Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as SOLELY of your
making. And seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from where
it is not. Your brothers and your Father have become very fearful to
you. And you would bargain with them for a few special relationships in
which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to keep
apart your thoughts and the Thought that has been given you. When they
are brought together and perceived where they ARE, the choice between
them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening
your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep.

The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside
yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign
the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding NOTHING. No sacrifice of
any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. In His Presence, the whole idea of
sacrifice loses all meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but
invite Him in Who is there ALREADY, by recognizing that His Host is One,
and no thought alien to His Oneness can abide with Him there. Love must
be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of holiness CREATES the
holiness which surrounds it. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God
in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence
which He protects, and Whose power protects Him.

This Christmas, give the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING that would hurt you. LET
yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing, and
let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us.
Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted
it with me you will GIVE it with me. All pain and sacrifice and
littleness will disappear in our relationship,
which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as
powerful. Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and
without pain there can BE no sacrifice. And without sacrifice there love
MUST be.

You who believe that sacrifice IS love must learn that sacrifice is
SEPARATION from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love
brings peace. Guilt is the CONDITION of sacrifice, as peace is the
condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. Through guilt
you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. Through peace
you invite them back, and realize that they are where your invitation
bids them be. What you excluded from yourself seems fearful, for you
endowed it with fear and tried to cast it out, though it was part of
you. Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within
himself in peace? And who can try to resolve the perceived conflict of
Heaven and hell in him by casting Heaven out and giving it the
attributes of hell, without experiencing himself as incomplete and
lonely?

As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you
perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also
perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing
others. For who could thrust Heaven and its Creator aside WITHOUT a
sense of sacrifice and loss? And who can suffer sacrifice and loss
without attempting to RESTORE himself? Yet how could you accomplish this
yourselves, when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the REALITY
of the deprivation? For deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that
attack IS justified. And as long as you would retain the deprivation,
attack becomes salvation and sacrifice becomes love.

So is it that, in all your seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and
FIND it. Yet you find not love. It is impossible to deny what love is,
and still RECOGNIZE it. The meaning of love lies in what you have cast
OUTSIDE yourself, and it has no meaning at all apart from you. It is
what you preferred to KEEP that has no meaning. While all that you would
keep AWAY holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe
together in its meaning. For unless the universe were joined in YOU it
would be apart from God, and to be without Him IS to be without meaning.

In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined
without the body’s interference, and where there is communication, there
is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of
love by teaching that communication remains unbroken even if the body is
destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the NECESSARY means of
communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will realize that
to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice NOTHING, and communication, which
MUST be of the mind, cannot BE sacrificed. Where, then, IS sacrifice?

The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my
brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For
communication embraces EVERYTHING, and in the peace it re-establishes
love comes of itself. Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for
the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in
celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so will you
offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive
we are deprived of NOTHING? Such is the message of the time of Christ,
which I give you that YOU may give it, and return it to the Father, Who
gave it to me. For in the time of Christ communication is restored, and
He joins us in the celebration of His Son’s creation.

God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him, and let Him
enter and abide where He would be. And by your welcome does He welcome
you into Himself, for what is contained in you who welcome Him is
RETURNED to Him. And we but celebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him
into ourselves. Those who receive the Father are One with Him, being host
to Him Who created them. And by allowing Him to enter, the remembrance
of the Father enters with Him, and with Him they remember the only
relationship they ever had, and ever WANT TO HAVE.

This is the weekend in which a new year will be born from the time of
Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish.
Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete,
and NOT destroy. Say and understand this:

“I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you
will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison MYSELF.
In the name of MY freedom I will your release,
Because I recognize that we will be released TOGETHER.”

So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we
have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born,
and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening.
Make this year different by making it all the SAME. And let ALL your
relationships be made holy FOR you. This is our will. Amen.