Sunday Reflections

A PRISON CELL, in which one waits, and hopes and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside--is not a bad picture of Advent.

---Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a letter from a Nazi prison

THE WHOLE LIFE OF CHRIST was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but the evening and morning of the same day.

---John Donne, Sermon of Christmas-Day, 1626

Both from today's bulletin, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Manhattan, Hunter College