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December 25, 2005

The Gift of Christmas

"What was the first gift of Christmas?"

So asks Mrs. Parkin in The Christmas Box, a neat little movie I first saw several years ago. Associated with this is her indignant retort that this "is not a trivial question!" In that movie, Richard first gives what is probably a typical answer for many - love. Mrs. Parkin isn't satisfied with this reply - only at the end does he find the answer she is looking for, the obvious and yet often missed answer - a child.

The meaning of Christmas is often missed, substituted with a confused vision of love. Louis Bouyer says it well in a book unrelated to Christmas, "charity that is not concerned with justice, nor with justice applied in the concrete, is merely a mockery of charity."

Amy Welborn has a good article on the meaning of Christmas, one of the best I've read in a while, as well as an inspiration for this post, in addition to the Liturgy of the Hours, which also offers a poignant reminder of exactly why Christ was sent to earth in the first place:

Second Reading from the Office of Readings for Christmas Eve:

Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.

You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.

Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.

He has become our justice, our sanctification, our redemption, so that, as it is written: Let him who glories glory in the Lord.

Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of a virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, man is justified not by himself but by God.

Truth has arisen from the earth: because the Word was made flesh. And justice looked down from heaven: because every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.

Truth has arisen from the earth: flesh from Mary. And justice looked down from heaven: for man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.

Justified by faith, let us be at peace with God: for justice and peace have embraced one another. Through our Lord Jesus Christ: for Truth has arisen from the earth. Through whom we have access to that grace in which we stand, and our boast is in our hope of God's glory. He does not say: "of our glory," but of God's glory: for justice has not proceeded from us but has looked down from heaven. Therefore he who glories, let him glory, not in himself, but in the Lord.

For this reason, when our Lord was born of the Virgin, the message of the angelic voices was: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.

For how could there be peace on earth unless Truth has arisen from the earth, that is, unless Christ were born of our flesh? And he is our peace who made the two into one: that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity.

Let us then rejoice in this grace, so that our glorying may bear witness to our good conscience by which we glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord. That is why Scripture says: He is my glory, the one who lifts up my head. For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?

Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.

- St. Augustine

The opening sure sets the tone - eternal death, sinful flesh, and the mercy of God. This reveals one of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith - Christ was sent to a world in dire need of Him, that could not be saved without Him, and yet the world never deserved such a merciful and loving act.

This love is not the sort of goodwill we try to show toward others, a temporary and ephemeral benevolence that passes away once the decorations come down. It is the mercy and love of a father who sees his children in danger of death and who will go to any length in order to save them - and that's where the Christ child comes in. Christ is much more a life-preserver, intended to keep man from drowning in the sea of sin, than he is a cute babe from on high meant to inspire good cheer. The situation was and is a lot more serious than the current celebration lets on - not for nothing is Christ called the light that pierced the darkness.

The world might have been able to accept Christ, but it cannot accept the reason He was sent - that there is something wrong with the world as it is, that man is fallen, a sinful race with no hope of salvation unless God sent His only Son to take on the sins of the world and offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice, to atone for a debt that could never be paid. To accept the gift of Christ, man must first acknowledge he has a need for it - and that means realizing that he is in actuality in the freezing, dark sea of sin, desiring to get out of that sea, and the realization that Christ is the only thing that can achieve that end.

All too often, we reject that gift, preferring the apparent pleasures found in the freezing sea, failing to realize they are delusions brought on by the frigid waters, and that in reality we are dying there. There is a sense in which the maxim "ignorance is bliss" plays a role here - because when man suddenly realizes where he is, the gravity of the situation causes panic as he looks for a way to save himself, desperately searching until he finds God's rescue through Christ. God will not save us without our participation, just as a life preserver cannot rescue if nothing is done with it - we have to take an active part in the process.

Recognition of being a sinner and trying to get out of sin is not fun - and the world in general cannot stand the accusation that it is in sin and in need of a savior, still less that it has to do something about it. But this is what the gift of Christmas is - God sends us Himself, in Christ, as a means of salvation to a dying world. The meaning of this gift will make no sense to anyone who doesn't understand why God did this - both because man is a sinner and because God loves all of us, and desires to save us from our sins.

UPDATE: The priest giving the homily for the daytime Mass actually touched upon the theme of the darkness of sin and the light of Christ in the homily, making good use of a story to boot. Very cool.

Merry Christmas!

- Posted by in Catholic at 12:00 AM