For the past 69 years,  every year on Christmas eve,  the Wall Street Journal runs the editorial below as its lead editorial.  It was written in 1949 by the late Vermont Royster.  I’ve repeatedly admired the beautiful poetry of the words.  But this year,  I think I understand a bit better what the words are  pointing to.   Christ represented a radical paradigm shift for the human race,  a  revolutionary/evolutionary shift in Consciousness for our species.   It is said so well in the  line from the Christmas carol  “O  Holy Night”     ” … long lay the world in sin and error pining,  till he appeared and the soul felt its worth…”     The Christ was a new level of  awakening in human awareness,  to the realization that every single individual  is  “beloved by God”,   for  they are a  singular individuation  of the  One that is All.   There had been particular adepts before this point  (e.g. Buddha,  Lao Tzu)  who had also understood  Truth,   but they were very few.   With the  coming of  the Christ,  a leap forward had occurred in the evolution of  humanity.   The world’s  civilizations before that point  (Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, India, China, etc)  had never really valued the individual  beyond what they served for the group identity  (the tribe, or band,  or village they lived in).  Thus, it was easy to justify keeping slaves and treating other persons inhumanely.   But Christ represented a new relationship  —  in mind and in experience.  The coming of  the  Christ was an  IDEA in  mind  —   an idea whose time had come. 

–Melissa Goodnight, HW, M.

IN  HOC  ANNO  DOMINI

December 23, 2018 (wsj.com)

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

Conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus.PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.