray. We crucified You when You were among us, and we have crucified You, and crucify You still, with every beat of our hearts.

And we, O Lord, are sinners: we speed our feet toward sin, and strew our dwelling places with shame — as though You, with all that lies in Your birth and Your death and Your resurrection, were a lamp in the daytime, or a beckoning in the night.

Is there no mercy from You, no forgiveness? Do You not see us keeping the feast of Your birth, and singing, and ringing the bells, and thronging the churches, and draping the world in splendor and gladness?

Will You not have mercy on us, O Lord, and forgive us, if only on this one day — the day of Your blessed Nativity?

Ah! When will that feast come which we shall keep with our hearts — with the depths of the depths of our hearts? Then the "End" would come back once more, and we would give it a fair welcome, and lodge it among us in ample room, and live by its grace a life of love and peace and goodness.

December 1946