One thing that everyone here has in common is the desire for happiness. Whether you consider yourself religious or not, everyone wants happiness. And happiness consists of two things, complete fulfillment as a human being and being with our loved ones again. That really sums up what everyone wants. On earth we get a taste of it, but we are never completely fulfilled and then we also lose the people we love. What our faith promises us, is that the possibility of finding fulfillment and being with our loved ones again, does exist. It is waiting for us if we choose it. We choose it by the way we live. God shows us how to live.
Christmas is the beginning of the event that makes that possible and that event has three parts.
1. The Son of God takes on human nature and comes among us.
2. To teach us about God and why we are here. When people wanted Jesus to stay in a certain place to continue to heal people, he said that it was more important that he kept going to preach to people. Why would preaching to people be more important than healing people? Because to understand why we exist makes all the difference as to how we live.
3. To atone for our sin, so that we can reach the happiness that God originally created us for.
Hopefully we will experience some of that happiness in this life, but it will only be fulfilled in the world to come. In 1858 Our Lady said that to St. Bernadette at Lourdes in France: ‘I cannot promise you happiness in this life, but only in the next.’ And in Fatima when she appeared to three young children, she said, ‘If people knew what heaven was like, they would do everything to change their ways.’
God originally gave us paradise. The story of Adam and Eve explains this. It says that our first parents whom we call Adam and Eve, lived in paradise. They were completely fulfilled. God gave them all they could ask for, but God also told them to respect their limitations as human beings: ‘Do not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,’ in other words, ‘Don’t play God, because you are not able for it.’ But out of hatred for God, Satan tempted them and told them that they didn’t need to listen to God and that they could be like God themselves, without God. The only reason that Satan tempted them to reject God, was out of hatred for God and wanting to destroy what was most precious to God, that is, the human being.
They gave in to the temptation and rejected what God had told them. As soon as they did, their world began to implode, as God had told them it would. Suddenly, they felt shame, guilt, fear, which they had never felt before. They were no longer at ease in God’s presence, or in each other’s presence. They had lost the harmony that God had given them. The worst part of this sin was that there was no way they could undo the damage. They had lost the happiness that God had given them and they could not win it back.
But because God loves his creation, He didn’t leave us in that state and instead He won it back for us. The death and resurrection of Jesus atoned for our sin and reopened the possibility of that happiness again. The coming of Christ at Christmas is the beginning of that event. That means that Christmas is the feast of the greatest hope imaginable, because it is the promise of the happiness that we long for, if we choose it. It might sound strange to say, ‘If we choose it,’ but not everyone does. We choose what God offers us, by being obedient to what commands us and teaches us, just like our first parents. If they had just listened to God, they would have been fine and it is the same for us. If we just listen to what God tells us, then we will also have that happiness when we die, but we must listen and be obedient to God.
Satan told our first parents that they didn’t need to listen to God or obey his commandments and that they could be like God. Satan continues to tempt us in the same way, whispering to us that we don’t need God and we don’t need to listen to God’s commandments. It’s all around us. There are more and more laws which tell us that we need not and should not listen to what God says in the scriptures, even laws which forbid Scripture from being taught and calling it ‘hate speech’ if someone takes offense to it. Notice how public schools are forbidden to teach religion, or even to pray, or have the Commandments visible. So when you find yourself thinking, ‘I don’t need religion. I don’t need to listen to the Bible,’ remember who you are listening to, because that was what Satan tempted Adam and Eve with. He convinced them to reject God and he continues to do the same to us, but it’s done under the guise of liberty, equality and respect.
The whole event of Christmas leading to Easter also tells us something that we find hard to grasp; that is, that we have infinite value and worth in God’s eyes, regardless of how our life turns out. It means that God will do anything to get us to heaven. 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 and God will let us into heaven. 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 we are never a failure 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 since 1986 has worked in some of 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. They are a family of sorts. He says that the young people don’t plan their futures; they plan their funerals, because they don’t expect to live long. 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 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 who came in to him 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. He had value in someone’s eyes.
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 book of our life, to see if we meet the grade, or testing us with questions. That is not the teaching of our faith. What the Lord tells us is that we are not capable of getting to heaven by our own strength, but He has made it possible for all of us to get to heaven by his life, death and resurrection. The only reason it won’t happen is if we reject God and we accept or reject God by the way we live.
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. Why would God choose someone to be pope 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. And that is what we are celebrating at Christmas.
‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’
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