CHRISTMAS DAY

“Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie”
That’s how one much-loved carol begins. Today we can make an imaginary journey to the Bethlehem that we sing about at Christmas. (It has to be imaginary, what with the risk of violence there these days). According to tradition, as you enter the town, you are greeted by a large banner across the road. In Hebrew it says, “BERUCHIM NABAIM” ....  “Blessed is He who comes.” And in Arabic another banner proclaims: “AHALAN veSAHALAN”, which means, “My tent is yours”. What a gracious welcome home, because this place is where our Christian family had its first beginning.
Then there is the Church of the Nativity with its peculiar doorway. The only way to enter the vast church is through a tiny postern gate. You have to bend almost double to avoid banging your head. It’s a sort of message that no one can come to see the place where Jesus was born without bowing low. In its own way the message also seems to say that you can no longer look for God where people usually look  - up there, out yonder. No, the real truth is that he is here, in something as utterly human as the birth of a baby.
How odd that our way of thinking could be on the lines that God is power, domination, infinity, and awesomeness. Actually, when we reach down to the moment of truth, what we find is weakness, helplessness, powerlessness, and dependency. For us, the birth of Christ means that the indescribable mystery we call God can only be found in someone as utterly human as you and me; and as utterly open to hurt, disappointment and failure. A newborn baby is one of the weakest forms of animal life. It is so easy to kill a baby. Mere neglect will do that. God forbid ! And God has put himself into our hands.
Today what we say to God is, “I believe in you.” And in reply, God says to us, “I depend upon you.”
It is clear that God is asking to be included into humanity, our families, and our communities. And on our part we must not make God and neighbour feel excluded.
When it comes to parish life, there are a growing number of Catholics whom I am tempted to describe as “spiritually excluded.” There are numerous reasons, of course, why people give up regular attendance at Sunday Mass and sever all contact with the Catholic Church: lack of faith, boredom, laziness, pressure of work, anger and marriage problems. Less spoken about, though, is the failure of the institutional Church itself  -  the failure to communicate the unconditional nature of God’s love. Church leaders give the impression that spiritual life is “performance related.” We give the impression that God’s love has to be gained or earned through personal performance.
Now, instead, please consider this fact. In becoming human, God has deliberately chosen to embrace the messiness, the brokenness and unpredictability of human life. Jesus is, indeed, the Divine Son of God. But if you consider his human ancestry you will be shocked to observe that his family tree had some liars, cheats, womanisers and bad women.
The Christmas story makes it abundantly clear that God frequently chooses to work through flawed human beings. An awareness of this fact should alert us to the dangers of being too judgemental and too ready to write off those who do not easily fit into our own understanding of how things should be.
Christmas therefore is a time to take an honest look at our attitudes and prejudices, our rules and regulations that so often exclude people from sharing fully in our community and sacramental life. Christmas is a time when the Church should try to regain a sense of the whole mystery and wonder of life; that we may look on life with a new freshness, and to accept people as we find them, with an openness of mind and heart.
As I wish you all a Christmas filled with joy and newness, I’d like to recall these lines of a poet: “Peace is so much more than a season;
 It’s a way of life and a state of reason.”
PRAYER poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889: 45 years)
Moonless darkness stands between
Past, O Past no more be seen !
But the Bethlehem Star may lead me
To the sight of him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord, Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord, Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway;
Now begin, on Christmas Day.