Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading: Isaiah 52:7-10 – Rejoice, for the Lord is consoling his people.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 97(98):1-6 – All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Second Reading: Hebrews 1:1-6 – God has spoken to us through his Son.

Gospel: John 1:1-18 – The Word was made flesh, and lived among us.

After four weeks of watching and waiting, here we are today celebrating the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ – an event that totally changed the course of history, time and period. Thanks to this event, the entire world now calculates world events according to what happened before Christ and what happened after the birth of Christ, or, more properly, in the year of the Lord (B.C. and A.D.). No other personality has changed the course of history as Jesus did. But beyond this sentiment of triumphalism however, the birth of Christ presents us with an opportunity for a deeper theological reflection on the meaning and implication of God becoming man in Jesus Christ.

Throughout the advent period, the prophet Isaiah has guided us in our various reflections and meditations. Today again in the first reading, we read a passage from the Deutero-Isaiah where God finally leads his people from Babylon back to Zion; and from its ruined walls, the watchmen shout for joy. This passage is a joyous proclamation of good news to Zion where the messengers arrive to announce that the enemy has been defeated and that God has taken over once again as King. Despite the fact that the promised liberation was yet still incomplete, the people are urged to trust God because the new Kingdom has begun and the watchmen have seen it and are therefore proclaiming it to all. This new Kingdom was to culminate in the event of Christ.

Today’s prologue to the Letter to the Hebrews announces God’s interventions in the world and in human history. If the liberation announced in the Old Testament was incomplete, it was not because it was a false announcement; it was rather because God started revealing his plan for salvation step by step: “At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets…” Because it was through the instrumentality of human mediators that God spoke in the past, God’s revelation was incomplete. But finally, God has spoken definitively through Jesus Christ, who is neither just a prophet, nor an angel, nor any other created being, but rather a perfect image of God himself: “But in our time…, he has spoken to us through his Son…. He is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature….” As “the Son of God”, and as “God’s perfect image”, Jesus is better qualified as a witness than those prophets and angels through whom God spoke to our ancestors in the past. The Gospel passage taken from the prologue to the Gospel of John was even more definitive when it identified the Word of God with God himself, and declared that the same Word became flesh (in Jesus Christ) and dwelt among us.

From the scriptural passages we read, it is obvious that Jesus Christ is the reason for the season of Christmas. Because the celebration of Christmas has become a global event, and cultures have adapted it to their different tastes, people often tend to exclusively associate the culturally-adapted celebrations to the meaning of Christmas. Take, for instance, the exchange of gift: The greatest exchange of gift happened on Christmas when God gave humankind the gift of his son. The Magi also gave the infant Jesus gifts full of symbolisms. However, ask an average child (in some cases, even adults) about the meaning of Christmas, and you will be shocked that there will be no reference to God and to Jesus Christ in their answers. They understand Christmas as the time of the year when they have a great opportunity to receive gifts and to visit relatives who will shower them with more gifts. This is all they know about Christmas (we shall come back to the issue of gifts shortly). In some other cultures where Christmas celebration has been adapted to become an end of year flaunting of wealth and an opportunity to show others that “you have arrived”, we see people committing all sorts of crimes – theft, armed robbery, ritual killing, embezzlement of public funds, etc., – in order to make quick money for “Christmas” celebration. Such people hardly think of the meaning and implication of God becoming human in Jesus Christ. They keep on acting in an inhuman manner, overlooking what the great Karl Barth once said: “Anyone who has really understood that God became human, can never speak and act in an inhuman way”.

John’s Gospel prologue tells us that the “Word” came as light that darkness could not overpower. But it also describes how there has been a constant struggle between the light and the darkness. These evils that have been associated with Christmas in our own epoch are part of the darkness that has been in conflict with light. It is our duty as Christians to help fight these forces of evil – sin, selfishness, exploitation, oppression, etc. This is the only way we can demonstrate that we understand the meaning of God becoming human in Jesus Christ namely, to sanctify our sinful humanity and make it resemble God’s divinity.

Returning to the question of the exchange of gifts which Christmas celebrates, most people are more interested in the exchange of material gifts among families and friends. However, the greatest exchange of gift is not between families and friends, but rather between God and humanity. But most often, we don’t recognize God’s gifts to us just like the story of a man who punished his five-year old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight, and he became even more upset when the child pasted the gold paper on a box to put under a Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her father the next morning and announced, “This is for you, daddy”. The father was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction. However, his anger flared up again when he discovered that the box was empty. He yelled, “Don’t you know, young lady, when you give someone a present that there’s supposed to be something inside the package?” The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes, and said, “But daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was full. It was the best gift I could give you”. The father was crushed. He fell on his knees, put his arms around his little girl, and begged for forgiveness. The little girl was killed in a car accident a few weeks later, and it is said that the father kept that gold box by his bed for the rest of his life. Whenever he was discouraged or faced tough problems, he would open the box, take out an imaginary kiss, and remember the love of the child who put it there.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, could it be that we don’t appreciate God’s gift of his Son because we see in it an “empty box”? As long as we are consumed by the consumerist society in which we live where success and failure are measured by how much material things we acquire or fail to acquire, we risk missing out on God’s gift of Jesus Christ by dismissing that gift as an “empty box”. Let us strive to always remember the love of God who gave us that gift.  Happy Christmas.