The Lord of the Feast

O God, Thy pardon, Thy pardon... Does the earth still groan beneath the feet of the tyrants of Israel, as they carry death and blood and ruin?? Is the whip of "Yahweh," O Lord, still a custom and a law upon the earth??

Are men to be slaves, their veins not daring to rise??

Lord, Thy forgiveness!! Shall the children of Bethlehem be the last sacrifice in the jaws of the hungry tyrants... so that never again shall their lips be smeared with blood? So that their fearful wrath shall never dare come out of their throats?

Shall it burn in its own fire, O Lord, and its wrath break within its breast as the dry reed breaks?? Shall tomorrow belong to truth and goodness and beauty? Art Thou not alone, O Lord, truth and goodness and beauty? O Lord of this feast?

...So ring out, O bells of Christmas... ring out, ring out, O bells of Christmas... For this night the staff of Moses sinks into the mire... it shall not bud before the Ark, nor blossom... and the Ark of the Covenant closes upon its gilded serpents and its symbols...

Tonight ends the tale of the tyrants, who trod the skins of humanity under their sandals, whose horses' hooves sank into the flesh of men... Ring out, ring out... for tonight "something" great dies in the heavens, that Christ Jesus may be born...

Jesus... For a thousand years man has cried this name, the cry of faith and joy... From the depths of caverns and caves he cried it aloud, under the whips of the executioners, his wounds oozing blood and pain.

And in the arenas of the beasts, on the day black paganism marshaled the hungry animal of the earth against Him who came to slay the wild beast in man...

Jesus... From the day the roots of the withered tree in man were torn up, that it might be grafted with the grafts of truth... man has cried this name, in the uttermost famine of his spirit, in the depths of his love, and in the darkening of his conscience...

...From the night of the grotto... to the night of the cross... a night that dyed the Gospel with blood... and it was the most magnificent thing that could be... And Jesus is a far-off longing in the depths of the soul; man dreams of Him in his loftiest detachment, and the mind fails before Him when it tries to seize Him and give Him body in words...

And what can two arms embrace of this vastness? And how shall words and pictures and feasts express the truth of Jesus, the beauty of Jesus, the purity of Jesus?? Had humanity come to Jesus in simplicity, as Jesus came to it in simplicity, it would have turned away from speeches and feasts, from chanting and hymnody, content with that beautiful faith which the love of Jesus begets in its depths...

And what peace of soul does the love of Jesus not beget in man?

What truth does this love not proclaim before the human soul?

And what a strong, beautiful God rises up in our spirits through this love? What a prayer is this love??

But... does man dare, in the darkening of his conscience, the clamor of his lusts, and the fevers of his desires, to draw near this purity that has never known defilement, this limpidity that has never known clamor??

Does man dare proclaim his faith in Jesus while he is in a hysteria of dust and flesh and blood? Does any man among men dare keep the feast of this night??

...I marvel at man — how hard is his conscience, as though it were all of iron!!

...The star in the East shall not set... as though it had been nailed there, on the hill in Galilee, above the grotto...

...O what a night that was!! The heavens in it were paths upon paths, in every path a color, and in every path a fragrance...

...O the heavens!! Descending in majesty and awe, embracing the earth in its first joy...

That is a night in which the star shall not set over the hills of Galilee until the light breaks and the Child is born...

So ring out, O bells of Christmas!! Ring out in every dome of the churches' domes, and carry in your echoes the echoes of the distant generations, from the night of Galilee, the night the star was nailed upon the hill... above the grotto...

For this night a tempest of flame is born upon the earth... and tonight heaven lays its firstborn Son in the arms of a woman of humankind, in a grotto in the mountains of my country...

O morning star, do not set... Pour down warmth upon the frost of the grotto... for the light has a tryst with the glorious Boy, and the shepherds of Galilee have a tryst with the light... and the Magi of the East have a tryst with divinity.

...O star of the East, do not set...! ...And since that night men have kept the feast with heaven, and the star has risen over the grotto, and the angels of God have sown the sky with roses and gardens of violets...

And since that night... Herod has raged, vomiting blasphemies and pouring them out as a curse with blood in it upon the children of Bethlehem...

...O God, Thy pardon, Thy pardon... Does heaven ransom the earth with its firstborn Son, and do a thousand mothers among the women of Bethlehem ransom the Child of the grotto with a thousand children in the bloom of spring??

...As though Jesus were nothing but a table rich with food at which man fills his belly on Christmas night!

...As though Jesus were nothing but a net with which man snares the goods and the honor of others on Christmas night!!!

...As though Jesus were... a nail that man drives into the flesh of Jesus's brothers and companions... on Christmas night?..

And a thousand children of the children of Bethlehem, yielding their necks to the knife of Herod the butcher — were they not a ransom for the children of Christmas, on Christmas night...??

And a thousand mothers of the daughters of men, who put on black and shed tears — were they not a ransom for every mother on Christmas night??

O Jesus...

The star has not yet risen... it lingers still, bewildered, upon the horizon... far away... When, one wonders, will it rise??

And the shepherds of the mountains still wait in their great joy... and the Magi of the East still ask after You... beyond the borders?

...And Herod's knife still sinks into the necks of the children...

The night has seen them, in their nakedness, their abasement, and their pains, dying at the gates of the great churches... on Christmas night...

And the sweet morning star has seen them... on Christmas morning, in the east of the earth and in its west, their necks being cut... a ransom for Christmas night...

Because the beautiful divine Child has not yet been born in the grotto...

So, O bells of Christmas... choke your voices in the cold iron, choke them... until the beautiful Child is born... Jesus...