At Christmas, God permanently connects with us, inviting us to do the same!
Besides Santa, Old St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, and even Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, who helped steer Santa’s sleigh through a stormy Christmas eve; the true meaning of Christmas is about God becoming one of us. Imagine – our all-powerful God chooses on this day to connect permanently with his beloved human race through his incarnate son, Jesus.
Christmas is the moment in history, when majestic angels serenaded the Savior’s birth with their celestial chorus, while humble shepherds came to adore and pay homage. On that first Christmas morn, God blended miraculously the sacred and the profane, the holy and the mundane, the human and the Divine in his son – a gift to a waiting world.
Through his newly human born son Jesus, God melded together opposing energies which Gaudium et Spes, the document from Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World, describes so well: “He (Jesus) worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will and with a human heart he loved.”
Through his divinity, Jesus shows creation how to live with one another. Jesus bestows mercy on his neighbors, offers compassion to those who wrong him, and gives forgiveness to all who seek to harm him. Jesus, the Messiah, acts for his father when he proclaims to the whole world that his father wants no one to perish, inviting everyone entrance into his kingdom.
This wonderful declaration lies firmly and deeply wrapped within the swaddling clothes of this sleeping infant kept warm in his manger-cradle by love radiating from his parents and the comforting breathe of surrounding animals.
This entire nativity scene displays God’s beauty and love for his cherished creation. We can almost perceive God, a happy father, presenting his son “of whom he is well pleased” to a waiting world needing every gift his son offers.
The wonderful feast of Christmas reveals our God still at work in our world trusting us to listen to his son’s alluring message. This Christmas, as at every Christmas past, we see God confidently waiting for his creation to realize the only obstacle keeping God’s dream from fulfillment is our choosing not to share in God’s dream for us.
God desires this present year to be the Christmas we appreciate his work, enough to connect with him and help accomplish his dream. It would give God, the exultant father of his newborn son a very Merry Christmas!
O Come All Ye Faithful, Joyful and Triumphant!
