The Christmas Proclamation
“Long the ages rolled, and slowly
To the coming of the Word.”
So begins one of our favorite Advent hymns. Advent is the period of waiting for Emmanuel, God-with-us, and the Christmas Proclamation reminds us of how long that waiting actually was! Traditionally, it was chanted as part of the Liturgy of the Hours on Christmas Eve. We chant it in English at supper on Dec. 23rd, so that everyone may know the text, and then we chant it solemnly in Latin before the morning Mass on Dec. 24th. Please join us in this beautiful ceremony to prepare us to receive our Infant King!
“Martyrology for the Twenty-Fifth Day of December:
In the year, from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created heaven and earth, five thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine; from the flood, two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven, from the birth of Abraham, two thousand and fifteen, from Moses, and the coming of the Israelites, out of Egypt, one thousand five hundred and ten, from the anointing of King David, one thousand and thirty-two, in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel, in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad, in the year seven hundred and fifty-two from the founding of the city of Rome, in the forty-second year of the empire of Octavian Augustus,
When the whole world was at peace, in the sixth age of the world,