Remaining Light-Focused

Today in “On the Square,” Elizabeth Scalia defends Christmas and finds a way to make even shopping a way of expressing something of Christ. In The Christmas Light in the Shopping Madness , she writes

Praying Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours each day is a productive way to remain “light focused.” Particularly in these last days before Christmas, the glorious “O Antiphons” are as quietening to the spirit as the gentle restraining hand of a mother, reassuring an overwound and anxious child:

O Dayspring, Brightness of the everlasting light, Son of justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

An antiphon is a little thing—a segue into a psalm or, in the case of the O Antiphons, into the Magnificat, Mary’s ebullient and ever-blooming canticle of praise, but perhaps little things, as we lurch toward the end of this endurance test of a season, can provide a heartening reassurance that Christmas is still, at its core, about love willing to exceed limits.