CHRISTMAS (DAY MASS)
No room…
Merry Christmas!
Dear friends in Christ, today we give thanks to God as we celebrate Christmas. The light of God has dawned on the darkness of the world, the eternal Word has been born in a flesh like ours. We have received the greatest gift of all -- God’s only Son. Let us celebrate this day and season with joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength.
In the First Reading (Isaiah 52: 7-10) The mood of celebration and joy is evident, as God himself is intervening in the restoration of his land. “The watchmen raise their voice, they shout for joy together, for they see the Lord face to face.” Isaiah invites even the ruins of Jerusalem to rejoice, for the Lord is consoling his people and redeeming Jerusalem. God is here in our midst as we celebrate Christmas.
The Second Reading (Hebrews 1:1-6) traces the revelations of the past as all pointing to the coming of Jesus. God has spoken in many ways and through various means but now he speaks through his Son. That is what Christmas is about, a celebration of the coming of God into our midst.
Today’s Gospel (John 1-:-18) is the prologue to the Gospel, he takes on the Word (Logos) with a deeper meaning and spiritual undertone—the word was made flesh and dwells with us. John declares Jesus as the Word of God who has been from the beginning, and through whom everything was created with nothing created without him. Here we come face to face with a mystery beyond all understanding—God, so powerful and yet so infinitely merciful becoming a man like us, in all things but sin.
Let us return to the manger. The factory made mangers are a thousand times more beautiful than what a regular manger looks like—the kind in which Jesus was laid. A cave on the hillside of Bethlehem, in the midst of goats and rams with an oil lamp, or the bright star for light that night. Feel and smell the surroundings. How did Joseph manage the delivery? With which water was the baby washed? The baby was wrapped in the mother’s swaddling clothes and herself left in the cold. Why was there no room in the inn? Why was there no one to shelter a pregnant woman? But do you have room for God in your own life? Are we not too busy to think of prayer, think of church, think of Mass, think of confession, think of bringing our children to Church?—According to John, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.”
Do you have time and space for those around you? Your husband or wife, your kids and family? Often people who have no time for God, hardly have time for their neighbours. If you have no time for a God who loves you so much, how do you manage to have time for those you should love?
We are often so full of ourselves, that we have no time and no room left for others. Go again and again into the crib. We need the most basic of things in life to survive. We were surviving before many of the things we rely on arrived. Why is it we cannot survive now for a day without them? A matter of priority?
I am also awestruck by the Gospel writer’s remark that there was ‘no room for them at the inn.’ Inevitably the question arises, what would happen if Mary and Joseph were to knock at my door. Would there be room for them? Saint John takes up this comment about the lack of room at the inn, which drove the Holy Family into the stable and he explores it more deeply saying: “he came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (Jn 1:11).
Jesus once told a would-be disciple, “Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head.” At the end of his earthly sojourn, he was crucified outside of the city and buried in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, that’s the Lord, the poor one, yet the maker and giver of all.
The great moral question of our attitude towards the homeless, towards refugees and migrants, takes on a deeper dimension: do we really have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof? St John teaches us further, “To those who did received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”(v.12)
This is what Christmas is all about, he became one of us, that we might become children of God.
Let us pray: Lord, we thank you for your love for us and for coming to live with us. Help us by your grace to accept your love and so become children of God. Amen. May the Almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen
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