Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Buon Natale! Joyeux Noel! Frohe Weihnachten!
Gift shopping can be a challenge. I told a salesperson: I’d like to buy a nice perfume for my sister. I was shown a beautiful bottle. The price: $200. I said: something cheaper? She showed me another: $150. I explained: my sister expects a “token” gift. I want to see something cheap. The clerk handed me a mirror.
Obviously from New York City, my hometown.
Each year we relive the story of Christmas: a baby in a stable; a mother holding her child, as her husband watches nearby; angels singing, shepherds running over the hillside, and so-called astrologers looking upward and traveling from afar.
The Gospel according to John sums up this story magnificently: The Word became flesh.
The story of our salvation begins with the Book of Genesis, where the first people walked with God, had friendship with God and one another. Somehow, they lost that friendship, they fell from grace. Genesis describes in a literary genre how they hid from God; one blamed the other; and earthly elements worked against them.
But God did not leave us to our worse selves. Remember the words of the prophet Isaiah: Can a mother forget her child?...even if she should, I will never forget you. And so continued the story of our salvation. God never reneges on his promises.
So, the Word became flesh. God is among us.
The word of God for the Christmas liturgies is like a prism refracting multiple facets of this great mystery of the Incarnation.
Isaiah proclaims glad tidings: the people have seen a great light.
Paul writes that the grace of God appeared in Jesus Christ who made us “heirs” to the promise of eternal life.
In the Gospel, the Virgin Mary gave birth to her son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and placed him in a manger. The prologue of the Gospel according to John phrased the story of our salvation brilliantly and profoundly and simply: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. …and the Word became flesh.
That is God’s greatest gift to us. His "presence," “life.”
The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, "The greatest gift is a portion of thyself." A visit to a friend in need, an ailing or aging relative. Giving of ourselves: for education, health care, for companionship, for love.
There’s also the gift of seeing the best in people. Another insight from Emerson, who wrote: "Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting."
Our faith ought to challenge us always to be a good finder: someone who looks for the good in ourselves, in other people and in every situation.
Remember that magnificent hymn of the Virgin Mary: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. Because the mighty one has done great things for me. Mary rejoiced in what God gave her, and so too should we rejoice in what God gives us.
Look for the good in others. Someone wrote that people in many ways are like wildflowers. If you study this flower carefully, you’ll see the delicate veins; the fragile petals; its special symmetry. The wildflower has a beauty all its own. So too do people.
Look for God's handwriting in all situations of life. When one door closes, another certainly opens if we look carefully. God is with us.
God so loved us that he became one of us. Yes, Jesus has a unique relationship with God. He is one with God: is a healer, a teacher, a peacemaker. Think of the people in the Gospels that Jesus met. Jesus found goodness in each of them.
We are new creatures; and one day God will transform us into a new spiritual embodiment. Christmas means not simply God in Bethlehem centuries ago, but God within us. We carry Emmanuel, God with us. How? Initially by the life-giving waters of baptism. For we are by grace what Jesus Christ is by nature: sons and daughters of God our Father, heirs to the kingdom of God.
Here in every mass, we encounter the living Christ, gloriously alive, in the mystery of the word, and in the mystery of the sacrament where the bread and wine become the real presence of the living Christ.
The promised Messiah is in our midst sacramentally and mystically, and He will come again in glory at the end-time.
In the meantime, here is a Christmas challenge:
What better season to mend a quarrel,
search out a forgotten friend,
encourage someone who has lost faith,
keep a promise, forget a grudge,
fight for a principle, express gratitude,
appreciate nature’s beauty,
tell someone you love them, and tell them again and again.
Amen!
