We trust these ancient prayers and hymn will encourage you in your personal time with the Lord this season.
Augustine’s Christmas Prayer
Let the just rejoice, for their Justifier is born.
Let the sick and infirm rejoice, for their Savior is born.
Let the captives rejoice, for their Redeemer is born.
Let slaves rejoice, for their Master is born.
Let free men rejoice, for their Liberator is born.
Let all Christians rejoice, for Jesus Christ is born.
—Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-440)
Puritan Christmas Prayer
O source of all good, what shall I render to you for the gift of gifts, your own dear Son?
Herein is wonder of wonders: he came below to raise me above, was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love: when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself.
Herein is power: when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart, he united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.
Herein is wisdom: when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost, as man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me!
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind!
Let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father!
Place me with ox, donkey, camel, goat, to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin!
Let me with Simeon clasp the newborn child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his!
In him you have given me so much that heaven can give no more.
6th Century Christmas Hymn
Jesu, the Father’s only Son,
whose death for all redemption won,
before the worlds, of God most high,
begotten all ineffably.
The Father’s Light and Splendor Thou
their endless Hope to Thee that bow:
accept the prayers and praise today
that through the world Thy servants pay.
Salvation’s author, call to mind
how, taking the form of humankind,
born of a Virgin undefiled,
Thou in man’s flesh becamest a Child.
Thus testifies the present day
Through every year in long array,
that Thou, salvation’s source alone
proceedest from the Father’s Throne.
Whence sky, and stars, and sea’s abyss,
and earth, and all that therein is,
shall still, with laud and carol meet,
the Author of thine Advent greet.
And we who, by Thy precious Blood
from sin redeemed, are marked for God,
on this, the day that saw Thy Birth,
sing the new song of ransomed earth.
All honor, laud, and glory be,
O Jesu, Virgin-born, to Thee;
whom with the Father we adore,
and Holy Ghost forevermore. Amen.
tr: John Mason Neale
