Christmas Day
Reflection
Christmas is a day of hope as well as joy. We do not celebrate Jesus’ birthday remembering something that happened long ago. We celebrate the stupendous fact of the Incarnation. “We can read the history of our universe as the rising up of Divine Love incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals love’s urge toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus is the love of God incarnate, the wholemaker who shows the way of evolution toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love. Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth to God in one’s own life and to become midwives of divinity in this evolving cosmos.”( Ilia Delio) God continues to take flesh in us, the men, women and children who form God’s body today. The birth we celebrate is not just a past historical event but a celebration of God’s continual birth in us.
Prayer
Glory to God and on earth peace.
Action
Rejoice in the meaning of the Incarnation in Jesus and in God’s presence in us and all creation.
Suggested Reading
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us.
John 1:13-14
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing.
Isaiah 9:1-6
God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If God gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it.
Pope Francis
Christmas proclaims the Incarnation, that God is among us, one of us. God is always in the present moment, and all things are possible.
llia Delio
We hold that in everything Jesus stood for, lived and proclaimed, he was and still is the clearest expression of God’s presence in our midst. Our faith proclaims God as the source of the perfection, goodness, compassion, mercy, and love manifest in Jesus.
Barbara Fiand
Christmas is not for children. It is for those who refuse to give up and grow old, for those to whom life comes newly and with purpose each and every day, for those who can let yesterday go so that life can be full of new possibility always, for those who are agitated with newness whatever their age. Life is for the living, for those in whom Christmas is a feast without finish, a celebration of change, a call to begin once more the journey to human joy and holy meaning.
Joan Chittister
Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.
Agnes M. Pahro
Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.
Janice Maeditere
As long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, Christmas is.
Eric Sevareid
One of the things that Christmas reminds us is that Jesus Christ was once a child.
Hark Herald Sarmiento