CHRISTMAS Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-16; John 1:1-18

On this joyful evening/night/day, we are celebrating the day of the birth of Jesus. We share the Joy of Mother Mary, we share the joy of St Joseph, we share the joy of the Shepherds and we share the joy of the Angels.

For four weeks now we have been preparing to celebrate this blessed day. Through four Advent weeks we have been listening, reflecting, praying about the expectations of a people that walked in darkness. It was a time of hope, hope expressed in those magnificent messianic oracles of Isaiah, visions of universal peace when there would not only be no more war and not even preparations for war. Spears and swords, instruments of death and destruction, would be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks, farm tools that cultivate the fruits of the earth and give us life.

 It was a time of promises yet to be fulfilled, a time of eager longing and expectation, a time of hope, that this could be a better world and that something great and wonderful would happen to let us know that God continues to be faithful, that God has not abandoned his people, and that God would break into our sad and sorrowful world with proof of a love beyond all expectation. Christmas is the fulfillment of those expectations. However, this fulfillment is not totally here. Though, Christ came into this world and fulfilled his mission of bringing peace to this world, only when he and his message are accepted and appropriated in each one’s life that fulfillment of the promise will remain incomplete.

 

Now, Why did God become man? Pope Benedict in one of his Christmas homilies said here is why.  

In the Credo there is a line that on this day we recite on our knees: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven." This is the fundamental and perennially valid answer to the question -- "Why did the word become flesh?" -- but it needs to be understood and integrated. The question put another way is in fact: "Why did he become man 'for our salvation?'" Only because, we had sinned and needed to be saved?

Blessed Duns Scotus, a noted Franciscan theologian, regards God's glory as the primary reason for the Incarnation. "God decreed the incarnation of his Son in order to have someone outside of him who loved him in the highest way, in a way worthy of God." This answer, though beautiful, is still not the definitive one. For the Bible, the most important thing is not, as it was for Greek philosophers, that God be loved, but that God "loves" and loved first (cf. 1 John 4:10, 19).

 

Christ did descend from heaven "for our salvation," but what moved him to come down for our salvation was love, nothing else but love. Christmas is the supreme proof of God's "philanthropy". John too responds to the why of the Incarnation in this way: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever should believe in him would not die but have life everlasting" (John 3:16).

So, what should be our response to the message of Christmas? The Christmas carol "Adeste Fideles" says: "How can we not love one who has so loved us?" There is much that we can do to solemnize Christmas, but the truest and most profound thing is suggested to us by these words. A sincere thought of gratitude, a feeling of love for him who came to live among us is the best gift we can give to the child Jesus, the most beautiful ornament in the manger.

 

The first to hear about his birth were shepherds, poor people, looked down upon by others because, despite the importance of their occupation, it was one that violated the intricate regulations of ritual purity, and so they were excluded from the synagogues and from temple worship. A major theme of Luke’s Gospel will be Jesus’ mission to the poor and the outcasts. He was one of them. He would be rejected by his own. There was no room for them in the inn, so he was laid in a manger.

Interestingly in Saint Luke’s short account of the birth of Jesus this manger is mentioned three times. We are told that Mary laid her infant in the manger. The shepherds are told that it is a manger which will be for them the key to identifying new born saviour. And it is when they reach the unlikely scene of a new-born in a manger that they recognize in this the person of the saviour, the Messiah and Lord.

The manger is thus a sign, not just for those mentioned in the Gospel narrative but also for us. When we look at the manger this evening what is it pointing to in today’s world? The manger is first of all a reminder that God tells us that if we want to understand who God is, then we have to look first of all at the humility of Jesus’ birth. The God of power and might appears in our midst without any of the trappings of what power and might mean in our terms. When we recognize that Jesus is born as an outsider, then we realize that God must be different to what we think.

The mystery we celebrate today is not just a historic occurrence that happened once two thousand years ago. The Incarnation, the enfleshment of the Word of God, is a mystery that is still with us. How does this mystery become real in the lives of each and every one of us?

Listen to what St. Theresa of Avila has to say on the subject: Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.

It’s Theresa’s insight into the mystery of the Incarnation and how it continues in our lives today. After all, as St. Paul so strongly insisted, we are the Body of Christ. Since that is so, then, it is in and through us that the Incarnation remains actual, that the presence of Christ is manifested in our world today.

Since God took on our human nature, we now share in God’s own nature. There is in each and every one of us at least a spark of the divine. How do we best celebrate the birth of Jesus? By accepting so great a gift, by letting that spark shine, by using our heads and hands and hearts to show the world the compassion that was born two thousand years ago but is still with us. Jesus is still Emmanuel.

May the peace, the joy, the love, the wonder that this day celebrates be yours today and every day of your lives. Amen.