By 
By Fr Declan Boland
You will be reading this column as you make your last minute preparations for Christmas. You have survived the queues, traffic jams, hustle and bustle and the weather, and now hopefully all is ready. The Christmas dinner list is now resolved, the presents bought, and hopefully your hearts are brimming with the joyful hope and expectation that the season is bringing us.
In Luke 2:10-12 we hear, “The angel said to the shepherds, do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today, in the town of David a saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Just think. We are Christians today, not because of anything we have done but because a teenage girl living in occupied Palestine at one of the most dangerous moments in history said yes – yes to God, yes to a wholehearted call she could not possibly understand; yes to vulnerability in the face of gossip and judgment; yes to the considerable risk of pregnancy and childbirth; yes to a vision for herself and her little boy of a mission that would bring down rulers and lift up the humble, one that would turn away the rich and fill the hungry with good things, that would scatter the proud and gather the lowly; yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or that of her son.
At Christmas we celebrate that God almighty, creator of the universe and all that exists has taken on our human flesh and appeared in time as a little baby. By becoming human, God encourages us to honour the vulnerability and fragility of our own lives. It is nearly impossible to believe – God implanted in the soft lining of a woman’s womb; God entering this world perhaps into the steady waiting arms of a midwife; God crying out in hunger; God reaching out to be fed by his mother; God totally relaxed, eyes closed, his chubby little arms raised over his head in a posture of complete trust. And God resting in his mother’s lap…
To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation (God taking on human form), and that is the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pains, in our confusions and sickness, in our losses and triumphs, in our brightest days and darkest hours.
In all things God is with us – and for us. Through Mary’s example, he invites us to take the risk of love, even though it undoubtedly opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt, being scared or even disappointed. There is nothing in our experiences, past, present or future that the God-man Jesus has not experienced in his own flesh. He knows and understands us from the inside out. Yes, our God is fully human. Yes divine too but fully human also. The tragedy is we do not fully believe this or if we do, we believe it in a rather fitful, sporadic way. We have so emphasised the divinity of Christ that we have forgotten that he was fully human and all the implication this has for all of us.
St Paul in his letter to the Philippians reminds us of this central truth: Ch 2. 6-8. His state was divine yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself taking the form of slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.
This is what I would like you to ponder as you possibly get a quiet time over Christmas. This God man born in Bethlehem is in every way like a human being. He understands us and journeys with us. That is why we can celebrate this or any other Christmas. He weeps with us, laughs with us and carries us. The God of the philosophers and the theologians is far too narrow, distant and cold. God, Emmanuel is with us, as close as our heartbeat or our breathing. This is the real meaning of Christmas and of our joy and celebration at this time.
I pray for all of you that the immensity of what happened on that fateful day in Bethlehem may become alive in your hearts, and that this humble and gracious God will be the one you will pray to and believe in now and in the years to come.
Happy Christmas everyone and may the light you bear illumine the face of the Beloved in everyone you see.
