CMP Review 2024-12-10

December 10, 2024

“With the season of Advent our thoughts turn naturally to that blessed mystery of our Faith—the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ,” wrote Charlotte Mason in 1910. It’s a wonderful description of what this season means to so many of us: a time for quiet and deep reflection on a mystery that never surrenders its full meaning.

As Charlotte Mason considered the deep truths of the faith, she seemed to be drawn to the sermons of Rev. Francis Lewis, a fellow Ambleside resident and educator. She arranged for several of his sermons to be printed in the Parents’ Review, and these sermons often emphasize themes that we see in Miss Mason’s writings.

This Advent season, the Charlotte Mason Poetry team is sharing a series of three sermons written by Francis Lewis and recorded by Greg Rolling. These sermons each relate in different ways to the mystery of the incarnation and speak to the hearts of parents and teachers today.

Today we share the first, entitled “The Nobility of Work,” in which Lewis meditates on how “the example of our Saviour at work in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth.” He shows us that “even the humblest task is a kind of sacrament; the outward means through which spiritual grace is manifested and conferred.” Read or hear this timeless sermon here.

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