On Christmas Eve and Day, we are drawn back to the events of Bethlehem. By grace we are not simply to recall the mother, foster father and child. We are to participate in that moment spiritually. 

 

We should seek to find ourselves peering over Joseph’s shoulder, jostling with the shepherds and adoring with the Magi.

 

This exercise is important because we need to rouse our faith against the temptation of letting our hearts become drowsy from this world of pleasures and cares of which Jesus warned us in the Gospel of the First Sunday of Advent. 

 

And we rouse our faith by having a personal and deep relationship with Jesus through the Catholic Church.

 

To that end, we need to deepen our recognition of the meaning of that baby in the manger. He is no mere human figure but the Second Person of the Trinity who “was in the beginning with God” (Jn 1:2). 

 

Jesus, at various moments in the Gospels, told us why He had come into this world. We would do well to call to mind why He came for each of us.

 

For example, we read in the Gospel of John, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (Jn 3:17). This means that as we gaze on the newborn Jesus we recall the fall of creation and the resulting death from sin that awaited us. 

 

That first Christmas was the moment when God’s plan to overcome the fall and restore us now was realized. In the human nature of that child, the instrument of the world’s sin became the instrument of salvation.

 

Christ also told us, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mk 2:17). And speaking to Zacchaeus He told us, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Lk 19:10). We are thus personally loved and personally sought by the Lord. 

 

We of course retain our freedom but each of us ultimately must, by our faith and life, choose for or against Christ. 

 

The birth of the Messiah is as personal a message as God could send to let us know that He seeks us out and gives us every help to choose rightly by loving Him in our lives.

 

At another moment, when face to face with Pontius Pilate, Jesus adds yet another element to the meaning of Christmas. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (Jn 18:37).

 

We live in a world and a society that over time has lost its ability and its confidence in being able to identify what is true, what is good. 

 

We sense ourselves surrounded by confusion that breaks down into a claim that each person owns his or her own truth. Of course this would mean that ultimately nothing is really true. 

Jesus overcame the world’s confusion because He is the truth. In Him, and through His Church, we can know what is right and wrong. And knowing what is true and good, our freedom is not restricted, it is enhanced. By adhering to the truth we can know how to love and to choose to live rightly.

 

The image of Christmas, that scene of the Holy Family in the stable on that night, is one of harmony and peace. But in that baby resides the salvation of the world and of each of us and our families and loved ones.

 

Rejoice! Rejoice! To you shall come Emmanuel. A most Blessed Christmas to all!