Christmas Morning

                It’s amazing to think how much Christmas morning has changed during my lifetime.  From the lyrical tiny tot with my eyes all aglow of my earliest Christmas mornings, to the whiny snot with my eyes all a-glare of my skeptical, present-hungry teenager years, from my first Christmas with my wife, where every gift seemed to be an ornament emblazoned with “Our First Christmas,” to the lump-in-the-throat blessing of watching our own small children explode with excitement at the sight of their presents under the tree, it seems like every Christmas morning of my 51 years has been somewhat different. 

                Some things about Christmas mornings have been constant over the years, though.  I’ve been fortunate to have been “home for Christmas” every year, no matter where home may have been at the time.  I’m blessed with family and friends who, though not always physically present on Christmas morning, always extend their Christmas greetings via cards, phone calls and now texts and social media postings.   Last, and certainly not least, I have received socks and chocolate every Christmas for about as long as I can remember.  My family obviously knows me well as a heavy user of both – dark chocolate, if you’re taking notes.  All of these things, of course, could change, so I cherish them every year while they last. 

There is one thing about Christmas morning that will never change – the unwavering feature of every Christmas since the first:  On Christmas morning “a child is born, a son is given: and the government shall rest upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called  Wonder Counselor, mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”  (Isaiah 9:6)  Every Christmas morning, God’s Word is made flesh and dwells among us to share in our humanity so that we may come to share in his divinity.  Every Christmas morning, indeed, every day of our lives, the birth of the Christ Child offers us a new dawn, a new beginning, a second, third or even fourth chance.  In short, the birth of the Christ Child offers us hope. 

          My wish for you and your families on this Christmas morning is that the hope of the Christ Child may always be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.  Have a Blessed Christmas Morning, now and all the days of your life.

Christmas Mourning

                While skating through various social media outlets, I found several posts nestled among the eggnog recipes, glittery angel babies and videos of tiny tots with their eyes all aglow that didn’t fit the typical holiday mold.  They were sad posts:  posts about missing loved ones, holiday depression and dreading Christmas.  It seems like 2016 has been particularly hard on people for lots of reasons.  It seems like a lot of people are dealing with Christmas mourning.

                From the commercials, to the decorations, from the parties to the caroling, everything about Christmas tells us that we’re supposed to be happy.  But life can be tough, and the challenges of life don’t go on holiday just because it’s Christmas.  I’m sure we’ve all experienced Christmas mourning at one time or another:  perhaps the first Christmas after the loss of a loved one, or during a persistent illness; maybe when we couldn’t afford Christmas gifts because money was tight, or a time when we spent Christmas alone.  The fact is, Christmas isn’t necessarily the “Hap-, Happiest Season of All” for everyone.

                So what do we do about Christmas mourning?  Well, a good first step is to acknowledge that Christmas mourning is real.  People really suffer – even on Christmas – and it’s ok not to be jolly every second of the day from Santa’s arrival in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade until the Magi depart for their own land on Epiphany.  Whether self-imposed or foisted upon us by the well-meaning chap at the company holiday party who can think of nothing better to say than, “Cheer up; it’s Christmas”, the expectation to be happy only exacerbates our woes.  We need to give ourselves and others a break and accept that it’s OK to mourn every once in a while, even if that once in a while may fall on Christmas.

                Second, we should honor our Christmas mourning.  When I was in Deacon School, we were taught that we need to honor every emotion because every emotion is legitimate.  If you’re mad, be mad; if you’re sad, be sad; give each emotion its due.  We take the time to honor our emotions so we don’t repress them in an unhealthy way.  Honoring our emotions, whatever they may be, helps us to deal with them, put them in proper perspective and not allow them to dominate our lives.  Christmas is no different, and in my experience, there’s nothing more therapeutic than having a good cry while the choir sings Silent Night during Midnight Mass!  

Third, and most importantly, we need to remember that we’re not alone.  Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation of the Christ – the moment in history when God humbled himself to share in our humanity, to prove that he is “God with us.”  In Jesus, God shares the fullness of the human experience:  mourning, weeping, suffering, pain and death included.  We’re never alone in our suffering, not just because others are suffering too, but because God himself suffered for us and with us in Jesus Christ.  What a blessing it is to have a God who loves us so much that he joins us in our suffering.  Aligning our suffering with Christ’s passion and death turns our attention to the glory of his resurrection – our sure hope that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

I'm not in a proverbial “bad place” this year, but I know a few people who are.  To them I say, I understand, but God understands perfectly.  Rest assured that a certain poor deacon will be offering his Midnight Mass for your Christmas mourning and may even join you in a good cry while the choir sings Silent Night. 

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:  come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.  Amen

A Personal Invitation

          In the best-selling novel The Shack, by William Paul Young, Mack Phillips goes for a walk with Jesus.  Along the way, Mack awkwardly comments that Jesus isn’t quite what he had imagined.  He thought Jesus would be, well, better looking.  Jesus laughed and said, “Once you really get to know me, it won’t matter to you.”[1]  Jesus extended a personal invitation to Mack to really get to know him.  Today’s readings teach us that Jesus offers that same personal invitation to each one of us, too.

          In our Gospel passage, John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he’s the Messiah, the one who is to come.  Jesus doesn’t offer a simple yes or no answer – he never does.  Rather, he invites John’s disciples to listen to his words and watch what he does so they can decide for themselves.  Each disciple must come to his own conclusion about whether Jesus is the one they’re waiting for.[2]  So Jesus extends to each one of them a personal invitation to really get to know him, to enter into a personal relationship with him. 

          The human experience can best be described as a journey.  We’re always seeking:  seeking truth; seeking justice; seeking peace; seeking love.  In other words, we’re always seeking God.  Whether we admit it or not, “[t]he deepest desire of the heart is to be connected with God,”[3] because it’s only in God that we’ll find all of these things in their perfection.  When we accept anything less, we’re dissatisfied, and we keep on seeking.  But when we enter into a personal relationship with God, we find exactly what we’re looking for, which is exactly what we need.  That’s what Saint Augustine meant when he said, “Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”[4]

          God never stops extending a personal invitation to each one of us to enter into a personal relationship with him – to really get to know him.  So much so that he came to us in human form (albeit apparently not a very good looking human form).  God came in human form so that we could better relate with him and through that relationship share in God’s eternal life.  “Eternal life is a relational event.  Man did not acquire it from himself or for himself alone.”[5]  In the incarnation, humanity and divinity are joined in perfect relationship.  “Through relationship with the one who is himself life, man too comes alive.”[6]  As our first reading and Gospel tell us, through relationship with Jesus, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap and the mute rejoice in joyful song.

Now, it’s true that God personally invites each one of us into relationship with him, but God doesn’t force that relationship on us.  Whether or not we accept that invitation is our choice.  Our challenge is that a relationship with God through Jesus today is necessarily a spiritual relationship– it’s not physical or tangible.  We don’t have the benefit that the Apostles had of seeing Jesus with our own eyes, hearing him with our own ears, and touching him with our own hands.  So God can seem distant; Jesus, mythical; and the Holy Spirit, ethereal.  In the absence of concrete evidence of God’s presence in our lives, we look elsewhere, and we wander.  We wander into the mistaken belief that truth is found only in libraries and laboratories, justice in the courthouse, peace in the halls of government, and love in a puppy, and we’re never satisfied.  Unless and until we take that proverbial leap of faith, unless and until we enter into personal relationship with the one who never stops inviting us, we will never know true happiness.  

So how do we enter into a personal relationship with God?  Well, the first step is to move beyond the images and stories that form our basic understanding of God and invite God into every corner of our lives.  We need to include God in every conversation with our neighbor; thank God for every blessing in our lives; lean on God through every hardship; rejoice with God in every triumph; lead God into the deepest, darkest recesses of our lives and let him carry us out freed from every burden, cleansed of every sin and filled with his everlasting love.  When we consciously invite God into our lives, we’ll soon realize that he’s been there the whole time; we just weren’t paying attention to him.  Like every relationship, building a relationship with God takes time and patience, as Saint James warns us in our second reading.  But I can assure you, the rewards are out of this world.

          That’s what Mack discovered during his walk with Jesus.  Once Mack accepted God’s personal invitation to really get to know him, he realized that what he  knew about Jesus was only an icon, an ideal, an image through which he tried to grasp spirituality, but not the real person who loved him with God’s eternal, boundless love.  By entering into a personal relationship with Jesus, “Mack felt more clean and alive and well than he had since . . . well, he couldn’t remember when.”[7]  God is inviting you into a personal relationship with him, too.  Will you accept?

Readings:  Isaiah 35: 1-6a, 10; Psalm 146; James 5: 7-10; Matthew 11: 2-11

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[1] Wm. Paul Young, The Shack (Los Angeles, Windblown Media, 2007) at 120.

[2] John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers: On Earth as It Is in Heaven, Matthew, Year A (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2004) at 37.

[3] Id. at 40.

[4] Augustine, The Confessions, Book I, Maria Boulding, trans. (New York, Random House, 1997) at 3.

[5] Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth – Holy Week:  From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2011) at 84.

[6] Id.

[7] Young at 122.