Contractus, continues up to the very day of the Purification, to be the termination of each Canonical Hour. It is by such manifestations of her love and veneration, that the Church honouring the Son in the Mother, testifies her holy joy during this season of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christ

mas.

Our readers are aware that, when Easter Sunday falls at its latest—that is, in April-the Ecclesiastical Calendar counts as many as six Sundays after the Epiphany. Christmastide, (that is, the forty days between Christmas Day and the Purification,) includes sometimes four out of these six Sundays; frequently only two; and sometimes, only one, as is the case when Easter comes so early, as to necessitate the keeping Septuagesima, and even Sexagesima, Sunday, in January. Still, nothing is changed, as we have already said, in the ritual observances of this joyous season, excepting only, that on those two Sundays, the fore-runners of Lentthe Vestments are purple, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted.

Although our holy Mother the Church honours, with especial devotion, the Mystery of the Divine Infancy during the whole season of Christmas; yet, she is obliged to introduce, into the Liturgy of this same season, passages from the holy Gospels, which seem premature, inasmuch as they relate to the active life of Jesus. This is owing to there being less than six months allotted by the Calendar for the celebration of the entire work of our Redemption: in other words, Christmas and Easter are so near each other, (even when Easter is as late as it can be,) that Mysteries must of necessity be crowded into the interval; and this entails anticipation. And yet, the Liturgy never loses sight of the Divine Babe and his incomparable Mother, and never tires in their praises, during the whole period, from the

Nativity, to the day when Mary comes to the Temple to present her Jesus.

The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary, in their Offices of this Season: but, they have a special veneration for the twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their Liturgy, are called the Dodecameron. During this time, they observe no days of Abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect for the great Mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that the Courts of Law should be closed, until after the 6th of January.

From this outline of the History of the holy Season, we can understand what is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas, and which has ever been a Season most dear to the christian world. What are the Mysteries embodied in its Liturgy, will be shown in the following Chapter.

CHAPTER II.

THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTMAS.

EVERYTHING is Mystery in this holy Season. The Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star,1 is born in time-a Child is God-a Virgin becomes a Mother, and remains a Virgin-things divine are commingled with those that are human-and the sublime, the ineffable, antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple in those words of his Gospel: THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church;-and rightly, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent, which unites, in one Person, the nature of Man and the nature of God.

It

The splendour of this Mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints; nay, is the source and cause of their beatitude. Let us see, how the Church offers this Mystery to her children, veiled under the symbolism of her Liturgy.

The four weeks of our preparation are over-they were the image of the four thousand years, which preceded the great coming-and we have reached the Twenty-fifth day of the Month of December, as a longdesired place of sweetest rest. But, why is it, that the celebration of our Saviour's Birth should be the perpetual privilege of this one fixed day; whilst the whole liturgical Cycle has, every year, to be changed

1 Ps. cix. 3.

and remodelled, in order to yield that ever-varying day, which is to be the feast of his ResurrectionEaster Sunday?

The question is a very natural one, and we find it proposed and answered, even so far back as the fourth century; and that, too, by St. Augustine, in his celebrated Epistle to Januarius. The holy Doctor offers this explanation: We solemnise the day of our Saviour's Birth, in order that we may honour that Birth, which was for our salvation; but the precise day of the week, on which He was born, is void of any mystical signification. Sunday, on the contrary, the day of our Lord's Resurrection, is the day marked, in the Creator's designs, to express a mystery, which was to be commemorated for all ages. St. Isidore of Seville, and the ancient Interpreter of Sacred Rites, (who, for a long time, was supposed to be the learned Alcuin,) have also adopted this explanation of the Bishop of Hippo; and our readers may see their words interpreted by Durandus; in his Rational.

These writers, then, observe, that as, according to a sacred tradition, the creation of man took place on a Friday, and our Saviour suffered death also on a Friday, for the redemption of man; that as, moreover, the Resurrection of our Lord was on the third day after his death, that is, on a Sunday, which is the day on which the Light was created, as we learn from the Book of Genesis" the two Solemnities of Jesus' "Passion and Resurrection," says St. Augustine, "do not only remind us of those divine facts; but they moreover represent and signify some other myste"rious and holy thing."

"

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And yet, we are not to suppose, that, because the Feast of Jesus' Birth is not fixed to any particular day of the week, there is no mystery expressed by its being always on the Twenty-fifth of December.

1
1 Epist. Ad Januarium.

For, firstly, we may observe with the old Liturgists, that the Feast of Christmas is kept by turns, on each of the Days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse, which Adam's sin had put upon them. But, secondly, the great mystery of the Twenty-fifth of December, being the Feast of our Saviour's Birth, has reference, not to the division of time marked out by God himself, and which is calied the Week; but to the course of that great Luminary, which gives life to the world, because it gives it light and warmth. Jesus, our Saviour, the Light of the World, was born when the night of idolatry and crime was the darkest; and the day of his Birth, the Twenty-fifth of December, is that on which the material Sun begins to gain his ascendency over the reign of gloomy night, and show to the world his triumph of brightness.

In our "Advent," we showed, after the Holy Fathers, that the diminution of the physical light may be considered as emblematic of those dismal times, which preceded the Incarnation. We joined our prayers with those of the people of the Old Testament; and, with our holy Mother the Church, we cried out to the Divine Orient, the Sun of Justice, that he would deign to come, and deliver us from the twofold death of body and soul. God has heard our prayers; and it is on the Day of the Winter Solstice which the Pagans of old made so much of by their fears and rejoicings-that he gives us both the increase of the natural light, and Him who is the Light of our souls.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, St. Maximus of Turin, St. Leo, St. Bernard, and the principal Liturgists, dwell with complacency on this profound mystery, which the Creator of the universe has willed should mark both the natural and the supernatural

1 St. John, viii. 12.