Chaim Potok begins his novel In the Beginning, with these words:

All beginnings are hard. I can remember my mother murmuring those words while I lay in bed with a fever. "Children are often sick, darling. That's the way it is with children. All beginnings are hard. You'll be all right soon."1

Whether it is the beginning of life, with all its fragility, the beginning of marriage with all its risk, or the beginning of a new job, with all its challenge, all beginnings are hard.

This is true also of a new church year. As we begin the story of our Lord's life anew, we acknowledge our inadequacy and need. It is a tradition of the western church to begin the first Sunday in Advent with the Great Litany, which honestly announces our helplessness: "Have mercy on us ... spare us ... good Lord, de…