“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14).

Today, Christmas Day, is what we have been preparing and anticipating for all of Advent. We celebrate today that the Word, Logos, in the Greek, who was, who is, and who always will be, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, has become human while remaining fully divine. We are the minutest of minutest speck of specks present in the whole of the cosmos. And yet, we are graced with each breath we take to be intimately known by God our Father. He loves us so much that he sent his Son to us to become a human being for each and every one of us, each individual person, so that we in turn can become one with him. He became human that we might become divine through our participation in his life.

The Mystery we celebrate today is that this Word, did not just appear to be a man for a time and cast off his humanity like a cloak. The Son was conceived in the womb of Mary, developed as you and I did, and when born let out a gasp and a cry indicating that our Savior was born to us in a unique time and place. Joseph and Mary gazed in wonder at the gift of their Son, the gift of the Incarnation for the whole world.

Christmas Day and the season that follows is the celebration of new life. Not just the birth of any baby, but through his coming into the world, a new beginning for humanity and creation. We do not just celebrate the baby who would become a great teacher and moral mentor, but the coming of our Savior and the truth, the reality, and the hope that although we may be wounded and even broken, we have not been undone, not unmade, not destroyed. We are not worthless to be tossed away, but we have been saved from our traumas, fears, doubts, insecurities, and freed from our slavery to sin. God’s grace is greater than our sins, suffering, wounds, our worst mistakes, misjudgments, and most grievous faults. We are loved more than we can ever imagine!

The Word who became flesh, was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” (John 1:2-3). Jesus, the Son, the Word, knew each of us before we existed. For all – all things came to be through him and everything that he created is good. We as human beings are very good. That means each of us exist as an outpouring of God’s infinite love. We may have trouble believing the truth of who and whose we are because we see on full display that we continue to be a world at war, even in the land of Jesus’ birth. We witness constant acts of inhumanity, injustice, and the fallen nature of our humanity in just a recap of the nightly news.

Yet even while these and so many other challenges both far and away as well up close and personal are happening, these dire episodes of life are not the truth, not the reality that God has intended for us. That is why we began to celebrate last night and continue this morning that “A light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it” (Jn 1:5). This is a day to hope, rejoice, to reconcile. A day to recommit to the Light, to the baby who would later call himself, “the way, and the truth, and the life” (cf. Jn 14:6).

This is a day to embrace the gift of the promise of our humanity, the gift of our diversity and interconnectedness, the gift of our families, biological and in all but blood, as we embrace this baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. We are one body in the Christ child.

Jesus, the One who saves, is our hope. We can trust in him. Change and healing happens by first allowing him to forgive, redeem and transform us. As we surrender to him, trust in and receive his love, we are invited to reach out, not in some abstract way, but to share his love and healing touch person to person as Jesus does with us. In so doing, we reflect and spread the Light we have received.

Jesus shows and imparts to us the truth and realization that: “We cannot save ourselves. We can only open ourselves to the hope that comes to us from without, from others, ultimately from one Other” (Lohfink 2014, p. 255). The One other who was willing and continues to be willing to come close, whose birth we celebrate today. The One who is Jesus: “The Light of the human race” (Jn 1:4).

Photo: From our family to yours from St. Philip Catholic Church, East Windsor, CT – Christmas Vigil Mass.

Lohfink, Gerhard. No Irrelevant Jesus: On Jesus and the Church Today. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014.

Link for today’s Christmas Day Mass readings from the Mass of the day for Monday, December 25, 2023