Christmas Eve

Dec 24th ... the night before Christmas ... and we turn our eyes to the suffering of the Christians in the very land where the Messiah was born.

Christians are senselessly tormented in muslim countries. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/21/ahmed.chane.christians.muslims/index.html?hpt=Sbin

and the persecution is rising http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/23/christians-face-rising-persecution-experts-say/?hpt=T2

and there will be no Christmas in Iraq this year http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/12/23/iraq.holiday.fears/index.html?hpt=T2

As I go to Bethlehem for the Midnight Mass, there is no cheer in my heart. I go with a weeping heart because the Cradle of the Messiah is bleeding; death and decay are its swaddling clothes; and the sound of modern murdered Holy Innocents rasp in the suffocating air of fanatical violence ... and all the while the rest of the world bawl its hollow "Gloria in excelsis Deo" to an audience that worships only itself.

Yes ... some rough beast has indeed awakened and slouches toward Bethlehem to be born. Woe to Christians in the Land of Christ. Our cheerless Christmas. Their Christ-less Christmas. Our last Christmas?

     ...............                   a waste of desert sand; 
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. 
    The darkness drops again but now I know 
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep 
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
                                                                   "The Second Coming"(1919) by W.B. Yeats