The Birth of Christ Changes Everything

For those of us who walk on this side of Christ’s coming in the flesh, it can often be hard to place ourselves in the position of our forebears.  We often lose sight of the magnitude of the Christian mystery to the degree that they had in expectation of His coming. It becomes easy to blur the magnanimity and awesome grace of that event.

The Preparation and the Gift

The Church’s wisdom in giving us the Season of Advent is a blessing. It is a season of slowing down — of breathing, waiting, and listening for the coming of our Divine Messiah, born to set His people free.  Through the Sundays of Advent, the collects and readings take us by the hand to lead us to the humble stable, befuddled and overwhelmed.

On Christmas Eve, we felt the anxiety of St. Joseph longing to comfort and protect his bride and the very Son of God given to his care. At last, amid the sighs and quiet of Bethlehem at midnight, we greeted a most unexpected and heartwarming sight.  The Root of Jesse, the Key of David, the Light of World, and the King of the Nations – He who is our Lord and Savior – came at last to comfort His people and to lift from our shoulder the yoke of our brutal master.

Christ has come, transforming night, day, life, and even death itself by taking upon Himself humanity from His Blessed Virgin Mother, and just as we have been led by our loving Church through the season of Advent, so in Christmastide we are brought deeper into the mysteries of the Life of Christ.

It is precisely this unthinkable reality which God Himself has spoken into existence which we celebrate each year — namely that God Himself poured out a healing, glorious gift upon the world one night, over two thousand years ago.

The Rich Imagery of Christmas

To help us, firstly, come to grips with what the Incarnation means and, secondly, how we might carry that joy with us through the gift of this Christmastide, we can consider a few important scenes and figures in this marvelous story.

First, on Christmas night, scripture directed our attention to an unassuming sight in the Judean countryside. To those shepherds, staring squint-eyed out in the blackness of night for wolves, thieves, or other evils lurking in the shadows to steal their flocks, God sent a blinding light of glory and a herald to celebrate the earth-shaking news. They left their flocks, which were not only their livelihood but their very life, and ran to the place the star lead them, finding Christ in swaddling clothes under the warm and loving gaze of His Blessed Mother and St. Joseph.

The shepherds’ reaction to the message of the angel was both spontaneous and obvious. God had graced them with the Good News, and they believed the Word of the Lord.  The angel further told them what they would find when they made it to Bethlehem, and it would be the sign that the message was true. Luke 2:13 gives us vivid details for the sign they were to see: “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

When the shepherds left the scene, they told everyone they met what they had just seen and heard from the angels in the hill country. It had happened just as they were told.  Luke continues his narrative of the first Christmas, saying that “all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.”

The Marian Dimension of Christmas

It is to Mary we must turn, of course, to fully appreciate Christmas.  It is precisely this image of deep, abiding wonder and meditation that she models for us and which we need to embrace in innocence of heart in order to grasp the riches of this season.

So many today argue vehemently, and not unjustly, that our society has for centuries been hollowing out Christmas. The cultural war cry that we must “keep Christ in Christmas” is fundamentally well ordered. Yet, like most attempts at clarity in an age of mass confusion and muddied minds, the best of intentions fall short. Either they simply crash against deaf ears, or worse, arouse a militancy which further pushes us from one another and widens the chasm between what St. Augustine calls the City of God and the City of Man.

The Heavenly City (an apt image for the Church Triumphant and indeed the unveiling of the glorious Kingdom of God) had on that furtive night stolen into enemy territory and placed no mere special operative, but the King Himself, behind enemy lines.  This, fundamentally, Mary knew by the words of Gabriel who announced the plan of God to her.

Yet, what the work of God’s Anointed One would look like, and the varied fruit of her Son’s life, death, and resurrection were truths too deep for any mind to grasp. So, Our Lady models for us the gift of meditation and rest.  The quietness and rest we see in Mary is not idle, for later we know she is the sort of woman who sees a need and acts (or tells her Son to act!) to meet it.  Instead, this meditation is the most important part of our spiritual life. It is what Brother Lawrence called “the Practice of the Presence of God” or may be commonly called “maintaining a state of recollection.”

Mary, in those early days, when she had barely known her infant Son, clung to the words of the angel, which she had taken on faith, and continued to consider, pray, and, ponder these things.  This sort of ceaseless meditation is what transforms the mundane into the miraculous, and it is imperative we take this lesson to heart. The Holy Family models a simplicity and unity to which all Christian families aspire. Our Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph constantly returned to the heart of God’s promise with a growing awareness of His Presence, particularly in the Person of Christ. This returning and rest formed their bond of love.

History and Hope

As we move through the ephemeral but deeply abiding joys of this Christmastide, we need to remind ourselves of the wonders we have been awestruck to consider in the past. Further, we must rest upon God’s good promises to us.  If our faith is to be of the kind which sees mountains cast into the sea, we must be people who know the One who keeps His promises, exceeding all we ever hoped they could be. Scripture is full of promises, hopes, and the faith of our fathers.

Make sure to dig deep roots into the story of our faith this Christmastide, because a people who do not know where they’ve come from have little hope for tomorrow.  Remember how Israel in exile was sustained by recounting the marvelous deeds of God — how He saved them time and again, turning from wrath to mercy and comfort.  Their common memory took them back to the Patriarchs, to Moses in Egypt, and to the parting of the Red Sea, God’s fundamental act of salvation.

Their recollection brought them also to the Tabernacle and the ascending glories of God’s covenants with His people. By the time of Christ’s miraculous coming in time, there were more, heroic stories of people of vibrant faith thriving against the conquest of Greece in Maccabees.  All these stories (and many more) are woven into the fabric of God’s covenantal tapestry, and from there, the Church’s story has been woven further still.  Countless saints, men and women of faith who clung to the hope of Christ, have added layer upon layer to this incredible shared treasure.

Rejoicing

Spend what’s left of this liturgical season of Christmas rejoicing in the Presence of our incarnate Christ. Do so with feast and song and with those you love, encouraging one another and building joyful, holy memories. Remember, like our Blessed Mother, all that has come to pass and upon which our faith, hope, and charity stands.

Ponder all these things in your heart and cling to the Presence of Christ in our midst.  That Presence is a challenge and a transforming gift, sublimating and augmenting the least of our virtues into a beautiful participation in His life of perfect self-sacrifice.

With the Holy Family this Christmastide, let us cling to the miraculously incarnate Son of God. May we walk deeper in faith with Him leading us to the Heart of the Father where all shall be transfixed upon the Power and the Glory.

O Come, let us adore Him!