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12.27.05  Tuesdays Reflection

On the 23rd I went to a noontime concert to benefit the Christmas Bureau.

For an hour, 1600 persons sang Christmas carols with a choir of 150 gleaned

from a dozen adult choral groups (it was a work and school day).

I wondered why some carols mean more to me than others. Then, I remembered a

very special Christmas gift I received in 1948. That September had brought a

great change in my life. I left the one-room school (grades 1-9) where I had

studied in French with Mlle Bedard who also boarded with us, to travel each

day with my father to study grade 5 in English in a 5-story convent school

in the city.  It meant not only having to learn a new language but also a

new culture.

As soon as I unwrapped the small parcel Mlle Bedard gave me before leaving

to spend Christmas with her family, I knew it was a very special gift - two

phonograph records, not the large black vinyl ones but small cardboard ones

with colored pictures on both sides. One contained Christmas carols; the

other, children's songs such as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Mary had a

Little Lamb. I played the two records so often that I learned all the words.

Even as a 10 year-old, I knew that this was a special gift, one chosen just

for me, one that cost quite a bit on a teacher's salary.

At the Christmas eve mass, I "heard" the last words of the first reading so

clearly: "Voila ce que fait l'amour invincible du Seigneur de l'univers."

(Isaah 9:6). The English translations seemed inadequate and so at the

Christmas day mass, I borrowed someone's French missal to copy it down:

"This is what the invincible love of the Lord of the Universe has done."

Invincible love - not power - love! Invincible Love - the Heart of the

Christmas Message.

Cecily