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December 24, 2022Every great story revolves around change happening within a person or a group of people, or at least a revelation of who that person was all along. Without transformation and deep change a story might be amusing, entertaining, or many other things, but it will not impact us deeply, because it does not touch the deepest part of ourselves, that is, our identity. As we gather to celebrate Christmas as a parish family, we do so fundamentally because Christmas tells us, along with the story of Easter, who we are. Much of the world celebrates Christmas because of custom, and many of these customs are built on consumerist ideals. Others may celebrate Christmas out of a sense of obligation, either to their families or to their traditions. These things are fine in as far as they go, but they are but a sad shadow of what Christmas is meant to be.
Before we revel in the Paschal mystery of Easter, the reality that Jesus loved us enough to die for us, we should first live out the reality that Christmas reveals to us: When we were still mired in sin and slaves to death, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to free us. As we hear in the Christmas hymn O Holy Night, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.” Wounded and broken by sin, subject to death, humanity longed for a Savior that we did not deserve, but desired nonetheless. In that state, God entered time and united His nature to ours to undo the ravages of disobedience that He never wanted for us.
