According to the calendar, Christmas is 2,000 years old. But according to our faith, Christmas is eternal. From all eternity, God’s overflowing love pointed toward having the eternal Word become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
Soon after God created the universe, he entered it, and immediately light shone throughout the cosmos (Gen. 1:3). John tells us that the Word that became flesh is the light of the world (John 1:1, 4). Our Christmas joy is that we are literally made from the eternally overflowing light and love of God that is present on earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
In today’s darkened world, where it can be so hard to “see” God, we joyfully and gratefully look to Jesus. In him we see God as clearly as we possibly can here on earth.
We say that Jesus came because of our sins. That’s true but it’s not the whole truth. Our faith permits us to believe that he would have come even if we had not sinned. To love is to want to be one with your beloved. Jesus would have come because God, in his overflowing love, wanted to be one with us. He wanted to share our hopes and dreams, our joys and sorrows. The fact that we sinned made it necessary that he come also as our Savior.
Jesus so completely embraces and fulfills us that he is the Alpha and Omega, (Rev. 22:13), the beginning and the end, the fullness of meaning for every person on earth. Like the guiding Star of Bethlehem, Jesus’ Spirit shines within us, spiritually leading us to fullness of life, to become all that God intends us to be, and to help others become all that God intends them to be.
In Jesus, who humbled himself by becoming one of us and by being born in a stable, we can live in self-fulfilling, liberating humility. In the story of the Magi, who brought precious gifts to Jesus, we can enjoy the richness of life that Jesus brings us. In the light and strength of Christ’s Spirit living within us and the world, we can discern the gifts and opportunities that God gives us as our personal vocation, so we can live ever-evolving, spiritually mature lives, taking care never to quench the Spirit of Christ within us (1 Thess. 5:19).
In a special way, the Good News of Christmas is that in Jesus, all of us are united to God and to one another in overflowing love. By becoming one of us, Jesus removed all our possible separations and alienations from God and from one another. To him, all men, women and children of every nation and tradition are equally beloved and respected. In Jesus, the poor, sick, vulnerable and outcast are preferentially one with us.
As members of a world-wide church, Christmas spiritually calls us to overcome all our separations and work for the creative integration of the whole world — ourselves, our families, neighbors, communities, country and beyond — in the spirit of peace, joy and love. The eternal Spirit of Christ, ever born anew within us, empowers us to be people of our own age, to create a contemporary spiritual culture that can renew the face of the earth as we work as prophets and shepherds to bring today’s science, arts, technology, politics, economics, philosophies and religions into peaceful and loving harmony for the good of all people and all nature. The message from the stable and manger is that, with Christ-inspired imagination, intention and commitment, we can truly change the world.
To begin with, we can let the light, joy, peace and love of Christmas shine within us so brightly that we become “transparent” to all who see us. All who look at us can see the Spirit of God present and alive in the way we live and accept all people in love, and in the way we reach out to help all others become fully and freely themselves, as God intends them to be.
In the creative and healing peace and grace that Christmas brings, the entire world can raise its voice and carol a hymn of joy. Emmanuel! God is with us! Jesus is born and we are born anew!
And in our Christmas song to God, the whole world sings,
I am! I am! I am!
The blessed offspring of your fertile Word.
Crescending proclamation of your love.
Loud, macrocosmic praise of Boundless One.
And softly allelu-ing cradle of your Son.
Anthony T. Massimini of Woolwich holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. He can be reached at massimini7@gmail.com
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