“Christmas Day” is a great festival that lasts for a whole week, and the season continues into January. The liturgy continues to mark the glorious event of God’s coming to dwell with us. Keep celebrating the joy of the birth of Jesus in your hearts and homes.
This is the joy mysteriously at work deep within us, the joy of the redemption of our humanity that is stronger than all our sorrows and frustrations, all our disappointments and regrets, all our sins. Let us make room for Him, for His joy, for His inexhaustible love that draws near to each of us with tenderness and “longs for us” to welcome Him into our lives.
His presence changes us, saves us, fulfills us and gives meaning to everything. He reveals the Mystery that is the source of our very selves, that sustains us and all things, that draws our hearts as the end of all our searching. He reveals the Mystery that remains what-we-NEED, what we long for, what we cry out for in our anguish, our dissatisfaction, our loneliness, our guilt, and in front of our own death which we cannot escape, which seems to imprison us in its implacable limits, and cut us off from everything that is true, good, beautiful, and enduring.
He reveals that the Mystery that whispers “forever” in the depths of our hearts is not lying to us. He reveals that this Mystery is Eternal Love, and He comes to reveal that we are called to share in the life of this Love that never ends, the life of the One-Who-Is-LOVE, the God who is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God in Three Persons, One God who is eternally a Communion of Love.
Jesus Christ is born! He comes, the Eternal Word through whom all things are made, through whom the “I” of each one of us—our very selves and the root of our freedom—exists in this moment. He comes to share our humanity, to become “one of us,” so that we might become His brothers and sisters, so that we might share in His life as sons and daughters of His Father, filled with the Holy Spirit, children of God and heirs to eternal life. He becomes like us so that we might become like Him, so that we might become alive in the Love of God who fulfills and overflows every aspiration and promise of our humanity, and who overcomes the greatest afflictions of our lives and all the most horrible, incomprehensible evils of human history.
It is too much for our minds to fathom. It seems to make us “dizzy.” How can we understand this? How can we bear it?
But then again, consider our own hearts. Aren’t our hearts too much for us to understand and too much for us to bear?
Christmas is a sign that God will give us this “yes,” that His Holy Spirit will invest the depths of our freedom with a “yes” that is truly our own… if we let Him. Jesus wants so much that we might “let Him” transform our lives. He has come to dwell with us, to stay with us, because He loves us.
We live in hard times, tumultuous times. The near future may seem fraught with perils. We may feel like strangers in a strange world, far from home, perplexed by the brokenness of our lives, estranged from ourselves. But He has come to be with us, and He is our hope!
⭐️Merry Christmas.⭐️
