We are all born as animals 

and live the life that animals live: 

we sleep, eat, reproduce, and fight. 

There is, however, another order of living, 

which the animals do not know, 

that of awe before the mystery of being, 

the 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans,' 

that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days. 

That is the birth – the Virgin Birth – 

in the heart of a properly human, spiritual life.