CHRISTMAS IN PERSPECTIVE

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What event do Christians celebrate at Christmas? Most folks would answer "The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem." This is certainly what most of us celebrate on December 25: Nativity scenes, the carols and Christmas cards and dozens of other charming traditions all celebrate the birth of the infant lying on the straw, with the ox and the donkey, Mary and Joseph looking on in adoration. Reflections on that scene are standard fare for preachers -- and bloggers -- during this season.  

On this Saturday before the Solemnity of the Birth of the Lord, though, I'd like to invite you to expand your vision of Christmas. First of all, like any feast on the Church's calendar, it's not an isolated event, hovering in space and unattached to anything before or after it. In this brief post I'll hint at a couple of connections that we need to fit Christmas into its proper place in the wide sweep of the history of our salvation.

Let's start with the gospel passage assigned for the "mass during the day" on Christmas. (There are three different sets of mass readings assigned for the feast: one for "Mass During the Night," another set for "Mass at Dawn, and the third for "Mass During the Day"). The gospel for the Mass During the Day is from the prologue of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ..." What a disappointment! You go to mass on Christmas day expecting to hear the beautiful familiar stories of the shepherds, the stable, and no room in the inn; and instead you get this highly abstract, cold theological tract about the logos, the Word, becoming flesh. But remember, the liturgy is a great source of instruction for us, so we should try to learn what we can from it, especially when it presents us with surprises such as this reading from John on Christmas day. In this case the reading from John offers us a great place to start taking a deeper look into the meaning of Christmas.

The nativity, the fact that God took on human form, is a central belief of Christianity, but this belief was not celebrated as a liturgical feast for the first few centuries of the Church's history; the great central feast was Easter, the resurrection of Christ. When the feast of the nativity finally began to be observed, it celebrated the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity took on flesh  for our salvation. There was no heavy emphasis on the infant, on Jesus' condition as a baby -- the "cult of the manger" was a later development. (See last week's post.)

The coming of the Word as man was closely connected with the paschal mystery (the suffering-death-resurrection of Christ). This connection is a specifically Christian idea of God's incarnation: Incarnation means not only that God is with us but also that we are redeemed and with God. Fallen mankind is redeemed and shares the very life of God. In the truly traditional thinking of the Church, there's nothing poetic about the incarnation. On the contrary, the emphasis is, if anything, on a brutal fact: The Word came to do God's will, even to the point of dying on the cross.

As second consequence of taking a wider perspective of Christmas is this: the Christian view of the incarnation is that God became a human being not so that he might be be with us, but so that we might be with him. In other words, the nativity is the starting point of our divinization. This is a favorite truth expressed by the Fathers of the early church: God became  human so that we humans could become divine." But this "divinization" is not an end in itself, nor is it some abstract theological principle with no consequences for you and me. Rather, it has practical consequences in our everyday lives. It comes about so that we, having become in a sense divine, may be capable of working with Christ to rebuild the world for the glory of the Father, and be his coworkers in establishing the Kingdom on earth.

We are not passive bystanders at the incarnation (contrast this with the awed onlookers in the stable at Bethlehem). Seen from this broader perspective, the incarnation radically transforms the history of the world and the personal history of each one of us. Because of it, each of us has our proper role in God's plan, and we're expected to play that part enthusiastically and generously.

Keep this broader perspective in mind when you gaze on the familiar warm scene of the babe in the manger: You are not a passive bystander, but someone who, by virtue of the incarnation, has become divinized, and shares in Christ's work of building the kingdom on earth by your deeds and your words.

 Have a blessed and holy Christmas!