Human Christmas

In this message, Fr Richard Healey offers a heartfelt reflection on the true meaning of Christmas. He invites us to move beyond nostalgic images of snowy wonderlands and instead embrace the reality of God’s presence in our lives today. RH shares his own experience of Christmas in a warmer climate, emphasizing that the heart of Christmas is about God’s desire to be intimately involved with us. Through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, we can encounter Jesus in a profound way. This Christmas, let us deepen our friendship with Jesus and celebrate His transformative presence in our lives.

Well, it’s midnight, so I’m going to invite you first just to close your eyes, just to think, what are the images that come to mind when you think of Christmas? What’s the most evocative kind of thing that might come to mind? Now we’re all products of the media, so I suspect that lots of movies probably will fashion and form a lot of those images. And you know, when I think of Christmas, it’s so weirdly a snow covered kind of scene. It’s a dark sort of of night. There’s usually the Christmas trees that are all decked out and all kinds of bright lights, and it’s it’s kind of weird because that’s just not our experience. I mean, this is a reasonably warm kind of night. And and that’s the, the image, that’s the, the reality for us. And yet as children of a generation where the northern hemisphere is kind of dominated our worldview and our culture where it is winter, and they do look forward to those opportunities for white Christmases and so forth.

00:01:11 You know, that makes absolute kind of sense. But for us, it’s a different reality, and it’s important for us to make sense of that, because if we just continue to imagine things as they once were or they might have been, we miss the opportunity for God to actually be here with us now. And if there is something that lies at the the heart that provides the heartbeat of of Christmas, it’s surely that sense of a God who is part of it, part of every moment in our lives. The God who doesn’t want us just to stay in abstract memories of things from the past. But he wants us to engage here and now with his reality, with that truth of a God who wants to be part of our lives. And it’s really struck me in the last few weeks, kind of pondering and thinking about what the difference Christmas makes in our lives. You know, we had some sense of God. You know, there were lots of of different people, the great patriarchs of the faith of Israel that had experienced God in some way.

00:02:29 I mean, often there was an angel that would appear and and sometimes it was, was that actually God or was it an angel? There was lots of confusion when you read those early stories in the Hebrew Bible. It’s not exactly clear. And people don’t seem to to understand. Was that God himself who was there before us, or was it merely I mean, an angel was already freaky enough and kind of scary enough. And the number one greeting of an angel is always don’t be afraid, because clearly a lot of people are afraid by the reality of God. But that wasn’t enough for our God. Even when he was able to lead his people through the wilderness, after they had reached that experience of exodus from the slavery of Egypt, even when he was present in the column of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, he wanted more. He wanted to be present. And he realized that that wasn’t enough, because even when they built the temple, even when the glory, the Shekinah of the Lord came down in this amazing experience and the manifestation of God was so present there in the tabernacle, in the very center of the temple.

00:03:49 Even there, when people were able to know that God was present amidst them, it wasn’t enough. The people still turned away. People still longed for some other presence of God. And even though they’ve just been revealed, and even though they’ve just been freed from slavery, what’s the very first thing? After God revealed himself in these signs and wonders on Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai, then what do they do? Moses is up on the mountain communicating with the Lord in conversation with him. And he’s very brother, his own brother, Aaron, you know, says Moses, we’re not sure where he’s gone. So let’s build an idol. Give me your gold. Give me your treasures, and we’ll melt them all down and. And out popped the golden calf. Out popped this sign and symbol. Here is your God, Israel. Worship him. And we have that recognition of of that tendency that is still there. You know, we make idols so readily and so easily of what we see around us.

00:04:54 But in Jesus we don’t have a meat idol. We don’t have something that is fashioned by human hands, even though of course, it was from Mary’s very body that gave birth to this the Savior. But in Jesus there’s this completely different reality. We’re able now to know God because he knows us. He’s experienced every single element of human life. He went through every moment. You know that experience of being hungry, of being thirsty, of being on his feet all day and covered in the dust and the soot and the smells of the road. He knew what it was like for friends to be annoyed at him. He knew what it was like for friends to walk away, for friends to betray him. He had all of those experiences because he’s experienced it directly. And so God is now no longer just observing our lives from a distance. But in Jesus we see someone who has offered his very experience to us. And so we get to have that friendship with God, or at least that possibility of friendship with God, because he’s drawn so close to us and so intimately, wants to be part of our lives.

00:06:12 And especially as Catholics. You know, one of the the beautiful gifts that we have is the ability to know that sacramentally the Jesus becomes present for us. He’s no longer just this distant object, but the bread that we hold up, that I hold up in mass, and that through the gift of the Holy Spirit being released upon that bread, it’s changed and transformed to become the very body of the Lord. And we offer it to you that we get to receive the very life of God. Not only did Jesus become human and walk among us, but he continues to be present among us. In the gift of the bread and wine, changed and transformed to become for us the body and blood of Christ, that we get to taste him. We get to consume him, that he becomes part of our lives. The Christian mystery is that a Christmas? It wasn’t just a one off event of a human baby being able to represent the very life of God, that we continue to be open to this, we continue to experience the joy and the wonder.

00:07:21 So Christmas is all about the reality of the God who’s reaching out to us, the God who is available to us, the God who longs that we might know him. The God who is able to be in friendship with us. So don’t allow this Christmas to be simply a remembrance of of old days, of remembrance of snowy, white Christmas colored seeds. But to know that a Christmas we get to encounter the very life of God, that we get to be invited into the friendship of our Savior, Jesus. Let’s allow him to call us more deeply into that friendship with him today.