Seasonal Reflection, part II

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Merry Christmas everyone! On this second day of Christmas, I bid you greetings in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As we enter into the Christmas season, let us with joy embrace the God of our salvation who has become flesh for our salvation. During this festive season, the Church reminds us that fasting is forbidden until the eve of Theophany. So, let us “throw off every hinderance, and the sin which so easily entangles, and run with endurance the race marked out for us.” (Hb 12.1)

Having prepared ourselves during the days of fasting by pondering the example of the prophets who foretold the coming of the enfleshed Savior, we now savor with gratitude and happiness the fulness of time: God is with us!

As I travelled yesterday to my parents’ home in Tennessee, I broke my own self-imposed fast from Christmas music, a fast by which I hoped to avoid the feeling of a precocious season before Christmas even began. As I listened to one singer’s plea for the true meaning of Christmas, I thought about what my response should be, were I asked my opinion: “Basil, what do you think the true meaning of Christmas is?”

It would be this: All have sinned and come short of the Father’s glory, and no one has seen God. But the only-begotten Son of God, born of a woman in these last days for our salvation, has made him known. The Virgin has given birth to a child, who is Emmanuel, “God-with-us,” the eternal and uncreated God in the flesh. He who is Being from all eternity became what he was not, that we might become by his grace what he is by his nature.

Without the Incarnation — the enfleshment of God — the sentiments of Christmas are impossible. Peace on earth is a pipe dream, unless it is possible; good will toward men is good for nothing, unless we can achieve it. That is what it means that God took our flesh and became one of us: The dreams of Christmas transcend sentimentality and become true in Jesus Christ, the divine and human Son of God.

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