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 great worth and value in God’s eyes, regardless of how our life on earth turns out. That is what we celebrate at Christmas.
We tend to see Christmas just as the birth of Christ, which is part of it, but the birth of Christ is the beginning of a great event that took place over 33 years. It has three parts.
1. The Son of God comes among us, to live as one of us and take on the human condition with all its difficulties.
2. To teach us about God and why we are here.
3. To sacrifice himself for us, so that we can reach the happiness that God originally created us for.
Hopefully we will have times of happiness in this life, but it will only be fulfilled in the world to come, but God has created us for happiness. God wants us to find happiness because that’s what He originally created us for. Why? Because God wanted us to share in his joy, just like you want others to share in your joy when you are celebrating something. Our instinct is to invite others to celebrate with us.
If God wants us to be happy, why don’t we have it now? It always seems to be just out of reach. We always think that if I could just get this house, car, job, or have this relationship, then I would find that fulfillment, but it always seems to be just out of reach.
God originally gave our first parents total fulfillment. The story of Adam and Eve is a way of explaining this. It says in the garden of Eden they had every delight. But God also warned them to respect their limits as human beings. Don’t touch the tree of good and evil. In other words, don’t play God, because you won’t be able for it. Don’t be the ones to decide what is good and evil, who lives and who dies, what male and female are. Only God can do this. But they were deceived into thinking they could.
Why did Satan want to deceive them? Because He hates God and He hates God’s creation and he tries to destroy us in order to get at God. We are nothing to him, except a way to get at God. And so he convinced them to take the fruit, to do what God told them not to do and as a result they lost the happiness they had been given. The problem was that they had no way of winning back that happiness. But because God loves us He would not allow things to remain that way. And so God the Son came among us, taking on human flesh and shed his blood to atone for our sins, so that when we die we could reach that original happiness that God intended for us. It is now waiting for us if we choose it. But it is not a given. We must choose it and we choose it by the way we live in this life.
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. In fact God has done everything to make it possible for us to get to heaven. We generally tend to think that if we really get our act together and if we become holy enough, 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. We are never failures in God’s eyes. 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 over 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, because they expect to die young. 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.
He spoke about one instance where he remembered the name of one young man and when he saw him on the street one time, he called out his name, ‘Hey Mike, how are you doing?’ He said the young man was astonished and kept turning back smiling. He couldn’t believe that someone noticed him.
Pope Francis, when he was a much younger priest was head of the Jesuits in Argentina. During the military dictatorship in Argentina he had to make some very difficult choices. One decision he made resulted 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 in God’s eyes. 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. We are never a failure in his eyes. And that is why He has made it possible for us to have eternal happiness when we die, because He wants us to be with him. And that is what we are celebrating at Christmas.
‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’
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