I am absolutely in love with Magnificat, a lavishly produced monthly that brings the reader the prayers of the daily and Sunday Masses, lives of the saints (even the less famous ones), gorgeous artwork, beautiful hymns and wonderful reflections. A one year subscription (or better yet, two years!) makes a great Christmas gift (ahem, ahem).
This editorial from the Christmas issue of Magnificat is so profound that I just have to quote it...
In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, the agnostic Charles Ryder engages in a casual conversation about Christianity with his lax but Catholic friend Sebastian Flyte. Charles says, "But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all. I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass." Sebastian replies, "Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea." Charles presses him, "But you can't believe things just because they're a lovely idea." To which Sebastian simply responds, "But I do. That's how I believe."Now that's food for the soul.
...Pope Benedict has stated that "the beautiful is knowledge in a superior form since it arouses man to the real greatness of the truth. True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of beauty that wounds man. Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction."
...Sebastion Flyte knows he can trust this beauty because of the way it satisfies the heart God has given him....
"Beauty and love form the true consolation in the world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection" (Pope Benedict XVI). And that world begins in this world this Christmas.
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