In the Infant Jesus, the Christmas Word has been proclaimed to you.
And that proclaimed Word has three stages. First, the anxious waiting.
It is expressed by the lips of a Hebrew prophet, Isaiah: all those
endless days when a people walked in darkness, when the land was
deeply shadowed, when joy was indeed there but ambiguous and muted,
when the experience of God’s people stressed a yoke that weighs a bar
across the shoulders. But he will come.
Second, the actual coming. It is expressed in the simplest of
narratives: a journey and a birth, shepherds watching and angels
singing, good news, great joy, to be shared by all. He has come.
Third, the theological reflection. In this child so anxiously awaited,
so simply come, in him God’s grace has been revealed, salvation has
been made possible for all, we are to give up everything that does not
lead to God, and wait in hope. He will come again.
One of the greatest Christians of modern times was Toyohiko Kagawa of
Japan. Kagawa’s parents died when he was a small child. He was raised
by relatives who mistreated him in many ways. In time he contracted
tuberculosis and was dying.
Then one day, he had an experience very much like the one St. Paul had
on the road to Damascus. A great light flooded the room he was in.
Kagawa was overwhelmed by the feeling of God’s presence.
The experience transformed him physically and spiritually. Kagawa’s
response to the experience was just as dramatic as St. Paul’s. He
devoted the rest of his life to helping Japan’s poor and neglected.
Kagawa wanted to share with them the great hope that came into his
life on that day, when his room was flooded with the light of the
Risen Christ.
As that light dispelled the darkness of his world and brought hope to
it, so he wanted to do the same for the poor and the neglected of the
slums of Japan.
Before Jesus entered our world, people were like Kagawa in his room:
sick, dying, and without hope. Their lives were filled with darkness
and despair. After Jesus entered our world, people were like Kagawa
after his religious experience: transformed and filled with hope and
joy.
Christmas is an invitation for each one of us to discover in ourselves
a dimension of goodness, which we call Jesus Christ. It’s an
invitation to let that dimension shine forth into the darkness of
today’s world.
Christmas celebrates the fact that the infinite God at a point in time
crossed an unimaginable border and personally entered our world. The
Christmas image of Jesus is that of a light shining in the darkness.
Christmas celebrates the fact that when Jesus entered our darkened
world hope also entered.
What Jesus was to the world of his time, he wants us to be to the
world of our time. We, too, must be a ray of hope in the midst of
despair.
A Blessed Christmas to You!
