Festivals in Faith: Sermons for the Liturgical Year
By St John Henry Newman
Edited by Melinda Nielsen
The Cenacle Press, £24.00
“Our Saviour’s birth in the flesh is an earnest and, as it were, beginning of our birth in the Spirit,” said St John Henry Newman in the opening words of a sermon preached in Oxford during the Christmas season of 1837.
Christmas, he said, is a “figure, promise, or pledge of our new birth, and it effects what it promises”.
“As He was born, so are we born also; and since He was born, therefore we too are born. As He is the Son of God by nature, so are we sons of God by grace, and it is He who has made us such.”
