December 25
The Nativity of the Lord
“All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.”
Reflection
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, ‘Your God is King’”
– Isaiah 52:7
As part of our Advent preparation as a parish, we worked through the recent book, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission which urges us forward to embody this simple line from the prophet Isaiah. Rather than find ourselves despairing at the apparent decline of the Church or the state of our wider culture, we instead have found new zeal with what an exciting and hope-filled time it is to be a disciple. Unlike the rest, we have real hope, we have a Gospel worth living for—and today we celebrate that this Gospel has taken flesh, the Incarnate Word dwells among us.
We often speak of our faith as being incarnational, meaning that it is something we must embody—the unseen aspects of our faith and of our spiritual life must become a living force in us and through us. For someone outside of the Church to truly receive the Good News that we announce this day, we must bear this Truth in our bodies by the way we live and the way we speak. The responsibility is on all of us to be the feet of the Gospel and to bear the Good News in to the world that has forgotten or neglected it.
Pope St. Paul VI describes this for us well: “The task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church. It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.” Earlier in Advent Paul’s Letter to the Romans makes this hit home for us:
“…everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent?” (Rom 10:13-15). The short answer is that our lives must bear the ‘fragrance of Christ’ and proclaim the joy of the Gospel.
Today we celebrate the birth of our Savior who really took on our flesh and really became incarnate in the womb of Mary. We shouldn’t let the sentimentality of this celebration overshadow the reality of this moment. Jesus bore our flesh and spent months in Mary’s womb, his heart beat within her, and upon his birth God allowed himself to be completely dependent on her care. Our humanity is forever elevated because of Jesus’ life in the flesh and for us now we see what is possible when the grace and presence of God enters us and transforms us. When the Gospel and the Sacraments change our lives, Jesus continues his life in our flesh. He has done this for no other motivation but love.
May we respond courageously to that love anew both this day and in the new year to come with gratitude that the Incarnate Word dwells among us and we continue to see his glory.
Peace,
Fr. Brendan Foley
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