Still fighting something like bronchitis, but I want to at least post this excerpt from a meditation from today’s Magnificat by Monsignor Ronald Knox:

“Prepare the way of the Lord, straighten out his paths” . . . All that busy leveling and clearance typify a preparation of the heart which is to be expected in us as we look forward to this year’s Christmas, and beyond that, to the eternal Christmas which will straighten out our world for good.

“Every valley is to be bridged, and every mountain and hill leveled”; the ancients built their roads, as we our railways, with an eye to avoiding steep gradients–the cutting and the embankment must eliminate rises and dips.  That Christmas ought to drive a cutting through our self-conceit goes without saying; for love of us men and for our salvation, God took on himself the nature of a slave.  But equally, it must bridge our gulf of self-despair; “Christian,” says Saint Leo, “be conscious of your own nobility, sharing as you do in the divine nature, will you return to your old groveling?”  Each of us must sink to child-level before the Crib; each of us, at the same time, must rise to Incarnation-level.