Christmas: God's Special Intervention in the World

 Christmas Day: December 25, 2021

Readings (of Midnight Mass): Isaiah 9:1-7 | Titus 2:11-14 | Luke 2:1-14

(Crib at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore 2021)
To listen to my audio-video reflections on YouTube please click here

  “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” With these beautiful words of Angels, we begin this great festivity of Christmas. As the global Christian community enters into this great mystery of God becoming human, we are invited to contemplate this mystery and draw some profit for our spiritual well-being. 

1. Christmas: From Ordinary to Extraordinary 

On this Christmas, we are commemorating a very ordinary and extraordinary event in human history that is the birth of God amongst us as a human baby. Let’s take the ordinary first: Can we imagine that seen of Mary, Joseph and little baby in an unknown city of Bethlehem in a cowshed and the baby is just born. This family from Nazareth could not get a place because people were not generous enough to say “yes” to what they were asking for, a place to stay. And now the baby is laid on a manger while cows or goats and their donkey are watching this scene. We can see the vulnerability of Joseph, the husband of Mary for having failed to give a modest place and privacy to his wife so that she could give birth to a child in a normal, anxiety-free place. 

From the ordinary event let’s go to the extraordinary. It is the event where God is born taking the form of a human person but in a very hidden and poor situation. God has said yes to being born in such a homeless state and pathetic situation. The child is going to lead us to salvation, is going to show the path of righteousness, and a path to God. 

2. Christmas: A historical and definite event

The event of Christmas which took place 2000 years ago is a definite, historical event. No event in human history has made such a difference as this, that is the birth of Jesus, our Messia. The evangelist Luke is full of historiography giving us the names of the rulers of the Roman Empire, Caesar Augustus, Quirinius governor of Syria, even the geography where this event took place, Bethlehem, in the town of David in Judea, in the person of  Joseph from Nazareth in Galilee. Therefore, history becomes a very essential part of our faith journey. The interconnectedness between the faith dimension and historical data gives us ample reasons to believe in this Christic event of humanity. 

Even after two millennia, the scene of Bethlehem still strikes us as if that event has been witnessed by us. This event is part of our history which tells us to go beyond and unite with the rest of the people, nations and cultures to celebrate. The event of Bethlehem brings us together with different nations, colours, cultures and languages. It is this Christ event that tells us that we are Christians and we are brothers and sisters. This reminds us of the words of Saint Paul, “In Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, free or slave, with Christ, we are all made one” (Galatians 3:28). Therefore this event of Christmas unites us all as brothers and sisters with a purpose.

3. Christmas: A salvific event for eternity

With Christ's entry into our world, we are redeemed. The history of humanity is sanctified by our Lord. Our history becomes salvific history. Therefore, everyone is involved in this tremendous mystery of God's Incarnation in our life situations of hunger and wealth, poverty and riches, war and peace, majoritarianism and minority status, life and death, drought and prosperity, tornadoes and gentle breeze, floods and desert, conflicts and harmony. The opposing trends and trivia are merged with the salvific event of eternity. 

God's Word, too, reveals something of his very Self.  We can see it first in the whole world around us, which He has made. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed” as the Jesuit poet priest Gerard Manely Hopkins said.  We live and breathe in a divine atmosphere, a divine milieu (Le milieu divin of Teilhard de Chardin SJ).  But today we celebrate that Word of God entering totally into our world in a very special way and becoming one like us. He not only became a human being; he became “flesh”/sarks.  He entered into the very experience of our lower nature, shared our joys and fears, many of our weaknesses, our anxieties and disappointments and even our sense of hopelessness ("My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Matthew 27:46).

4. Christmas: Becomes relevant through the Eucharist

So why do we celebrate this event in the liturgy or in the sacrament of the Eucharist? Christmas is a Christic event. Therefore it is a memory that we celebrate today with the church. The event of God becoming human which occurred 2000 years ago in Bethlehem is still a memorable event that happens here and now. Christ before the completion of his mission on earth as a human person tells his disciples to continue to celebrate the meal of Eucharist as a remembrance of him. So that he comes to us alive again and again through this mystery. Soon after Mary gave birth to her child, the child was placed on a manger. A manger is a place where the fodder is kept for the cattle or goats. Therefore it is a sign that Jesus Christ is going to be food for all of us. That is why this sign of baby Jesus in the manger and Jesus in the Bread and wine has such a close relationship.

Christmas reminds us that God so loved the world He gave His Son to the world. Therefore love is the center of this great day. That is why Christmas unites us, our families, our friends and our colleagues. God’s love is manifested through us in various ways. In this feast, God’s love and human love are manifested together. 

5. Christmas: An ever-evolving mystery in our world

And now, just as it was in Bethlehem two millennia ago, he is still in the world, the world which was made through him, and the world which still, in large part, does not know him, a world of violence, anger, hostility and, above all, of fear.  Floundering in the darkness of our neon-lit world, many cannot see him, many do not take time to share his vision. He came to his own people and they did not accept him.  The Jews first and so many others after. One of the Fathers of the Church (St Irenaeus) had once said, Gloria Dei vivens homo; vita hominis visio Dei. “The glory of God is the human being fully alive; the life of the human being is the vision of God.” (A.H. IV 20, 7) 

For the Word made flesh is full of "grace and truth" and that is what we are also called to have a share in.  “From his fullness (pleroma) we have all received, grace upon grace...  Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16).  For "grace" is God's unconditional love poured out on us in so many ways.  For "truth" is the total vision of life that comes from God who made us and which has been given to us by Jesus. Let us at this Christmas time, try to count just some of those 'graces'.  And may we be ever more filled with God's grace and truth in the year that is to come. In the words of Oren Arnold, to do this let our Christmas gift to your enemy, forgiveness, to an opponent, tolerance, to a friend, your heart, to a customer, service and to all charity, to every child, a good example, and to yourself, respect.

Prayer: 

Jesus, the Light of the World, as we celebrate your birth, may we begin to see the world in the light of the understanding you give us. As you chose the lowly, the outcasts, and the poor to receive the greatest news the world had ever known, so may we worship you in meekness of heart. May we also remember our brothers and sisters less fortunate than ourselves in this season of giving. Amen.

I wish you, dear reader of my blog, a very happy Christmas to you and your family/community. 

- Olvin Veigas, SJ

23 December 2021