"Our celebration of the great feast days should instantiate in our lives the realities they communicate. For Christmas, the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, our actions, such as gift giving, caroling, the symbols of green life in winter, should make present the gift of the new life of Christ coming into the world. Like the angels, we sing our joy at the arrival of our Savior.
"Music provides one of our most common experiences of Christmas and this is fitting. Even in the midst of the secularization of the feast, the most profound and cherished musical pieces still reflect the sacred mystery we celebrate. Nonetheless, it can be difficult to see the realities of Christmas. We take them for granted. They have become hackneyed, plastered on Hallmark cards and shaped into plastic ornaments. Christmas can become marked by kitsch and confined to the sentimental.
"To respond to the many threats to our experience of true festivity, we must interiorly reclaim the mysteries of faith so that we can translate them into the world around us. This renewed experience of the reality of Christ's birth can be aided by a broader use of art in our celebration. I am presenting a triptych of art, which entails a movement from a renewed formation of the inner word, to its outer expression in an image, culminating in an outer instantiation in the world."
In a recent commentary, R. Jared Staudt, Director of the Catholic Studies Program, University of Mary, Bismarck, ND, reflected on how art can shape the embodiment of the Incarnate Word in our lives.
To access Dr. Staudt's complete essay, please visit:
Crisis Magazine: Art and the Embodiment of the Incarnate Word (24 DEC 15)
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