An expanded Martyrology:
The twenty-fifth Day of December (or thereabouts)
Some 13.7 billion years from the time when, in the beginning, divine power exploded into the void;
some 4 1/2 billion years from the cooling and formation of planet Earth, our home;
some 3 1/2 billion years from the creation of single-celled organisms;
some 4.4 million years from the oldest authenticated hominid skeleton;
some 160 million years from the earliest homo sapiens;
some 130 million years from the arrival of the first flowers;
some 10,000 years from the end of the last ice age and the beginning of settlements;
some 7 1/2 thousand years from the time of Abraham;
some 1 1/2 thousand years from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
some thousand years from David’s being anointed king;
in the 65th week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the 194th Olympiad;
in the 752nd year from the foundation of the City of Rome;
the 42nd year in the reign of Octavian Augustus:
Jesus Christ, the eternal God and Son of the eternal God,
desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
was conceived by the Holy Spirit;
and nine months having passed since his conception, was born in Bethlehem of Judah of Mother mary,
and was made human.
