Christmastide

Christmas is not over; it’s just getting started. This year Christmastide stretches from December 26 to January 12. It is easy to get caught up in the rush of the season, December 25 has come and gone, the child is born, Midnight Mass is a fading memory and New Year’s is coming, let’s move along. But by doing so we are neglecting the true message of Christmas.

You see Christmas is not about the newborn baby. It is not about the sweet, Christmas card scenes of Mary and Joseph looking adoringly at the Christ–child. Christmas is about a fierce, passionate God who inserts Himself into our history because He cannot abandon us to the darkness.

That is what we celebrate for these 17 days. The eternal infinite God has condescended to enter our human history and change it. He does this because of His great desire to be with us, to be part of the human condition.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the mess we have made of things, God does not want us to be alone. He wants to be with us. He has not given up on us.

We have built prison walls around our hearts, walls of grief, betrayal, tragedy and emptiness. But God has come to us to break down those walls and dispel the darkness that surrounds us.

When we let the light of Christ into our hearts, His strength, hope, and light become our own. This is the message of Christmas.

Pax vobiscum
Feast of the Holy Family