We
welcome everyone to our Christmas Eve celebration here at the St James the
Greater Catholic Church in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Christmas is a time of year when many visitors and family members come
to worship with us, to celebrate Christ’s birth into our world. As we welcome all of you to our Eucharistic
celebration this evening, we hope you will feel the warmth and hospitality of
our community of faith. We are very
thankful for all the children and youth who have participated in the singing of
carols this year – it has made our celebration very special this year.
Each
Christmas Eve, we hear the story of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel of Luke, so
there are no surprises in the story we hear tonight. We are all familiar with Mary and Joseph
traveling to the city of Bethlehem due to a census being taken by the Roman
empire, in how they were forced to spend the night in a poor, humble stable
because there was no room for them in the inn.
Jesus, the Son of God made incarnate in the world by being born by the
Virgin Mary, came into his earthly existence not in some grand palace or in a
mighty castle, but in the place where animals live. Shepherds and animals were
present at his birth, not kings, not noblemen, not the rich and powerful of
society. Jesus was not born in a
comfortable bed with fine linens, but instead in a manger. A manger, in fact, is food trough where the
animals ate, so it foreshadows the way that Jesus’ body will become the
spiritual food that nourishes us in the Eucharist, as we partake of his body
and blood that are transformed from the bread and the wine that we give back to
God as gifts on the altar.
If you
look at a lot of the spiritual writings on the internet or in Christian
magazines this time of the year, there is a lot being written about how we have
the need to rediscover the true meaning of Christmas in our lives, because
Christmas has been so overtaken by our secular world. If you look at the message that our modern
society puts forth, Christmas has been transformed into a secular holiday where
shopping and presents and parties seem to take the focus away from its
religious and spiritual significance.
Christ was born in that humble stable in Bethlehem more than 2000 years
ago, but how is he born in our hearts and in our lives today? That is really the big question we need to
ask tonight. Is Christ being born in
Black Friday sales and trips to Walmart and the mall? Or, is Christ being born in the way we reach
out to others in this holy season and in the way the values of our faith
permeate our lives? It is our job – in fact the duty of every Christian – to
proclaim the message of Christ to the world today. If being a disciple does not have an affect
on our lives, if we do not reflect the Gospel in the way we live, then I don’t
think that Christ’s birth has much significance at all for us.
We are
called to celebrate Christ the light in our lives tonight. But it is not a light that came to our world
only once upon a time so long ago. It is
a light that shines tonight here with us in our church during the Christmas
season, a light that is to shine for all of eternity. But, in order to feel the true meaning of
Christmas, we need to feel that light shining in our lives, to feel the
responsibility to bring that light to others.
I
remember a Christmas Eve mass that took place when I served as a missionary in
South America. I was in the small village
of San Francisco de Onzole deep in the interior of the rain forest – a village
with no electricity and no running water at all. As we
processed to the church in the middle of the night in order to begin our
celebration of Christmas eve, I couldn’t believe how dark everything was. We
sat in the middle of the church with just a few candles giving off light – with
the beating of drums and joyful singing filling the night air. In one sense, this felt so far away from the
United States from where I had lived and had grown up – in the big cities of
Los Angeles and Chicago. But in another sense, I felt a unity in my Catholic
identity, where I can be attending mass as a missionary half a world away,
celebrating the way that Christ the light entered the world as a little baby in
the manger in Bethlehem so many centuries ago. It is amazing that the joy of Christ’s birth
brings joy and good news to so many different corners of our world. I saw the light of Baby Jesus being born in
the hearts and in the joyful voices of those celebrating Christmas in that
remote village in the jungle. It is up
to all of us to not only recognize the Christmas that is here around us, but to
bearers of that spirit to the world – not only on Christmas day – but every
day.
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