It is a great and noble thing to meditate on what happened this day many years ago, that God became man and lived among us. He did not just become man but He became a little, small, vulnerable baby. I am sure that it is easily understandable that God would come here powerful, ready to destroy, scaring people back into order, yet He did not come to us in that way. It is really shocking that God would come in a way He could be neglected, killed, wounded, abused. What was He thinking? As Christians we believe there is a powerful reason for His deciding to do so. In Greek there are three words for power. One is word we use for dynamite, explosive. The next word means daily, influential power that one had, by simply doing things each day you have the power to achieve something. The final word for power is the power a baby has to change something. It is power in vulnerability. I love hearing children at Mass and their power. One word, one sound can send the most dignified, controlled person into a frenzy. Their presence can make the most dignified people say ridiculous things to sooth or get a smile out of a child. They have a real power over our lives. Yet they can do so little.
Christ the child is meant to have this effect on our lives and a child is a good analogy of our faith. It is fragile like a child. It needs to be looked after, fed and nourished often or it will die. It is a very vulnerable thing to be a Christian. As a priest I do not stand before you as a perfect person but as a failure and one who does not have it together but is struggling. I struggle because I am called to be Christ but I am not, not even close. I am vulnerable when I try to follow Jesus, when I try to be like Jesus. Another thing about a child and our faith is how much a child changes our lives. If you think that when you have children it won’t change your lives, that you will still have an ordered life and get your eight hours of sleep each night, well, you are wrong, so wrong. A child will test your strength and show you how strong you are, that you can go not merely a day without sleep but apparently years. So, like the child, we must expect that our faith will challenge us the more we contact it. I think though many times we have allowed that faith to die in us. We have not nurtured it and the cry of the faith, the cries of our hearts, are ignored. We know they are ignored because we live a distracted life. That is how we know that we are ignoring if we have to watch entire series on Netflix, if we can’t go a moment without checking our phones, if we have to have three or four media things open as not to miss a moment of social media, yet we have no time in the real word for family and friends. That is our heart crying to be nourished with real food, with real attention. This is the time to pay attention to our heart, to our real need and one of those needs is faith.
In this time we are reminded of the real possibility of our soul that as God took on flesh we are made in the image and likeness of God. The more that we live in that image, the more our lives are satisfied and full. I cannot tell you though how to life in that image because how you reflect God is different than how I reflect God, so the only way you can be what you are called to be is to have a relationship with Him and that brings me to the final point of the Child Jesus.
Like children, Jesus is going to accept you. A child doesn’t care where you have come from, it is only concerned that you are there. It does not care if you smell funny or were doing something wrong, a child is very accepting. A child also seeks their identity in looking into the eyes of those they meet. We, too, need to find our identity in the Child of the Bethlehem who has come not as a judge but as a child. He has come to embrace us and teach us who we are meant to be, that is other Christs. Take time this Christmas to find out who you are by spending time with this Child.