Christmas is about what happens to us when we die. It is the feast
of the greatest hope imaginable, because it tells us two things:
First, that what all of us want—happiness—awaits us if we choose
it. Second, that we have infinite worth and value in God’s
eyes, regardless of how our life turns out. That is what we
celebrate at Christmas.
The birth of Christ is the beginning of a great event that really
has three parts. The Son of God comes among us, to live as one of us
and experience the human condition with all its difficulties; to
teach us about God and why we are here; and ultimately to sacrifice
himself for us, so that we can reach that happiness.
This year alone we have buried 16 people from this parish and that
doesn’t count all the people who died here and were buried
elsewhere. If the Son of God hadn’t come among us and died for us,
none of those people could be with God in heaven. That is our
destiny, but it is only possible because of the birth, life, death
and resurrection of Jesus. That means that Christmas is the feast of
the greatest hope imaginable.
It also tells us something that we find hard to grasp; that is,
that we have an infinite value and worth in God’s eye’s,
regardless of how our life turns out. It means that God will do
anything to get us to heaven. We generally tend to think that if we
really get our act together and if we become holy enough, that then
we will be acceptable to God. That is not what God teaches us. God
teaches us that He loves us totally and completely, as we are right
now. We may think of ourselves as failures, or disappointments in the
world’s eyes, but that is not how God sees us. Think of a little
child. No matter how much that child makes a mess of things, you
don’t love them any less. You love them just because they exist.
There is a Jesuit priest called Fr. Greg Boyle, who for the last
thirty years has worked in the toughest gang-land areas of LA. He
wrote a book called, Tattoos on the Heart: the Power of Boundless
Compassion. Up to the time he published the book in 2010, he had
already buried 167 young people, from gangland shootings. In the book
he talks about the fact that most of the young people who end up in
gangs, really have little else. Most of them have grown up in homes
with no parents, or with parents so wrecked by addiction that they
might as well not be there, or of such violence that they have left
and lived on the streets. They end up in gangs because the gangs
provide them with a sense of belonging; a family of sorts. He says
that they don’t plan their futures; they plan their funerals. Young
women often want to get pregnant early, so that they will have the
experience of having a child before they get killed. Most of them
don’t expect to make it past 20.
Fr. Greg helps them to see that they are valued, that they have
worth and that they are not failures. He says that so many of them
have come into his office and just cried, saying that they are total
failures and they live in shame. But once he takes an interest in
them, learns their name, helps them to see that he has an interest in
them, they begin to change and many of them then leave the gangs and
even get jobs. Once they begin to feel loved and valued, their life
starts to turn around. He has now set up an organization called
Homeboy Industries.
Many of us are often afraid that we will not be good enough to get
to heaven and that God might refuse us. We even joke about meeting
St. Peter at the gates and him going through the log-book of our
life, to see if we meet the grade. That is not what the Lord tells
us. What the Lord tells us is that He has made it possible for all of
us to get to heaven and the only reason it won’t happen is if we
turn our back on God and we accept or reject God, by the way we live.
Pope Francis, when he was a much younger priest and head of the
Jesuits in Argentina, made some very difficult choices during the
military dictatorship in Argentina, resulting in at least two Jesuit
priests being arrested and tortured for several months. One forgave
him the other did not and considered him a traitor up to his death.
He made bad decisions with very serious consequences. Years later the
Lord made him pope. Yes, I said the Lord made him pope. Why
would God choose someone who had betrayed other priests, even if he
didn’t intend to? Why would God choose a failure? Because he
was not a failure. He is a human being who made mistakes. Why did he
choose St. Peter who also betrayed him? because he saw the greatness
in him, just as He does in us. God sees the greatness in us. We are
beautiful in his eyes, regardless of the mistakes we have made. And
that is why He has made it possible for us to have eternal happiness
when we die. And that is what we are celebrating at Christmas.
'The Word was made flesh and lived among us'.
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