Here, on the fifth day of Christmas, on a day made for us, may we rest in the “Dayspring” or “dawning” of God’s grace, the first truth (prima vera) that our life comes from the light of Jesus (John 1:1-5).

O Oriens | Malcolm Guite

First light and then first lines along the east

To touch and brush a sheen on light on water,

As though behind the sky itself they traced

The shift and shimmer of another river

Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;

The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.

Are bathing in it now, away upstream…

So every trace of light begins a grace

In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam

Is somehow a beginning and a calling:

‘Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream

For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,

Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking.’