Christ is Born! Glorify Him!
Today we
celebrate a feast that is gloriously strange and mysterious. For the Eternal Word of God, Who spoke the world into existence,
becomes part of that very world as a helpless baby born in a cave used as a barn.
As angels sing in His honor, the humble shepherds and the wise men from a
foreign land worship Him. A young virgin becomes a mother, not simply of
a son, but of the Son of God. She gives birth to a child both fully
human and fully divine.
Jesus Christ,
an unusual and unexpected Messiah, is born this day to save and bless us.
He is the Second Adam in Whom all the corruption of the first Adam is
healed. He brings us into the life of God by entering into our life in
this world of sin and death. He is born to raise us to the holy, eternal
life for which He created us in the first place in His image and likeness.
The Savior comes to us humbly and
peaceably. He takes the lowest, most vulnerable place for
Himself: born to a Jewish family that lived under the oppression of
the Roman Empire and the cruelty of King Herod. Soon Joseph would
take the Virgin Mary and the young Jesus to Egypt by night, fleeing literally for
their lives. He was born like the children today whose families flee from war
and persecution in troubled nations in the Middle East, Africa, and
elsewhere.
He is King of Kings
and Lord of Lords, but in way totally different from the high and mighty of
this world. He is the Prince of Peace
Who comes to restore and heal His creation without brutal domination or physical
violence. He makes all who believe in Him the sons and daughters of the Most
High—not as slaves, but as children and heirs who share in His divine glory by
grace. That is something no earthly ruler or mere religious teacher could ever
accomplish. Only the Incarnate Son of
God can make us participants in the divine nature, for He Himself is truly
divine and human.
In the good
news of Christ’s birth, we encounter the deep mystery of the Immortal One Who
put on mortality. Out of humble,
selfless love beyond our understanding, the Son of God lowered Himself to
become a human being, “born of a woman, born under the Law,” as St. Paul wrote
to the Galatians. He is not an idea to
be defined or debated about, but a Person Who shares His life with
us. So that we could enter into Him, He entered into us, sanctifying
every aspect of our humanity from the womb to the tomb that could not
contain Him. Nothing human is foreign to
Him, and nothing is rightly human that is not healed, transformed, and
fulfilled by His holiness and grace.
Let us
take the foreign wise men as models of how to respond to the great mystery that
God has become a human being: namely, let us worship Him by uniting ourselves
to Christ as fully as possible in faith and obedience. That is how we will share personally in the
wondrous transformation of the human being that the Incarnate Son of God has made
possible. Because Christ is born, the
peace and joy of God’s kingdom may be ours even as we live and breathe in the
world as we know it. Because Christ is born, we may encounter Him in
every human being, especially the poor, the needy, the stranger, and the outcast.
Because Christ is born, we may participate already in the eternal life for
which we were created in God’s image and likeness.
The only
limits on the blessing of Christmas are those that we place on ourselves.
For the One Who appears as a baby in a manger never forces us or anyone
else. He is the Mystery of Love made flesh for our salvation. We welcome
Him into our lives by choosing to live in ways that reflect the deep truth of
the Incarnation. We welcome Him into our lives by becoming living icons
of the good news of this season. We welcome Him into our lives
by becoming participants in the deified humanity that the God-Man Jesus Christ
has brought to the world.
As we
celebrate this great feast, let us live as those who have become the sons and
daughters of the Father through Him, for now nothing but our own refusal can
separate us from His love. Yes, my brothers and sisters, that is the deep
spiritual mystery of the Incarnation. By
uniting humanity and divinity in His own Person, Jesus Christ has fulfilled our
original calling to become like God. The
door to the Kingdom is now wide open and leads through our own souls, through
our own existence as human beings. In
Him, we find the holy joy for which we were made. There could be no greater cause for rejoicing
this day or any other.
Christ is Born! Glorify Him!
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