From The Nativity Sermon of St. John Chyrsostom:

Behold a new and wondrous mystery.

My ears resound to the Shepherd’s song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn. The Angels sing. The Archangels blend their voice in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt His glory. All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised.

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I share some songs I recorded long ago, settings of the Christmas stanzas from Tennyson’s In Memoriam. I keep thinking I’ll re-record these some day. But there is a certain twentieth-century Dickensian quality to these lo-fi versions, recorded on a boombox in the early 1990s by a penniless graduate student in Bloomington, Indiana.

• In Memoriam 28
• In Memoriam 73
• In Memoriam 105