Reflections for Christmas 2004

Christmas 2004 is unique, as is every Christmas because we celebrate the presence of a God who dwells among us in our own space and time. It arrives at the end of a year that has had its own hopes and challenges, its disappointments, its fears.  

We create a strange world to celebrate this feast of Christmas. It is one of crisp snow and sparkling icicles, of sleigh bells ringing and carolers singing, of colored lights and decorated trees. Even the creche is sanitized and romanticized to anyone who has seen the sparse and rugged terrain around Bethlehem .  

We feast in a world where 28 people die of hunger every minute, where wars are killing many more. We imitate a snow, which is the dread of the homeless among us. Our lights brighten streets where crime is endemic and the innocent are attacked.  

The tinsel and chatter are illusory in our lives. We delight in the expectation and dreams of the child, cherish the memories and traditions of family Christmases, but death separates us from loved ones and sickness dims what we can do. We chastise one another for our holiday excesses, but forget those whose poverty allows no such choice, whose loneliness permits no gift. It is Christmas and we would have it no other way.  

It all only comes together when we realize what we celebrate. We decorate this world to remind us that we are in God’s world. Our lights proclaim the presence of Jesus, the Light of the world. Our gifts are recognition of the Father’s gift of His only begotten Son. We take symbols of tree and wreath and candle, even the date itself, page in origin, but baptized as it were because we are celebrating a world transformed by God who became one of us.  

The circumstances of His birth are described to us in terms that explain it was in the plan of Providence that a Child be born to us. His birth is described as that of one who was poor and who had as his first visitors the outcasts of society. That was no embarrassment to the new born King, but a message that He came that all people may be brothers and sisters.  

In the true meaning of Christmas all our efforts, however flawed, seek to portray a world that really accepted Christ, Our Savior. Prophets said that the lion would lie with the lamb, the hills would rejoice and the desert bloom. Enmities would cease so that even a little child could lead us.  

Christmas is a time to seek a glimpse of that world, to greet one another as brothers and sisters, to put aside the all too apparent evidence of our selfishness and limitations, to be strengthened.  

A true Christmas cannot mask the realities of life, the poor and suffering, the victims of violence who are our brothers and sisters. We celebrate a true Christmas when, in the warmth and fullness of life and in times of loneliness and loss, we realize the gift of a God whose love is not conditioned and a Redeemer whose promise of love is eternal.  

Our celebration is meant to lighten and brighten these special holidays, to give hope in a sometimes hopeless world. It looks beyond when the cotton snow is soiled and the trees and tinsel discarded, to a deeper realization of the presence of the Incarnate God.  

We observe Christ 2004 in a troubled world but with the conviction that it is God’s world. We pray that like the Infant we may grow in wisdom, age, and grace to build the kingdom of peace and good will that His coming announced.  

Best wishes to you and your families for a blessed Christmas.  

Love,

Father Kelly