Westminster Cathedral Choir - 'Coventry Carol'

The choristers of Westminster Cathedral  sing "Coventry Carol" which dates from the 16th Century. The carol was performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors.

The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod orders all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed. The haunting lyrics represent a mother's lament for her doomed child. It is the only carol that has survived from this play.

From the Pastor - 'The Light of the World'

A Weekly Column by Father George Rutler

From the roof of our church at 3:41 am on the Winter Solstice, I did not see many others on Murray Hill watching the lunar eclipse. The magnificent coppery red color of the moon was an effect of the Sun’s light cast from the edges of the Earth’s circumference, like all her sunrises and sunsets reflected at the same time. The last time this happened was 1638, and some of the babies I have recently baptized may see it again in 2094, if they live long enough and stay up late enough.

The Wise Men “followed a star,” of what kind we do not know. These erudite astronomers may have seen a unique event, or they may have been inspired to read a portent into some ordinary configuration. As good scientists, they followed their hypothesis until they reached their conclusion in Bethlehem: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Like a bad scientist, the Edomite client king Herod tried to destroy that Light because it threatened the derivative fluorescence of his own ego.

There are many Herods in our time. In his World Peace Day message, Pope Benedict XVI said: "At present, Christians are the religious group which suffers most from persecution on account of its faith." He cited attacks on Christians particularly in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Holy Land: “This situation is intolerable, since it represents an insult to God and to human dignity.”

All wise men must outwit Herod wherever he is, confident that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). That light is celebrated on the Feast of the Epiphany. It is the feast of the Wise Men who followed the star, but it is a multi-layered feast recalling also the other “Epiphanies” or “showings” of the Light of the World in the Luminous Mysteries:  Our Lord’s Baptism, the Wedding at Cana, the Proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Institution of the Eucharist.

Pope Gregory XIII improved the Julian calendar with his own more accurate Gregorian calendar in 1582, using his own astronomers led by the Jesuit Christopher Clavius who remarkably calculated the solar year without even using decimal points. But it was the virtue of faith that enabled those men to understand the source of the light they measured. When that faith fades, creatures are worshiped instead of their Creator, as with one nouveau eclectic church in our own city which now “celebrates” the Winter Solstice.  “[T]hey supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world. . . . [L]et them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them” (Wisdom 13:2-3).

Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

'At the Gate of the Year'

Regensburger Domspatzen - 'Es Blüh'n Drei Rosen Auf Einem Zwieg, O Maria'

Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict XVI, leads the Regensburger Domspatzen in a Silesian folk song in honor of the Blessed Mother.

Happy New Year!

We wish for you and all our readers the broad, sunlit uplands of Christ's love and peace.  May God richly bless you in the year ahead.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In Memoriam A.H.H.

President and Family on Another Multi-Million Dollar Vacation

From The Examiner

By Mark Tapscott

President Obama and his family are enjoying a delightful Christmas vacation with friends and family in the chief executive's home state of Hawaii.

Nobody questions a president's right or need to take take away from the White House, but an investigation by Hawaii Reporter has turned up some eye-opening information about the costs and other aspects of the Obama get-away.

Just consider these estimates on part of the costs of the latest Obama Hawaii trip:

Al Gore Set To Become First “Carbon Billionaire”

CO2 tax agenda front man lining his pockets on the back of global warming fearmongering

From Prison Planet

Paul Joseph Watson

The New York Times has lifted the lid on how Al Gore stands to benefit to the tune of billions of dollars if the carbon tax proposals he is pushing come to fruition in the United States, while documenting how he has already lined his pockets on the back of exaggerated fearmongering about global warming.

As is to be expected, the article is largely a whitewash and takes an apologist stance in defense of Gore.

However, the NY Times‘ John M. Broder does reveal how one of the companies Gore invested in, Silver Spring Networks, recently received a contract worth $560 million dollars from the Energy Department to install “smart meters” in people’s homes that record (and critics fear could eventually regulate) energy usage.