Message of hope on Christmas Day

Today, we stretch toward the end of a difficult year, a year challenging like most seem to be on this troubled planet of ours.

And yet today, on Christmas, the most significant holiday of the year for tens of thousands of suburbanites and millions of Americans, most of us don't feel quite so, well, weary.

It really is a joyful day for most, a day of joy unmatched on any of the other days of the calendar.

This is a day, more than anything, of hope. "On earth, peace and good will to all." That's the joyful thing about it.

And we don't think you have to be Christian, or even religious, to see that, to feel that, to be inspired by that.

So today, we turn our Christmas message over to 1 Corinthians, an eloquent, enduring passage that captures that good will better than our words ever could:

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Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing.

Charity suffers long and is kind.

Charity envies not.

Charity vaunts not itself, is not puffed up,

Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil.

Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth.

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Charity never fails.

But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.

Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.

Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know now in part and we prophecy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face.

Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abides faith, hope, charity, these three.

But the greatest of these is charity.

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Happy holidays to you all from all of us.