The love of Jesus was simple for us. Children like me, raised with Bible teachings, had no trouble accepting songs that told us “Jesus loves me, this I know,” (we did know!) or singing together enthusiastically, “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam to shine for him each day, in every way try to please him at home, at school or play.” Besides the fact that my generation was often raised with church and Sunday school, our undistorted receptivity to this love of the Son of God was undoubtedly a result of the presence of the bestowed Spirit of Truth.

   Jesus often commented on the natural spiritual awareness of children. “See that you despise not one of these little ones,” Jesus said, “for their angels do always behold the faces of the heavenly hosts." (The UB, 158:8.1, Matthew 18:10)

    This week when I was driving to my lessons, tutoring young people in Piano, English and History, I began to sing the great Christmas hymn, Adeste Fidelis, O Come All Ye Faithful, “Glory to God, glory in the highest. O Come let us adore him.”

   While the constant rains of December continued to drum along on the windshield, I was thinking about Jesus, our Creator Son, and the Universal Father. Storm clouds driving in on a strong wind; reservoirs replenished; no one complaining; those ancient words marching into my consciousness like a Roman legion. All revealed deeper meanings to me this season.

   It was an old memory returning. The Canadian community where I grew up was old world enough that we still sang a couple of the Latin verses of Adeste Fideles along with those translated into English whenever we gathered for a carol sing.

“Adeste fideles læti triumphantes,     O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!
Venite, venite in Bethlehem.              O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
Natum videte                                      Come and behold him
Regem angelorum:                              Born the King of Angels:
Venite adoremus (3×)                         O come, let us adore Him, (3×)
Dominum.”                                         Christ the Lord.

   The original four verses of Latin are in the version we know published around 1751, sometimes attributed to sources from the previous century. They were “written” by an English Catholic, John Wade, who was exiled and living in France to escape religious persecution.

   A more mature kind of love is expressed in this hymn than the simpler love we knew as children, “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing,” one I would have barely comprehended then, if at all. We sing, “Oh, Come let us adore him,” but I wonder as an adult immersed in secular modernism and skepticism, how is it we can adore that which is not even visible? Perhaps as we grow older, our angels do not always behold the heavenly hosts as when we were little.

   “The indwelling Adjusters are one of God's separate but unified modes of contact with the creatures of his all but infinite creation. Thus does he who is invisible to mortal man manifest his presence.” (The UB, 32:4.7)

   O Come All Ye Faithful reminds believers that we adore Jesus and his associated divine parents because they represent the perfect ideals we strive for: Truth, Beauty and Goodness, that which we love and attain by faith, no longer questioning the source, the center point of stability and true reality that we yearn for to anchor us on this troubled world.

   “We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive from such veneration;” (what we can get out of it), “we render such devotion and engage in such worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father's matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes.” (The UB, 5:3.3)

   “The Eternal Son is the personal source of the adorable attributes of mercy and service which so abundantly characterize all orders of the descending Sons of God as they function throughout creation. All the divine nature, if not all the infinity of attributes, the Eternal Son unfailingly transmits to the Paradise Sons who go out from the eternal Isle to reveal his divine character to the universe of universes.” (The UB, 7:6.2)

   “On both friends and foes [Jesus] exercised a strong and peculiarly fascinating influence. Multitudes would follow him for weeks, just to hear his gracious words and behold his simple life. Devoted men and women loved Jesus with a well-nigh superhuman affection. And the better they knew him the more they loved him. And all this is still true; even today and in all future ages, the more man comes to know this God-man, the more he will love and follow after him.” (The UB, 149:2.14)

   “And there can be no peace in the heart or progress in the mind unless you fall wholeheartedly in love with truth, the ideals of eternal realities.” (157:2.2) And he was the incarnation of this very truth, the light of the world brought to our humble planet.

“Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning;
Jesus, to thee be glory given!
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing!

Oh Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Venite Adoremus, Dominum.”