Our yearly celebration of the birth of Jesus is, for most people, an occasion for reliving or revisiting memories or images that are important in nearly everyone’s life.

Those images might be of families coming through a front door, visiting relatives with arms full of packages, Christmas dinner with a table appropriately full of family and friends, or Christmas trees and snow covered houses decorated with colored lighting.

At least these are the kinds of images most captured in our advertising and our current culture.
Still, how often these wonderful and evocative signs miss the central point. The very reason for Christmas is the birth of our Savior. Without some reference to Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Bethlehem, these decorations are hollow.

Rooted in the events that changed the world forever, those images move our minds and hearts to goodness, joy and reconciliation that we constantly need.

Each year, then, Christmas serves as a joyful reminder for us to “get back to basics” about ourselves, about the world and about the meaning of existence. The reminder brings us joy, but it helps to keep away our tendency to get wrapped up in day-to-day life and so lose sight of why we are here.

The story of Christmas is, of course, not that the Son of God came to visit us because we were good. Rather, it was to redeem the world made good by God but fallen under the power of sin leading us all to death.

We need to remind ourselves over and over that sin had separated us from God. The human race, and therefore we, were not simply waiting for the door to heaven to be reopened as if it were inevitable, only a matter of time. Our sins had merited eternal separation from God.

However, because of His love, God would not simply let us go. He came Himself, in Jesus Christ born in that stable, to offer us again the chance to be with Him forever.

How remarkable, then, is the Christmas story itself. God could have sent His Son in power and glory fitting to His divine majesty as He came to rescue the human race.

But each Christmas we remember again the poverty of the Holy Family. We reflect upon the challenges to faith that it recounts such as the uncertainty of Joseph when discovering that Mary was with child.

We seek to understand God’s will in our own lives as we ponder God’s plan for Mary and Joseph to be so inconveniently on the road and then unable to find worthy shelter on the day of Jesus’ coming among us.

Perhaps most especially, in our time and society where the meaning and the love of family is so challenged and even distorted, we are given the model for God’s plan for the family.

Mary and Joseph are first united in their shared loved for God. To read the Gospel stories of the Holy Family is to realize that for both of them, God comes first. Then from that love of God flows their love for each other in the sacred task of being a family.

We can only imagine, and then try to incorporate into our own spiritual lives, the first moment when Mary held her newborn son, sinlessness embracing sinlessness. Here now was the first time that human eyes beheld the Son of God.

Joseph, perhaps nearby, like every father, must have felt his love for them, but also his responsibility to provide for them and protect them.

Through the flight into Egypt and the search for the lost child, the family’s love and commitment is tested and confirmed.

It is good for us at this Christmas time, not only to give thanks for the knowledge of God’s love that we have been given. We do well to recall those for whom this time of year is challenging.

With Pope Francis, we think of the poor, especially those struggling to get by. Please join me in prayers for all of those in prison, for whatever reason as I celebrate Mass again for inmates on Christmas morning.

Let us be reminded of all of those, especially our fellow Christians from the Middle East, who have been forced to flee as refugees this year. That tragedy continues and deepens, especially with the horrific events taking place in Syria.

Back to basics means, above all, giving time to Jesus. Attend Mass. Pray, thanking Him for His love not just for the world but for each of us.

“For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16).

May you and your family have a Blessed Christmas.