20 Christmas Quotes to Help You Prepare Your Soul for the Infant Jesus
How often do you hear “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas”? Indeed, the war against Christmas is unrelenting. Secular “carols” flood the airwaves with meaningless lyrics. Neo-pagan attitudes and cold commercial transactions have replaced the spiritual significance of the holy season. In short, our all-inclusive culture strives to exclude Christ from Christmas.
However, the grace of Christmas still pierces the darkness of the modern world like a brilliant light. Its sublime rays radiate from the Manger and render evil powerless.
TFP Student Action invites you to read and reflect on the following quotes about Christmas. May they inspire you to draw closer to the Child Jesus and His Blessed Mother.
St. Ambrose of Milan (340-397)
“Open wide your door to the One who comes. Open your soul, throw open the depths of your heart to see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the sweetness of grace. Open your heart and run to meet the Sun of eternal light that illuminates all men.”
St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
“People can pass thirty nights in dancing and no one complains about it, but if they watch through a single Christmas night they cough and claim their stomach is upset the next morning. Does anyone fail to see that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and well disposed to its own children but harsh and rigorous towards the children of God?”
St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231)
“O Father, in your Truth (that is to say, in your Son, humbled, needy and homeless) you have humbled me. He was humbled in the womb of the Virgin, needy in the manger of the sheep, and homeless on the wood of the Cross. Nothing so humbles the proud sinner as the humility of Jesus Christ’s humanity.”
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386)
“Teacher of children became Himself a child among children, that He might instruct the unwise. The Bread of Heaven came down to earth to feed the hungry.”
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995)
“On Christmas night, through the power of God, an immense impossibility becomes possible, and a shower of graces flows from Heaven to earth, turning into marvelous realities all of our impossible dreams. Because “apparuit salvator noster Domini Nostri Jesu Christi,” [our savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ appeared]. The Savior becomes incarnate in a Virgin and dwells amongst men. He comes with everything He brought for men. This is more audacious than any other utopia, but grace, miracle and the power of God turn it into reality.”
St. Gregory Nazianzen (329-390)
“Christ is born, glorify Him! Christ from Heaven, go out to meet Him! Christ on earth, be exalted! Sing to the Lord all the whole earth; and that I may join both in one word, let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for Him who is of Heaven and then of earth. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope.”
St. Leo the Great (c.400-461)
“Dearly beloved, today our Saviour is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness. No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all.”
St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787)
“Arise, all ye nobles and peasants; Mary invites all, rich and poor, just and sinners, to enter the cave of Bethlehem, to adore and to kiss the feet of her new-born Son. Go in, then, all ye devout souls; go and see the Creator of heaven and earth on a little hay, under the form of a little Infant; but so beautiful that He sheds all around rays of light. Now that He is born and is lying on the straw, the cave is no longer horrible, but is become a paradise. Let us enter; let us not be afraid.”
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
“Awake, you who lie in the dust, awake and give praise. Behold, the Lord cometh with salvation. He comes with salvation, He comes with unction, He comes with glory. Jesus cannot come without salvation, Christ cannot come without unction, nor the Son of God without glory. For He Himself is salvation, He is unction, He is glory, as it is written, "A wise son is the glory of his father.”
St. Peter Chrysologus (c.380-c.450)
“Christ’s birth was not necessity, but an expression of omnipotence, a sacrament of piety for the redemption of men. He who made man without generation from pure clay made man again and was born from a pure body. The hand that assumed clay to make our flesh deigned to assume a body for your salvation. That the Creator is in his creature and God is in the flesh brings dignity to man without dishonor to Him who made him.”
St. Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130 – 202)
“Because of his boundless love, Jesus became what we are that he might make us to be what He is.”
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
“Not the visible sun, but the invisible Creator of the sun has consecrated this day on which the Virgin, a true but inviolate Mother, gave birth to Him who became visible for our sake and by whom she herself was created. A virgin conceives, yet remains a virgin: a virgin is heavy with child; a virgin brings forth her child, yet she is always a virgin. Why are you amazed at this, O man? It was fitting for God to be born thus when He deigned to become man.”
St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-395)
“Today the darkness begins to grow shorter and the light to lengthen, as the hours of night become fewer.... Realize that the true Light is now here and, through the rays of the Gospel, is illumining the whole earth.”
St. Bede the Venerable (672-735)
“Christ is the Morning Star,
Who, when the night of this world is past,
gives to His saints the promise of the light of life,
and opens everlasting day.”
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407)
“Behold on Christmas a new and wondrous reality. The angels sing and the archangels blend their voices in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt Christ’s glory. All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth and man in heaven. He Who is above now for our redemption dwells here below, and we who are lowly are by divine mercy raised up. Bethlehem this day resembles heaven, hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices. Ask not how. For where God wills, nature yields. For He willed. He had the power. He descended. He redeemed. All things move in obedience to God. This day He Who is born and He Who is becomes what He is not. He is God become man, yet not departing from His Godhead.”
St. Leo the Great (c. 400-461)
“Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon. Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life. For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that (nature) which he had conquered.”
St. Augustine of Hippo
“Wake up, O human being! For it was for you that God was made man. Rise up and realize it was all for you. Eternal death would have awaited you had He not been born in time. Never would you be freed from your sinful flesh had He not taken to Himself the likeness of sinful flesh. Everlasting would be your misery had He not performed this act of mercy. You would not have come to life again had He not come to die your death. You would have perished had He not come.”
St. John Chrysostom
“Come, then, let us observe the Feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been ‘in planted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels.”
St. Ephraem the Syrian (c. 306-373)
“Today Godhead pressed itself like a seal upon manhood, so that with the Godhead’s stamp, manhood might be adorned.”
St. John Bosco (1815-1888)
“Tomorrow begins the Christmas novena. I recommend two things to you for these days. Call Baby Jesus to mind often; recall the love that He brings you and the proofs that He has given you of His Love - to the point of dying for you. When you get up in the morning immediately at the sound of the bell, and feel the cold, recall to mind Baby Jesus, who trembled from the cold, there on the hay. Throughout the day, encourage each other to study your lessons well, to do your work well, and to stay attentive in school out of love for Jesus. Do not forget that Jesus advanced in wisdom, in age, and in grace before God and men. Above all, for love of Jesus, watch that you do not fall into any sin that could disgust Him. Do as the shepherds of Bethlehem did: go often to visit Him. We envy those shepherds who went to the stable in Bethlehem, who saw Him as a newborn babe, who kissed His little hand, and who offered Him their gifts. How very blessed those shepherds were, we say! Yet, we have nothing to envy because that same blessing is also ours. That same Jesus, Who was visited by the shepherds in the stable, is found here in our tabernacle. The only difference rests in this: that the shepherds saw Him with their eyes of flesh; we see Him only with the eyes of Faith. There is nothing that we can do that would be more pleasing to Him than to go often to visit Him. How shall we go visit Him? First of all, with frequent Communion. Another way is to go every now and then into church during the day, perhaps just for a minute.”
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