Christmas
The Joy at Christmas: God Pitches His Tent Among Us (John 1:4)
To All the Parishners of the Epiphany of the Lord
Gaudete! Gaudete! Christus Est Natus Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete: Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is Born of the Virgin Mary, Rejoice! The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love. His heart, then, is not merely a symbol for some disembodied spiritual truth. In gazing upon the Lord’s heart, we contemplate a physical reality, his human flesh, which enables him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, like ourselves, albeit fully transformed by his divine love. Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we need to keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love. The image of his heart of flesh helps us to do precisely this. [Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter, Dilexit Nos, Paragraph No. 60.]
This is Christmas: At Christmas, we celebrate the Nativity of the Lord in the flesh. The mystery of the Birth of Our Lord is not only that Jesus’ divine nature enters into the smallness of human infancy and birth, but that Jesus’ human heart and emotions become the sacrament of his infinite divine love. In the Immaculate womb of the Blessed Virgin, time and eternity meet, truth and peace kiss, and the long reign of sin and death is conquered. The New Eve, Mary, gives us the New Adam, who is Christ. Our weak frail human nature, at the Nativity of the Lord, is caught up into the eternal Godhead.
The Incarnate LOVE: God becomes one like us in all things but sin. Nothing human is foreign to him. He knows our pain, our fear, our suffering. He who did not know sin becomes sin itself. The same Christ who is born in the wood of the manger, poor and naked, wrapped in cloths, is the same Christ who died on the wood of the Cross, poor and naked, bloodied, bruised, derided, cursed, defiled, as the Stabat Mater reminds us. This child, born to us, unto us a Son is given, is a promise and a pledge, but also a challenge. This Christmas, bathed in Love’s pure light, may we accept this challenge. God pitches his tent among us (John 1:4)
The Nativity Scene narrates that: while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she [Blessed Virgin Mary] gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:6- 16.) Rejoice at the Joy of Christmas!
Hence, firstly, Mary places Jesus in a manger (Lk 2:7); secondly, the angels tell the shepherds about a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (v. 12); and finally, the shepherds, who find the child lying in the manger (v. 16). In order to rediscover the meaning of Christmas, we need to look to the manger. Through the manger, at least, three things, are noticed: closeness, poverty and concreteness of the Child of Nazareth. God pitches his tent among us.
Closeness: The manger serves as a feeding trough, to enable food to be consumed more quickly. In this way, it can symbolize one aspect of our humanity: our greed for consumption. While animals feed in their stalls, men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbors, their brothers and sisters. As always, the principal victims of this human greed are the weak and the vulnerable. This Christmas too, as in the case of Jesus, a world ravenous for money, ravenous for power and ravenous for pleasure does not make room for the little ones, for so many unborn, poor and forgotten children. We could think above all of the children devoured by war, poverty and injustice. Yet those are the very places to which Jesus comes, a child in the manger of rejection and refusal. In him, the Child of Bethlehem, every child is present. God was born in a manger so that you could be reborn in the very place where you thought you had hit rock bottom. God reveals his closeness by pitching his tent.
In the manger of rejection and discomfort, God makes himself present. He comes there because there we see the problem of our humanity: the indifference produced by the greedy rush to possess and consume. There, in that manger, Christ is born, and there we discover his closeness to us. He comes there, to a feeding trough, in order to become our food. God is no father who devours his children, but the Father who, in Jesus, makes us his children and feeds us with his tender love. He comes to touch our hearts and to tell us that love alone is the power that changes the course of history. He does not remain distant and mighty, but draws near to us in humility; leaving his throne in heaven, he lets himself be laid in a manger.
Poverty: The manger of Bethlehem speaks to us not only of closeness, but also of poverty. Around the manger there is very little: hay and straw, a few animals, and little else. People were warm in the inn, but not here in the coldness of a stable. Yet that is where Jesus was born. The manger reminds us that he was surrounded by nothing but love: Mary, Joseph and the shepherds; all poor people, united by affection and amazement, not by wealth and great expectations. The poverty of the manger thus shows us where the true riches in life are to be found: not in money and power, but in relationships and persons. Rejoice!
Concreteness: The manger speaks to us of concreteness. Indeed, a child lying in a manger presents us with a scene that is striking, even crude. It reminds us that God truly became flesh. As a result, all our theories, our fine thoughts and our pious sentiments are no longer enough. Jesus was born poor, lived poor and died poor; he did not so much talk about poverty but to live it, to the very end, for our sake. From the manger to the cross, his love for us was always palpable, and concrete. From birth to death, the carpenter’s son embraced the roughness of the wood, the harshness of our existence. He did not love us only in words; he loved us with utter seriousness! It was a concrete, tangible and credible gesture. Rejoice!
Consequently, Jesus is not satisfied with appearances. He who took on our flesh wants more than simply good intentions. He who was born in the manger, demands a concrete faith, made up of adoration and charity, not empty words and superficiality. He who lay naked in the manger and hung naked on the cross, asks us for truth, he asks us to go to the bare reality of things, and to lay at the foot of the manger all our excuses, our justifications and our hypocrisies. Tenderly wrapped in swaddling clothes by Mary, he wants us to be clothed in love. God does not want appearances but concreteness. May we not let this Christmas pass without doing something good, brothers and sisters. Since it is his celebration, his birthday, let us give him the gifts he finds pleasing! At Christmas, God is concrete: in his name let us help a little hope to be born anew in those who feel hopeless! Rejoice!
Our Prayer at the Crib: Jesus we behold you lying in the manger. We see you as close, ever at our side: thank you Lord! We see you as poor, in order to teach us that true wealth does not reside in things but in persons, and above all in the poor: forgive us, if we have failed to acknowledge and serve you in them. We see you as concrete, because your love for us is palpable. Help us to give flesh and life to our faith. We ask this in the name of the New Born Child Jesus at Bethlehem. Amen!
I wish each and every one of the family of Epiphany of the Lord a Blessed and a Joyful Christmas. I promise to remember all of you at the Altar of the Midnight Christ-Mass. May the New Born Child Jesus Bless each one of you!
Gaudete! Gaudete! Christus Est Natus Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete:
Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is Born of the Virgin Mary, Rejoice!
Your Pastor, Fr. John Peter Lazaar SAC
Fr. Clemet Sahaya Anand SAC