Venite a laudare. Marian and Christmas lauds

Like a gust of wind that dispels the morning mist, gives things their proper outline and their true proportions, warming them with colour, so these songs penetrate our hearts with the freshness of their announcement, which renews our expectation. It comes like a sudden radiance, a sudden light. Venne dal ciel messo novello – From heaven came the bearer of tidings. Though we do not know how and cannot know when, something is certainly given us: in the undeniable inkling we can cry “Come!” The answer is given, because the entreaty is an irreversible event, because Christ answers. And Christ has answered. “Da ciel venne messo novello”: this is a fact. The song sets us before a Fact with the transparent immediacy and the joyous wonder that spring from the simple acknowledgment of what is evident, and therefore breaks out in a festive cry. Firstly, the simple memory of what has happened. It is the renewal of the adhesion imposed naturally by the wonder that this Presence arouses in man, in you.

(Excerpt from the introduction by Luigi Giussani to the booklet enclosed in the CD)