We live in a time and place that is filled with doubt and confusion about important matters. Most especially there is uncertainty about what is true and good. 

 

Even more, many in the modern age consider that what might be right and true and good varies from place to place and person to person.

 

We must hope that the lack of a unifying truth and goodness in the world is not true. If it were, it would mean that as a human race we can never be united since we will each be walking to the beat of our own personal drummer. 

 

More importantly, it would mean that we could never hope to make sense of this life since its reality would be different for each person. 

 

Finally, we could never hope to know anything about a life after death or even if there is such a life.

 

During this recent Christmas season, we celebrated the opposite of such fundamental uncertainty. Each Dec. 25, we celebrate the truth of the historical moment and place when the Son of God entered this world. 

 

There are of course historical proofs about Jesus’s birth. Beyond the testimonies of the Gospels, there is the enduring witness of the Church venerating from the earliest time the places where Jesus was born and where He lived and died.

 

Even more, the very mission of Jesus born in Bethlehem was to reveal to the world the truth. That truth not only binds each of us to God, but it also unites us to each other. 

 

It is with this basis that Jesus could give us the great commission. In the Gospel of Matthew, the final words of Jesus before ascending to heaven were these: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20).

 

By commanding us to bring baptism to all the nations, Jesus is summarizing His teaching that we live in a reality of sin and forgiveness. We are all born into original sin, the lack of grace and union with God that resulted from the rebellion of our first parents. 

 

By baptism, each of us is truly reborn. We are joined to God and His family in a manner that, acting on our own, would otherwise be impossible to us.

 

Further, Jesus told us to observe all that He has commanded us during His lifetime, and then to teach others to do so as well. This is a particular reference to the unity of the moral life to which every person is called by the very fact of our existence. 

 

Because God has made us in His image and likeness, we must live in a way that reflects the truth about Him. We must, for example, be honest in our thoughts and speech, forgiving to those who offend us, and reverential to God Himself who is the foundation and the grounding of our existence.

 

Even for those who have not yet come to faith in Jesus, however, it is possible to recognize how to live morally. Our faith teaches that God has given to every person access to a natural law, “present in the heart of each man and established by reason. … the natural law remains as a rule that binds men among themselves and imposes on them, beyond the inevitable difference, common principles” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1956-57).

 

The natural law means that by reason and honest seeking, every person can attain the end for which God made us. That is eternal life in heaven.

 

By the birth of Jesus, real, true and historical, the way to God has been opened to every person. 

We do not create our own truth, our own way. Rather, the truth of Jesus’ humanity and teaching leads us to the truth of Jesus, seated at the right hand of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

 

That is what joins us to God and to each other.