Unexpected Joys!

Benedicamus Domino!

I had a very different entry planned for this evening's musing, but something small has just happened in the last few minutes which simply demands treatment in this blog. It all began with iTunes and a search for a long lost album which I once charished though I never owned it. This album was the original cast recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta staged for television in the 1950s and composed by Gian Carlo Menotti. It tells the story of a young shepherd boy somewhere in the east who encounters three strange visitors at his door. They turn out to be kings bearing gifts to a mysterious child for whom they are looking. It is a rather simplistic tale, somewhat moralistic but also miraculous, and well, when I was ten and heard this music and those words, I began to know a little of the true nature of Christ and of His Incarnation!

To have this album is a true joy to me, though it seems but a small thing. It brings back a little of the wonder I always used to feel at this time of year, and though that wonder was tinged with expectation of presents under the tree, once I had heard Amahl, it forever broadened into a deeper kind of wonder: the wonder of a babe born in a manger who contained within his small body the vastness of the Creator of all things!

Joys do arise in very unexpected ways at times, and for this small fount and many larger springs which have arisen in my seemingly barren and thirsty heart of late, I say a fervent and heartfelt,

Deo, O Deo! Gratias!