“She
wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no
room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7)
What a glorious
Christmas! I am so thankful to be
sharing it this year with family and with my new parish family as your
pastor. This year I am particularly
thankful because for the first time in years I was able to have dinner on
Christmas Eve with my family. We had a
joyous time because in the center of it all was the love of family and at the
center of the love of family is Jesus Christ.
On that holiest of nights centuries ago, the warmth of the family is
what kept our Lord warm, and we feel that warmth here in church as we gather to
celebrate more than a birthday. We are
gathered to celebrate God’s marvelous gift to us in his Son and to hear the
ancient Christmas story told again.
We are struck by the
simplicity and the depth of Luke’s account of the events surrounding Christ’s
birth, of God’s coming into the world.
Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this during his Midnight Mass homily:
“Again and again the beauty of
this Gospel touches our hearts: a beauty that is the splendor of truth. Again
and again it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love
him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly lets himself
be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that my glory
frightens you, and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face of my
grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me and
love me.”
What struck me from that
paragraph is that God became a child who “trustingly lets himself be taken into
our arms.” Imagine that? God trusts us. He loves us so much that he humbled himself
to the point of becoming a vulnerable little infant totally dependent on
humanity. God dependent on humanity:
this is love! Totally surrendering
himself to us so that we might love or might “dare” to love him. But now the Holy Father touches upon a rather
innocuous verse that goes to the depth of what Christmas and the life of the
Christian should be about:
“I am also repeatedly struck by the Gospel
writer’s almost casual remark that there was no room for them at the inn.
Inevitably the question arises, what would happen if Mary and Joseph were to
knock at my door. Would there be room for them? And then it occurs to us that
Saint John takes up this seemingly chance comment about the lack of room at the
inn, which drove the Holy Family into the stable; he explores it more deeply
and arrives at the heart of the matter when he writes: “he came to his own
home, and his own people received him not” (Jn 1:11)... do we really
have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have time and
space for him? Do we not actually turn away God himself? We begin to do so when
we have no time for God. The faster we can move, the more efficient our
time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The question of
God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full. But matters go
deeper still. Does God actually have a place in our thinking?”
Yes, the question of God is no longer urgent
because we simply do not have time for him.
I’m always dismayed during Christmas Eve and Christmas of how people try
to “squeeze” Mass in between their plans of unwrapping presents or dining as if
Jesus is somehow an afterthought on his own birthday! If you are celebrating someone’s birthday,
wouldn’t it be tops on your list to see the guest of honor? But do we have room at the inn? Do we have room in our hearts, in our homes,
and in our lives for Jesus? Not just on
this day but every day. The Holy Father
touches upon the irony that we surround ourselves with so many time saving
gadgets yet there is less and less time for God in our lives. (We use those same gadgets every year to send
every one on our contact lists a rather impersonal two word “Merry Christmas”
greeting without much thought behind it because it would take too much time to
actually send a personalized greeting or pick up the phone to call those you
love.) Mary and Joseph needed to make
more and more room for God because they basically surrendered their entire
lives for Jesus and placed him at the center of their lives. As Christians, we are called to do the
same. We are called to be like the
shepherds who upon hearing the joyous news from the angel went in haste to see
the Lord with what the Pope called “holy curiosity” which leads him to wonder:
“In our case, it is probably not very often that we make haste for the
things of God. God does not feature among the things that require haste. The
things of God can wait, we think and we say. And yet he is the most important
thing, ultimately the one truly important thing. Why should we not also be
moved by curiosity to see more closely and to know what God has said to us? At
this hour, let us ask him to touch our hearts with the holy curiosity and the
holy joy of the shepherds, and thus let us go over joyfully to Bethlehem, to
the Lord who today once more comes to meet us.”
In this Year of Faith, we pray for this
“holy curiosity” so we may grow more in our faith and in the joy of knowing
that this manger scene symbolizes how much God truly loves us. So on this Christmas, I leave you with two
questions to ponder during this holy season:
What space does Jesus Christ occupy in our lives? And when was the last time we went “in haste”
to encounter God? If the world only knew
what those shepherds discovered on that holy night in Bethlehem. If the world only knew the joy that comes
from placing Jesus Christ in the center of our lives.
For today a savior has been born for us.
Peace on earth
Good will to men.
Merry Christmas.
Amen. Amen.
