“Come is the blessed season. Everyone is keeping…”

How better to wish you Christmas blessings
than with this Fra Giovannie poem?

Take Life!

There is nothing I can give to you which you do not already have.

But there is much, very much more, that while I cannot give, you can take…

No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today - Take Heaven.

No Peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant - Take Peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is Joy - Take Joy.

There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see,

And to see, we have only to look - I beseech you to look.

Life is so generously given, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard.

Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom with power.

Welcome it, grasp it and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, the Angel's hand is there. The gift is there.

And the wonder of an overshadowing Presence - our joys too -be not content with them as joys - They too conceal more divine gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that will find earth but cloaks your Heaven.

Courage then to claim it, that is all -

But the courage you have; and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, are wending through unknown country, home.