Christmas Day

 

December 25, 2023

  

+ I know I say this every year on Christmas Day.

 

But one of my greatest pleasures in life is doing the Christmas morning Mass.

 

Yes, I know.

 

Christmas Eve is beautiful.

 

Really beautiful.

 

But Christmas morning.

 

I don’t know.

 

It’s just just…something special.

 

I think that is what Christmas Day is all about.

 

This sense of it all being just…a bit more holy and complete.

 

This morning, we celebrate the Light of God coming among us.

 

And we celebrate the Word of God—the fact that God still speaks to us.

 

That God still communicates with us.  

 

We celebrate the Light that has come to us in our collective and personal darkness.

 

We celebrate the Light that has come to us in our despair and our fear, in our sadness and in our frustration.

 

And we celebrate this Word that has been spoken to us—this Word of hope.

 

When we think long and hard about this day, when we ponder it and let it take hold in our lives, what we realized happened on that day when Jesus was born was not just some mythical story.  

 

It was not just the birth of a child under dire circumstances, in some distant, exotic land.  

 

What happened on that day was a joining together—a joining of us and God.

 

God met us half-way by sending us the very Son of God.

 

God came to us in our darkness, in our blindness, in our fear—and cast a light that destroyed that darkness, that blindness, that fear.

 

  God didn’t have to do what God did.  

 

But by doing so, God showed us a remarkable intimacy.

 

I love this great quote from the great Dominican theologian, Meister Ekhart:

 “What good is it  if Mary gave birth to the Son of God [two thousand years ago]? I too must give birth to the Son of God in my time, here and now. We are all meant to be the mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.”

 I love that quote and I think it’s very true.

 We need to be the people through whom the Son of God is born again and again in this world.

 We need to bring God into reality in this world again and again.

 Why?

 Because God is a God of love.

 Because we are loved by God.

 Because we are accepted by God.

 Because we are—each of us—important to God.

 We are, each of us, broken and imperfect as we may be some times, very important to God.

 Each of us.

 And because we are, we must love others.

 We must give birth to our God so others can know this amazing love as well.

 Knowing this amazing love of God changes everything.

 When we realize that God knows us as individuals.

 That God loves us and accepts each of us for who we are, we are joyful.

 We are hopeful of our future with that God.

 And we want to share this love and this God with others.

 That is what we are celebrating this morning.

 Our hope and joy is in a God who comes and accepts us and loves us for who we are and what we are—a God who understands what it means to live this sometimes frightening uncertain life we live.

 This is the real reason why we are joyful and hopeful on this beautiful morning.

 This is why we are feeling within us a strange sense of longing.

 This is why we are rushing toward our Savior who has come to visit us in what we once thought was our barrenness.

 Let the hope we feel today as God our Savior draws close to us stay with us now and always.

 Let us continue to be the mothers of God, bearing God within us, revealing God to others, giving birth again and again to God in this world.

 When we do that we can say with all the joy that is within us:

 God is here.

 God is in our midst today.

 God is so near, our very bodies and souls are rejoicing.

 And God loves us.

 It wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t quote the great Anglican poet Christina Rosetti

(my mother’s favorite poet) who put all of this more eloquently than I ever could:

 

 Love came down at Christmas,

love, all lovely, love divine;

love was born at Christmas:

star and angels gave the sign.

 

That is what we are experiencing this day.

 

Love came down.

 

Love became flesh and blood.

 

God’s Love for us became human.

 

And in the face of that realization, we are rejoicing today.

 

We are rejoicing in that love personified.

 

We are rejoicing in each other.  

 

We are rejoicing in the glorious beauty of this one holy moment in time.

 

It really is a glorious morning!