"Everything Comes at a Cost, Including Prosperity, and Almost None of It Will Fulfill You"

Beautiful message from Ms. Scalia:

The lesson was a simple one: everything comes at a cost, including prosperity, and almost none of it will fulfill you, save authentic love, which requires very little in terms of acquistions or things, but much of oneself. “Use your time, and your love wisely,” they might have told their know-it-all children, “because the first is fleeting, and the second is fundamental. Waste your time, and you cease to be what you were born for; waste your love, and you simply cease to be, because you have built nothing upon which to serve anyone, or anything. Your ‘deconstruction’ is an oxymoronic illusion — a euphemistic license to tear down and serve only the self, the times, the trends. It is a building up of what is only empty; of sterile nothingness.”

Had he encountered the language of “deconstruction,” dear old “Uncle Charlie” would likely have shrugged and turned back to the bar, rolling his eyes. In his gut, he would have understood that such a “five-dollar word” had nothing to do with the simple warmth and generosity with which he lived his own unglamorous life.

Words that actually mean nothing eventually fade, to be replaced by other words that also mean nothing, but manage to fool generations before they are found out.

What remains is the Word — the Incarnate Word which consents to build and then sustain; its Constant Reality serves everything, in Authentic Love.

Preparing to contemplate, in my limited way, that unfathomable mystery, I wish youse a Merry Christmas, and hate youse all, very much!

Read the whole thing... it's good.  It's always good over at The Achoress' place.

And in case I don't post again today, I join Elizabeth in wishing every one of you reading a most joyous and most Merry Christmas.

May the meaning of this day pierce you.  May it pierce us all.