As usual you can hear the homily here.
I remember one Christmas
day as we were having breakfast my mother heard a child crying and when she
went outside there was a young traveler boy just outside our front door. He had hurt his ankle and could not
walk. It was bitterly cold and he
had only a thin jacket and shorts on while on his feet were a pair of
wellys. My mother brought
him in and sat him down at our table.
She took the boot off the injured foot and checked it for any
injury. Once she had made sure he
was ok, that it was only a sprain and she had strapped it up, she gave him
breakfast. I wasn’t too happy
having a traveler sit at our breakfast table but the memory has stayed with me
and its lesson: charity comes first and one never turns away a human being in
need. It was also a lesson
in the real meaning of what it is to be a Christian.
Do you ever ask yourself what
is this day that we celebrate? Do
you ever wonder what is this day about?
Why do we decorate our houses, give gifts and eat so well? It’s an old tradition that the wood of the Cross was made
from the same tree as was his cradle.
There is a truth in that.
Christ is conceived, born and lives in the shadow of the Cross that He
will suffer and die on. It means
that this day is about what God has done to keep us out of Hell. We are celebrating that God the Father
has sent the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity into the world to save us
from eternal damnation through His death and resurrection. Or least that is what one school of theology says anyway and
they are right but it’s not the whole story. Being intelligent and discerning persons you have chosen to
worship in a Franciscan church and in Franciscan theology the answer to our
questions about this day is much richer.
You see, God made us for Himself. The Son did not become man for us
because we fell but He created us for Himself so that He could become one of us
and unite us to Himself forever.
He did this because of His own goodness and love. Whether we had fallen or not He would
still have become human, still have become the man Jesus for us. We are made for communion with God and
it is through Christ that all creation has its existence. It is through Him that even the angels
are preserved from falling. It is
through Him that every good thing comes to us: every grace, every blessing and
every joy. That our first parents
fell into sin merely gave Him another reason to become one of us and, to go
further, to show us His love for the Father and for us by dying on the Cross.
God could’ve just forgiven
us but that was not enough for Him.
The Son became fully human for us and was born of the Virgin Mary but
that was not enough for Him. He
walked and lived amongst us but that was not enough for Him. He suffered and died on the Cross for
us but that was not enough for Him.
God the Father raised Him from the dead but that was not enough for
Him. He unites us to Himself in
Baptism and Confirmation but that was not enough for Him. He remains with us, really and truly
Present, body and soul, humanity and divinity, in the Blessed Sacrament that we
receive at Holy Communion but that was not enough for Him. He cleanses us of our sins and
sanctifies us through Confession but that was not enough for Him. He has sanctified Marriage and made it
holy, and given us the Priesthood so that we could have Him in the Sacraments but
that was not enough for Him. He
even offers us bodily and spiritual healing in this world but that was not
enough for Him. He has invited us
to take the narrow way of faith into the Kingdom and into Eternal Life with Him
and only that, only that is enough for Him. Only if we are with Him forever in Heaven will He be
satisfied. Our salvation was the
primary objective of His suffering and death and His becoming truly human and
being born is the beginning of that work.
Without His intervention, without His grace we cannot attain salvation
and are destined for the horrors of eternal damnation, cut off from God and
without hope, without blessing of any kind, lost forever. Through His birth as man we are offered
a lifeline, a chance to be truly and eternally happy and at peace. This is what we celebrate and this is
why we decorate our homes, why we give gifts and feast so well. We celebrate the greatest gift ever
given: God has given us Himself.
Since He is so good to us,
since He loves us so much how then ought we to respond? What thanks can one offer the One who
saves you from eternal death?
He has given us the answer: to believe in Him, to love Him and to love
our neighbour, to avoid evil and to do good. These are the simple steps that mean we are following
Christ. These are the steps to
holiness, to eternal life.
If we are not seeking to be
holy then we are not really Catholic.
By holy I do not mean ‘pious’ or ‘devout’; those are good things but not
necessarily signs of holiness.
Holiness is being right with God and our neighbour. To be holy is to seek the will of God
in everything and that is not hard to know – just do the duties of your state
of life while seeking to avoid evil and do good, to avoid sin and maintain
oneself in a state of grace.
That’s it in a nutshell.
The greatest gift we can offer the Lord on His birthday is to seek to do
the will of His Father.
We have been given an
infinite gift in Christ. Like all
gifts it must be unwrapped. If we
really know Christ then we cannot keep Him to ourselves but must share Him with
others above all in the way we behave.
We will want to share Him with everyone, even the traveler, the
immigrant, or the homeless at our door.
So this Christmas day do your best to share the good news that God has
become man for us by how you treat those around you: point your anger away from
others, try to be patient, kind and generous, forgive others and share with
them the mercy God has shown you.
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