It’s
Christmas Eve, I have two Masses and a Christmas party tonight, and guess how I
spent my afternoon: cleaning
windows. No, it’s not a peculiar Meyer family
tradition, and it’s not because I prefer the smell of Windex over pine trees
and gingerbread. I cleaned windows this
afternoon because my windows were dirty – very
dirty; spray twice, let it soak in and scrape with a fingernail kind of dirty. Like most, I don’t love washing windows, but it
did give me a little time to think, which I do appreciate. So while scrubbing off a year’s worth of
grime from my windows, I thought about tonight, tomorrow, and Christmas in general. You could say, washing windows gave me a
little time for Christmas reflection.
I
started off reflecting on the various readings for the Christmas Masses. In the Catholic tradition, we celebrate Christmas
with four Masses – the Vigil Mass; the Mass During the Night; the Mass at Dawn;
and the Mass During the Day – each with its proper time and its proper
readings. I love that we have four
different sets of readings on Christmas, and as I reflected on them this
afternoon, I noticed something interesting. The Gospel for the Vigil, the first Christmas
Mass, is Matthew 1: 1-25, informally known as “Matthew’s begats.” This passage traces Jesus’ genealogy from Abraham
to Joseph and Mary, clearly demonstrating Jesus’ humanity. By contrast, the Gospel for the Mass During the
Day, the last Christmas Mass, is John 1: 1-18, which proclaims Jesus’ divinity:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Thus, from the first Christmas Mass to the last, we find in Christ the
marriage of humanity and divinity and the road map for our own divinization: our return to union with God from our sinful
human state.
That’s
what Christmas is all about. Knowing full-well
that we could never free ourselves from the sinful chains that bind us, God sent
his only Son to reconcile humanity with divinity, coming in human form to teach
us that God’s ways are better than our ways, to show us that humanity and divinity
are meant to live together in peace, and to lead us to God’s Kingdom. God, in his Wisdom, didn’t eliminate suffering,
pain and death (at least not yet); rather, he chose to suffer with us. Through Jesus Christ, God got right down in the
muck with us to drag us out, clean us up, and lead us to the eternal banquet in
heaven. That’s the program, but it’s up
to us to stick with it, to clean ourselves up through the grace of God, so that
we can achieve “that fully divinized human glory of which the child was only
the promise.” [1]
Somehow, cleaning windows became a
spiritual exercise. As I stepped back to
admire my work on a large plate glass window, I noticed how much nicer a clean
window looks than a dirty window. I
could see through it almost as clearly as if there were no window standing
between me and the great outdoors. Sunshine
gleaming through another clean window reflected back into my eyes, and the
objects behind me danced before me, as in a mirror. Then, I noticed something interesting. I saw myself in the window. There I stood with rays of light glimmering around
me, no longer cloudy and distorted by a year’s worth of grime, but clear and
crisp, just as God created me to be. I
was pleasantly surprised that I could still look that good. It was an early Christmas gift and a fitting
end to a busy day cleaning windows. It was
a perfect Christmas reflection.
Merry Christmas!
[1]
Jennifer Glenn, “What Child is This?” Assembly,
vol. 11:2 (Notre Dame, Notre Dame Center for Liturgy).
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