On Christmas Day, there are three masses that are traditionally celebrated.
Nowadays, there's four with the vigil mass early on the eve of Christmas,
but traditionally there's the mass at night, so-called midnight mass,
and there's the mass at dawn and the mass during the day.
And in both the old rite and in the new rite,
the text for the gospel at that mass is the prologue from St. John's Gospel,
which happens to be in the old rite, the last gospel.
So the first part of St. John's Gospel,
where we talk about the incongruity,
incarnation of the Lord, that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us,
that he existed before time, and through him all things were created.
This is something we celebrate every day of the year,
and in the old rite, it became a solemn part of every single liturgy.
Today's mass, we make it the gospel that is preached on,
because the mystery of Christmas is a mystery which is too good to be true,
but it is true because God, who dwelt in inaccessible light,
has become one of us, has become our salvation,
and has been born of the Virgin Mary in a miracle that never happened before Christmas
and will never happen again.
Christmas is a central event of all of human history,
because through Christmas, God has become one of us.
He has wedded man to God, and we have the hope of salvation.
We have the hope of eternal life, and that eternal life begins even now.
With the presence of Jesus, God with us in history,
through that life that he lived between Bethlehem and Calvary,
and then sacramentally through the Eucharist,
and through his word which is preached to us,
and through him we have hope for all eternity.
Christmas is a phenomenon in history and culture,
I mean the celebration of Christmas,
the celebration of it in the world that is worthy of reflection,
because we decorate, we have family together, we shop,
we do all the things that are associated with the season,
and we see this ongoing struggle in secular culture
between the happy holiday and the merry Christmas,
between realizing the truth,
the truth of the celebration,
or sucking the life out of it,
and leaving nothing but a kind of flashy shell,
which has no real meaning.
And I think very practically there's something that we can do
to keep Christ in Christmas,
and at the same time to evangelize the culture.
I read recently on the internet about a priest,
in Germany,
who wanted to get rid of Santa Claus,
because he thought it was ruining Christmas.
And, you know, to each his own.
I don't have a problem with Santa Claus,
as long as Christ is kept in Christmas.
But in the end I think he sort of said,
I really, my target isn't really Santa Claus,
it's that I just want to wake people up to the fact
that Christmas has been so commercialized,
and Santa's been turned into the giver of all gifts,
and so the focus has been taken off Christ.
And I suppose because he's big,
and he's got this red suit,
he's a good target for attacking the commercialism of Christmas.
But Santa isn't really the problem.
The thing about Christmas is that it's the biggest event
that ever took place,
aside from our Lord's suffering and death on the cross.
It is the central event of all human history.
And those of us who believe in Jesus
believe that this is our hope.
This is our joy.
This is our reason for living,
and our reason for hoping for something beyond this life.
And so it's a huge event.
And it's a huge event in the Western world,
and that's just the way it is.
And the custom of giving gifts,
of being generous at Christmastime,
is in keeping with the reality that Jesus is our gift.
He is the best gift that we could possibly have.
And our gratitude should be expressed by generosity.
And so gift-giving is an appropriate thing.
It's a very appropriate thing.
And the whole thing with Santa Claus and St. Nicholas
was that St. Nicholas was a generous man,
and he was engaged in the corporal works of mercy.
His feast day happens to fall on December 6,
so St. Nicholas was associated with Christmas.
But the reality of St. Nicholas's life was that,
he was in love with Christ,
and he had the spirit of Christ within him.
And he expressed that spirit through generosity towards his neighbor.
And so all of this has gotten tied into the mystery of Christmas.
I think the real way of keeping Christ in Christmas
is not to hijack Santa's sleigh and kidnap him,
but it is to remember this generosity,
and to imitate St. Nicholas
in the true spirit of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
It's a great thing to give our brothers and sisters,
the members of our family and our friends gifts at Christmas time.
There's nothing wrong with that.
We shouldn't let it get out of hand
and overshadow the reality of our celebration.
But perhaps one of the practical ways that we could prevent that from happening
is to really practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy at Christmas time.
To really concern ourselves with the poor,
to extend ourselves beyond the little confines of our own little world,
and extend our charity to those who live outside of it.
Whether those people who live outside of our world are our enemies,
even if they're members of our families,
people that we don't talk to,
people that we haven't forgiven,
or whether there's people around us who are in need
that we've ignored or haven't attended to.
This is where we can really understand
and really inculcate the spirit of Christmas.
It should take the form,
our spirit of Christmas should take the form of our adoration of the Eucharist
and of solemn liturgies
and our focus on the Christ child
and on the way the Christ child comes to us
in the liturgy through the Eucharist.
That should be a central part of our celebration of Christmas.
But we need to remember how our Lord was generous to each one of us
and express that generosity
by fraternal charity.
And that is a way to keep Christ in Christmas
and to keep our focus on the things that really matter.
Because in reality,
the Word has become flesh and has dwelt among us.
And that's the best thing that ever happened to anyone who ever lived.
And it's something that we all need to remember
very practically through our adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ
and through our brotherly love.
© BF-WATCH TV 2021
© BF-WATCH TV 2021