CHRISTMAS-2009

All religions involve mankind's effort to get back into a stable and healthy relationship with God - that's why they can appear to be so similar. But Christianity is the only religion in which mankind's effort to find God is met by the unimaginable event of God himself deciding to come down into human nature so that he can be more easily found.
It's like, the farmer who stayed home on Christmas Eve because he didn't believe in Jesus. A terrible snow storm started, and outside the living room window he saw a gaggle of wild geese huddling together in confusion, trying to keep warm. He rushed out into the storm and opened his barn door. Then he went over to the geese - barely able to see them through the blizzard. He tried to coax them into the barn. Then he tried to scare them in. But they just kept jumping away from him, squawking and flapping their wings in self-defense. After 20 minutes and no progress, he gave up and went back inside. He stood in the warm living room staring out at the geese. And he thought: "If only I could become a goose myself, then I could lead them into the barn and save them." And with that thought, he fell on his knees, right there in the living room, and started to cry. He realized that that's exactly what God had done on the first Christmas night - and that he had been spending his life squawking and flapping in the wrong direction. Christmas tells us that God became one like us, like us in everything but sin. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He became man so that he could approach humans in a non-scaring and non-frightening way.
St.John says He came to his own and his own did not accept him. God never presents himself in revelation in a manner in which we are forced to believe. I imagine, if it weren’t so, there would have been no atheists or non-Catholics. We are always left with an option, for that is God's way. Thus, one person can say "Its a miracle, while another says "It's coincidence." Certainly there were thousands of people in Palestine but only very few people saw and heard and understood what took place that night. The choirs of angels singing were drowned out by the haggling and trading going on in the Jerusalem bazaar. There was a bright star in the sky but the only ones apparently to pay any attention to it were pagan astrologers from the East. If anyone did see Mary and Joseph on that most fateful night, they were too preoccupied with their own problems to offer any assistance.

The Child born today is God's new deed: But this is not announced in the excited voice of the advertisers; it is a silent deed. He is the Word made flesh, but he lies there as helpless to speak as any infant. Only in silence can this silent Word be heard. The new blade of grass does not make a scene or a noise; neither does the Word made flesh. God comes to us in the whisper of the breeze, not in peals of thunder or earthquake as the prophet Elijah experienced. So we need to be quiet and calm to enter into the presence of the World made flesh.

We all believe in Jesus - at least to some extent. So why don't we experience his joy and peace as deeply and constantly as we would like to? It is because we don’t pause enough to see him. It's because we don't trust him enough. We are afraid to let Christ rule our lives completely - we are afraid to let him be the King that he was born to be, that he truly is. We are like the inn-keeper in the Gospel passage. Our lives are crowded - filled with personal pleasures and hopes, maybe even with unhealthy relationships and habits. And Jesus comes knocking on the door of our hearts and wants us to let him in. But we are afraid that if we do, there won't be room enough for our little idols. So we let him stay in the stable, out back, where we can keep an eye on him, where we can be sure he doesn't clean out our closets and junk drawers. But unless we give him free rein, he cannot give us his true peace and joy. Instead of being like the inn-keeper, we need to be like Mary. When Jesus knocked on the door of her life, she put all her plans aside. She risked her reputation and her engagement; she opened every closet and every junk drawer to Christ. Let’s Accept Him and allow Him to turn our life inside out and upside down. And he wants to come not as a mighty warrior, but as a little baby, because he wants us to hold him in our arms, to adopt him, to make him the companion of our lives.
He chose to be born in a smelly, damp, cave near Bethlehem, a cave full of moldy straw, a cave that shepherds used as a stable for their dirty sheep during storms. Maybe our souls are like that cave, and we don't really believe that God's love can get in there. But Christmas proves that it can. He wants to come into the smelly, dark caves of our hearts and fill it with the light, joy, and peace that will come from convincing us that he hasn't given up on us. And so we greet one another today by saying "Merry Christmas." Be merry, be joyful, not just because a baby was born 2,000 years ago, but because God has entered into our world to draw us into His Presence. For we have been chosen by the Son of God to be holy.
Every Christmas reminds us that we still need this Savior to be reborn in our hearts and lives to free us from our evil addictions and unjust, impure and uncharitable tendencies.
As Emmanuel, Jesus is present to us in the sacraments (especially in the Holy Eucharist), in the Holy Bible, in the praying community and in each believer, while His Holy Spirit transforms us into the "Temples of the Holy Spirit.” Christmas reminds us that we are bearers of God with the missionary duty of conveying Jesus to others around us by loving others as Jesus did, through sacrificial, humble and committed service. Sharing Jesus, Emmanuel living within us, with others, should be our best Christmas gift to others.

Thomas Merton speaks of Christmas this way. "Christ is born to us today so that He may appear to the whole world through us. This one day is the day of His birth, but every day of our mortal lives must be His manifestation." Let’s ask the Lord the grace to be his ambassadors living out his legacies, living out his will so that the world may come to know him through our lives. Merry Christmas.