Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. The day after is Christmas. I felt I needed to remind myself what the true meaning of Advent and Christmas really is. Few said it better than Saint Augustine. These words really capture the impossible becoming reality that is at the heart of Christmas.

“When the Maker of time, the Word of the Father, was made Flesh, He gave us His birthday in time, and He, without Whose divine bidding no day runs its course, in His incarnation reserved one day for Himself. He Himself with the Father precedes all spans of time, but on this day, issuing from His mother, He stepped into the tide of years. Man’s Maker was made Man that He, the Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast, that the Bread might be hungry, that the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired from the journey, that Truth be accused by false witnesses, that the Judge of the living and dead be judged by a mortal judge, that the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Vine crowned with thorns, the Foundation be suspended on wood, that Strength might be made weak, that the Healer be wounded, that Life might die” (St. Augustine).

“He so loved us that, for our sake,
He was made man in time,
although through him all times were made.
He was made man, who made man.
He was created of a mother whom he created.
He was carried by hands that he formed.
He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, he the Word,
without whom all human eloquence is mute” (St. Augustine).