Today, because we celebrate the birthday God made man, at the
Creed, we will genuflect (for those who are able) at the words and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the
Virgin Mary and became man[1].
Our Mother the Church with its liturgy wants us not only to
give adoration to God but also to help engrain in our psyche the power that
these words hold. Salvation is not communion with some Impersonal Philosophic
Divine Essence. It’s not sitting on cloud strumming harp looking at God from a
distance. – boring. I understand why people don’t want to go to heaven or come
to Mass every week if that is what heaven is like. But salvation is much more
wonderful than anything we can ever imagine. Salvation is an intimate and
personal relationship with a personal God who loves us more than we can ever
know. How many times have you seen A
Charlie Brown Christmas? Well, there is all this commotion about a
Christmas tree and Snoopy’s commercialism, but in the end, Linus brings us back
to the real meaning of Christmas by quoting Luke’s Gospel story of the Birth of
Jesus. It’s a very familiar
reading and I wonder how many people, when I began the gospel story, thought I
sounded like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons, “Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa.”
When we heard the beginning of the
Gospel story, did we mentally switch off a little button in our head, been
there, heard that I hope the football game is more exciting. What is the major
complaint about coming to Mass every week? It’s boring. Well, G.K. Chesterton writes, «A child kicks its legs
rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have
abounding vitality, because they are in spirit, fierce and free, therefore,
they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again;” and
the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people
are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough...
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun; and
every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity
that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately,
but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal
appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is
younger than we» .
Let us be honest: have we taken the Christmas
message for granted? The all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful God became,
through Mary’s Fiat (the old Latin
word for “Let it be done) a little embryo that began to grow inside of
Mary.
In his encyclical on the Eucharist, blessed
John Paul wrote, «At the Annunciation, Mary conceived the Son of God in the
physical reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what
to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the
signs of bread and wine, the Lord's body and blood. As a result, there is a
profound analogy between the Fiat
which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the
Lord». Thus, after the minister says The
Body of Christ, we should with great faith proclaim Amen and receive our God into our mouths.
And just as Mary was without sin when
she conceived Jesus in her womb so too when we, Catholics, receive Jesus in
Holy Communion, we must be in a state of grace, free from grave sin, and have
fasted one hour, to prepare a place for Jesus to rest in our souls. And yet,
this wonderful gift of God made man, this wonderful gift of Emmanuel, God with us not only in the Incarnation
but also in the Holy Eucharist is something that we celebrate every
Sunday.
My brother, my sister, let us recapture
that faith of a little child on the day of their first communion, and
figuratively say to the priest at every Mass “Do it again! Make present the
Body and Blood Soul and Divinity of the living God present among us” ■
[1]
Monday 24th December, 2012, Christmas Eve. 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14, 16. For
ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord—Ps 88(89):2-5, 27, 29. Luke 1:67-79.
