Christmas, 2008

It just doesn’t seem right to celebrate Christmas this year.

After all, haven’t you been reading the newspapers and heard the daily updates of violence in our cities and among our nations. Unemployment is in our families and in our neighborhoods. Pension plans, life savings have taken a nose dive. Department stores are offering pre-holiday discounts to entice those of us who are cutting back on purchasing to come in and spend. Instead of assisting the economy, we read stories of greed that has shoppers trample other shoppers and store employees. Reports tell us it’s not necessarily to get a gift for someone else.

People are losing their homes, their jobs, their savings, their hope.

It just doesn’t seem right to celebrate Christmas this year....when fear abounds and violence escalates, when hope is shaky and darkness seems to penetrate our lives.

So, how can we sing "Joy to the World", decorate, celebrate, participate in this moment of joy?

Yet on this night, we gather in our finery, greet each other with "Merry Christmas" and sing, "O Come all ye Faithful, Joyful and Triumphant". We have sent and received cards that announce "Peace on Earth".

It is, in fact, into this moment, that we welcome the Prince of Peace. Into this moment, so rich with human failure and evidence of our mortality, that we welcome Emanuel: God among us, God with us, God one of us. It is in this moment when our hopes and fears are met in Him tonight.

While the story of Jesus’ birth is sweet and precious, it is also stark and real. He was born in a moment not unlike our own. He did not wait til we "cleaned up our act" or as the 20 somethings say, "until we ‘got it’ ".

Let’s look at the world into which Jesus was born.

Palestine was an occupied country. Taxes were breaking the backs of people. Roman soldiers controlled the masses. Violent revolutions were always a heartbeat away. The gap between the rich and the poor was enormous. Religious and political scandals were common place. Greed and abusive power were normative. ...a time so different from our own; a time so very much like our own.

It was at that moment, the Word became flesh. It is at this moment, in this place, in this time, that the Word again becomes flesh.

Christmas is in the real world!

God does not wait until we "clean up our act"!

This is the way God comes to us: God came not as a conquering King, as was expected, but as one of us. Jesus did not come in a royal procession isolated from the realities of the human struggle, but was placed in a feeding trough right in the middle of human struggle because he would be Bread for the World.

Jesus anchored himself to our world through the common and everyday realities of our lives. Emmanuel: God with us, God among us, God one of us.

Jesus came to insure that we find peace by taking part in our world without peace.

Into the darkness, he brings light. Into despair and fear, he brings hope. Into violence and separation, he brings peace.

Christmas is a reminder that God loves us so much that Jesus came to be one of us, to walk with us, to accompany us, to show us the way, to be Emmanuel: God with us, God among us, God one of us....today and always.

Maybe it doesn’t seem right to celebrate Christmas this year or just perhaps, it’s exactly what we need. For into our world comes the Prince of Peace to offer us gifts of hope and ask us to share them with a world in need.

For, in the words of our Dominican brother, Meister Eckhart: "What good is it that Christ was born two thousand years ago in Palestine if Christ is not born again in my soul?"

What good is it that Christ was born two thousand years ago in Palestine if Christ is not born again in our world today? ...a world desperate for peace, a world hungry for light in the darkness, a world in profound need of comfort and joy, a world that needs you and me to bring peace on earth and joy to the world.

This Christmas may each of us receive the gifts that Jesus offers, peace and joy

and may each of us be bearers of those gifts to our families, to our communities and to the world.

So, in truth, is seems only right to celebrate Christmas this year!

Joye Gros, OP