Make A Christmas Season Gift To SFCCA

For me, one of the best parts of the Christmas season is the chance to sing Christmas carols. Liturgically, we only get the chance to sing them for a very short while - a little more than a fortnight from Christmas Eve to Epiphany - and like so many good things, you blink and the moment is gone. 

So, on this third day of Christmas, I wish to reflect on one of my favorite carols - "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" - and see what lessons it may teach us here at Saint Francis Classical. 

The carol begins with a paradox - gentlemen who wish to be merry, but who are also filled with dismay and foreboding. Is this not the human condition - our perpetual desire for happiness among the daily pitfalls of life?  So what keeps us going?  The reminder, most certainly, that through the Nativity God sent us a Lord and Savior who is the ultimate source of our merriment. 

But if it were only that simple?  For as the carol continues, satan lurks around every corner, attempting to lead us, and more sinisterly, our children, astray.

As you sing the carol, its hearty and upbeat tempo, I must admit, belies the deadly seriousness of the message. But before you become despondent, you stumble back into joy, for the verse ends with great tidings, or one might say - Good News - which promises the comfort and joy all men seek, and which guides the work we do at Saint Francis Classical. 

Please accept my sincere thanks for your past  prayers and generosity, and if it makes sense at this festive season of the year, we would be ever so grateful for any gift consistent with your overall charitable endeavors. Helping more families attend our beautiful and growing school would certainly make all of us at SFCCA very merry indeed!

So, even though we're only supposed to sing Christmas carols once a year, I think it might be all right, especially when life is getting you down, to hum a bit of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" to yourself, as a source of encouragement to never despair, and to take hope in that Nativity scene, where meekness and power join together in the most unexpected yet beautiful way.  

Merry, merry Christmas!
Dr. Brake