Dear Friends,

On Saturday evening, St. John’s offers a wonderful gift to the larger community, our Service of Nine Lessons and Carols. It is a St. John’s tradition, and also part of the larger tradition of the Anglican Communion. Each Christmas Eve, persons all over the world listen to the service that originates from Kings’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England.

The beauty of such liturgical offerings is one of the gifts that the Anglican tradition offers to the larger church. We see God’s beauty in all the elements of this service, as the scriptures, anthems, and carols reveal once again the mystery of God’s love made known to us in Jesus Christ.

There are times when one may wonder if our efforts to create such moments of beauty should be directed elsewhere. I remember that four years ago, our service took place just days after the shootings at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. Today, the reality of the suffering in Aleppo and so many other places around the world is before us. At such times, it may feel that  stepping into the beauty of a candlelit church can be more an act of denial than of worship.

The poet Mary Oliver reminds me of how our efforts to see beauty are essential in such times.  The writer Parker Palmer recalled being at a reading by the poet several years ago. After the reading, someone in the audience asked her, “What is the purpose of beauty?”

Mary Oliver replied, “We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”

Our coming together in candlelight, our listening and singing, are  all ways of evoking that poignant ache – to be worthy of the beauty and love that God has already given us. We gather, knowing in the words of the carol that “the hopes and fears of all the years” are met in this person of Jesus Christ.

I hope you can join us to hear again the wondrous story of the One who himself is the embodiment of God’s beauty, and who awakens in us the ache to be worthy of love and life.

Faithfully,

Tom