Looking around town, one can see that the Christmas season becomes more and more secular every year. We used to have stars on the lamp posts in Mill Valley, but they have been replaced by bows. For many, this holiday means something quite different than for those whose celebrate Christ’s Mass, the Christian Christmas. It can be somewhat discouraging to see how the faith that is behind our holiday gets diminished year after year.
Yet people in the secular world struggle to make this holiday their own, so they borrow whatever is transferrable. We still see lots of lights, and light is definitely a part of what Christians celebrate as well. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, Isaiah says. Those who had once lived in the land of gloom now live in bright sunlight. Isaiah speaks of dismal times – war, boots that trod in mud and cloaks rolled in blood, now good only to be burned as fuel. Yet even as they burn, they bring light.
So many things seem to be going wrong in the world. The virus keeps mutating and we are still masked and careful to protect one another. Yet there is also so much that seems right: we are alive. We can gather, and reaffirm to each other our faith and the power of Christ at work in our lives, the grace of his presence, the Incarnation, his birth as one of us.
Pope Francis speaks of this birth of such a small child, totally dependent on his parents to keep him wrapped in swaddling clothes [as Luke's Gospel tells us] and to feed him, and of the great humility of our humanity that needs help, a humanity that needs one another. How necessary we are to each other! With just a little humility on our part, there is so much we are capable of providing one another. It just requires that we get out of ourselves a bit, and let go of that self-focus that has become a way of life over the course of the pandemic, and begin to look at the needs that are around us.
We tend to push the Incarnation to the sidelines as though it were not important, but it is. Jesus doesn’t play at being human, he becomes fully human, incarnate. He shares our flesh; he shares our struggle. Because he is God doesn’t mean he didn’t feel cold that night. Because he is God doesn’t mean he wasn’t a little frightened by those who gathered around him that night. Because he was God doesn’t mean that his journey through life was going to be easy. Because he was God did not mean that death was going to be a breeze – far from it. When he died on the cross, he meant those words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? For every human being experiences a moment when they feel abandoned, and in order to take our full humanity with him to death, Jesus had to live it fully. Incarnation means everything to us.
And here’s the beauty: it doesn’t matter whether the world celebrates Christmas with a focus on Christ. It doesn’t matter if this holiday is about Santa to them. What does matter is what it means to us: that this child is born in our hearts, born again, that he might live among mankind, that he might be known. All it takes is a little generosity, a little consideration, a little kindness, and quite a bit of forgiveness (when families gather). In that mercy, the absolute love of God revealed in this child is revealed in us. That’s when Christmas is truly celebrated, because we believe in the power of this infant and his Incarnation and in the power of his death and resurrection to save us. What matters is that we believe enough to do as Paul suggested to Titus: believe enough that we might be convinced to do that which is good for each other, for that which is good for other is good for us. We build a better world, little by little, not by fighting it but by loving it. For the child came among us with open arms, ready to embrace an entire world and to love it fully, so much that mercy could spread.
--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
December 25, 2021
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s 2021 Christmas Eve homily.
Image source 1: www.wordclouds.com
Image source 2 & text source: https://www.facebook.com/mountcarmelmv/videos/639542220522981
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