Christmas attracts us, for many reasons and on many levels. This miraculous and long-awaited birth began the final act in God's careful and deliberate act to bring the world back to friendship with Him. God the Son becoming man and being born brought this loving plan of salvation into the open. Quite right it is therefore that we celebrate heartily both in the church and at home!
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Speaker 1:
What compels us to attend holy mass tonight or during the day tomorrow had been in the mind and the heart of God for thousands of years before it all came to happen in the fullness of time 2022 years ago. You see, God is immensely and perfectly patient, as well as very careful and exact in his actions with God. Nothing happens by chance and no detail is overlooked. Sometimes I think that a whole lifetime of Christmases would not be enough to come to appreciate and understand what God has done for us. So it is that year by year we try to enter a more deeply and consciously into the miraculous and marvelous birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Christmas draws us in because our hearts thirst after truth. A truth that is easily discovered and quickly grasped does not eant or hold us. But sublime and perfect truth captures us. Let me this year provide some answers to the question. Why was Jesus Christ born? Firstly, Jesus was born so that we could enter again into a state of friendship with God. Eve and Adam broke that bond when they did their own will and believed the devil's lies Only because he was fully one of us. Could Christ bridge the gap between mankind and God. Secondly, Jesus was born so that we might know God's love and not just with the mind, but to know a person. This person is God who loved the world so much as to send his divine son to us. Thirdly, Jesus was born so that we, he might be for us a model of holiness that we might learn from him what our human nature looks like when it is fully directed towards God. Fourthly was born so that we might have a share in the divine nature just as he had a full share in our human nature. This is the truly unique aspect of Christianity. No other religion offers a share in the divine nature, perhaps only a closeness to it or a service given to it. This is why it is said that Christ took the loneliness of our human nature so as to elevate us to the divine nature. And lastly, Jesus was also born and was the helpless baby in the manger to underline for us that the only proper way of relating to God is that of a child in simplicity and trust. The very opposite of what Adam and Eve did under the influence of the evil one. All the beautiful and heartwarming aspects of Christmas, both in the church and at home, are meant to impress more deeply upon us year by year that the second person of the Blessed Trinity, out of perfect love for us, took to himself a complete human nature was conceived in, developed in, and was born to the blessed Virgin Mary grew up and lived an ordinary life and then taught, performed miracles, founded a church, and then suffered, died, and rose from the dead. Now we have the chance to be saved from sin and death and to become sanctified so that we can share in God's divine life forever in heaven. All of that is truly worth celebrating. May I wish you and your family are happy and a holy Christmas day and season. Remember that it's not just one day. We have the Christmas octave beginning with Christmas day ending next Sunday on the 1st of January with the great solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. And during the Octa, we honor some wonderful saints on the 26th Saint Stephen on the 27th, St. John the Apostle on the 28th, the holy innocence who died for Christ. And on Friday the 30th, the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And then the Christmas season lasts all the way through epiphany, up to the feast of the baptism of the Lord on Monday, January 9th. So I wish you a happy Christmas day and a beautiful Christmas octave and Christmas season.[inaudible] was Christmas.