Christmas 2019

What did Adam say to his wife on the night before Christmas?

The answer: “It’s Christmas, Eve!”

From the Catholic Digest:

in 1980, on the day before Christmas, Richard Ballenger’s mother in Anderson, South Carolina, was busy wrapping packages and asked her young son to shine her shoes. Soon after, with the proud smile that only a seven-year-old can muster, he presented the shoes for his mother’s inspection. His mother was so pleased that she gave him a quarter.

The next morning, on Christmas day, as she prepared to go to Mass, the mother started to put the shoes on. As she slipped her foot in one of them, she noticed a lump in it. Taking the shoe off, she found a quarter wrapped in paper. Written on the paper, in her son’s childish handwriting, were the words, “I done it for love.”

The gift has arrived—wrapped in swaddling clothes. Somewhere in the manger and crib we can imagine a wadded up note that explains it all:

“I did it for love.”

The good news of Christmas is this: it doesn’t matter if you’re paying attention or having difficulty speaking the language of faith into our celebration.

It does not hinge on you doing yet one more thing in this busy season because the meaning of Christmas is not dependent on your action or inaction.

You see... the manner in which the Word became flesh independent of any human consultation or fanfare.

All things were created through him. Reality inheres in him.

Yet, he enters the world homeless.

Born on a cool night so that he had to be wrapped in cloths.

The real good news of Christmas is that Jesus was born in a barn.

The hope of the ages lying in a manager.

As one writer said, imagine Jesus born in a back alley behind the Safeway store, where Joseph has made a bed for Mary and Jesus between the dumpster and a wall as protection from the wind.

The good news of Christmas is that God does not turn away from our broken and hurting world. He sent Jesus to enter into the world's pain and ours, to bring light and hope and joy and peace and new life.

It should be difficult to ignore. Yet it has to be testified to because John 3:19 says: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

Even so, John 1:5 says: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

"Do not be afraid," the angel says to the shepherds "for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy: to you is bom this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."

The magic of Christmas is that the shepherds had first feared.

For theirs was the one true fear which first must be embraced in order to enter into the wisdom that alone diminishes other fears.

Fear of God is the fear, that in comparison, all other fears become trivial or meaningless.

As Ralph Martin wrote:

One of the signs that John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila give that we’re growing in holiness is that we’re becoming less and less afraid. We’re becoming more and more free. We're becoming less afraid of suffering, less afraid of death, less afraid of failure, and less afraid of what other people think. We are becoming more confident and joyful in the Father’s Love. We are more able to love, worship, and serve.

"If you know the right thing to fear," a rabbi told his student, "there is no need to fear anything else."

Or as a Christian hymn sings: Fear Him, ye saints, and you will then Have nothing else to fear.

Christmas invites us to receive the gift of the fear of Lord; because it alone enables us to put our hands into the hand of God. As the poem by Minnie Louise Haskins says:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."

And he replied:

"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day.

Amen.