23-Dec-2007
Dear Friend,
At Christmas we wish each other a very Happy Christmas! For most people
Christmas is a time of merry making, of visiting friends and sharing gifts and
partying. But Christmas can also be a difficult time for people who have lost a
dear one, people on their bed of pain, people who are jobless or lonely or
alone. We need to remind ourselves that the first Christmas was not a merry
affair. Mary and Joseph had it tough, yet they brought Jesus into the world. If
we can hold the good and the not-so-good, the expected and the unexpected, the
desired and the undesired, the weaknesses and the promises of strength with
faith, we can have a happy Christmas. Wishing you a Christ-filled Christmas!
Fr. Jude
Sunday Reflections: Christmas Day - Today a Saviour has been born to us
25 Dec-2007
Readings: Isaiah 9:1-7; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke
2: 1: 1-14;
Isaiah foresees an ideal descendant of David who will inaugurate a new era of
peace and prosperity for God’s people. The images used by the prophet and the
titles he gives to the royal figure aptly symbolize the glorious times ahead.
The light that conquers the darkness is the sign that the new era is about to
dawn. The people seeing the end of their distress will shout for joy. Their
yoke will be removed. This future prince is given glorious titles: Wonderful
Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace! Security,
justice and integrity will characterize the life of the nation under the new
king.
Light In The Darkness
The Christmas image of Jesus is that of a light shining in the darkness. This
image took on a remarkable meaning for Victor Frankl, a prisoner of the Nazis
in World War II. One early morning he and some other prisoners were digging in
the cold hard ground. As he was struggling to find a reason for all his
sufferings and slow dying, suddenly he became totally convinced that there was
a reason, though he could not fully understand it. He writes in his book Man’s
Search for Meaning, “The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey
the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners
were clad, and grey their faces…I was struggling to find a reason, a reason for
my sufferings, my slow dying.. ..At that moment a light was lit in the distant
farm house which stood on the horizon, as if it were painted there in the midst
of the miserable grey.” At that moment, he says that the words of the gospel
flashed into his
mind: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness never put it out.”
From that time, Victor was a different man, for it gave him hope and dispelled
his despair.
Vima Dasan in ‘His Word Lives’
The second reading from Paul’s letter to Titus proclaims that God’s grace in
the person of Jesus Christ is the basis of all Christian conduct. The basis for
the Christian’s practicing renunciation of worldly passions and living upright
lives is that Jesus sacrificed himself in order to redeem us from all iniquity
to form us into a people dedicated to God. Holiness of life is a necessary
condition for all those who call themselves Christian and who await the coming
of the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s grace and manifold blessings have been revealed
to us through Jesus born for us as our Lord and Saviour. In simplicity and
humility we contemplate Him and follow him.
A Christmas Lullaby
A few days before Christmas in 1818 the organ of St. Nicola broke down. It
became clear that it was impossible to make repairs in time for the midnight
Mass. The organist asked the parish priest, Fr. Joseph Mohr, for permission to
use a guitar at the Mass. He explained that they would keep the music simple
but they did need some form of accompaniment. Fr. Mohr agreed and mentioned
that he had been working on a Christmas poem, one which his people could
understand, for they were without much education as were the shepherds who were
invited to the crib in Bethlehem. The priest handed him a piece of paper on
which he had written a text which came to only twenty-six words in German.
There was no title to the brief poem. The organist went to work. Shortly before
Christmas, Franz Gruber had completed his melody. At midnight mass in the
church of St. Nicola in an Austrian village in the year 1818 people for the
first time sang “Silent Night.” The carol
needed no title. It had captured the spirit – the feeling –of Christmas. It
was simple, humble, actually a lullaby to the Son of God. A German carol became
universal because a Jewish baby, the eternal Son of God, was born in Bethlehem
as our Saviour. – The meaning of Christmas is so simply profound that our
recognition of it overflows from human thought and seeps into our deepest
emotions. The significance is more felt than understood.
Charles Miller in ‘Sunday Preaching’
The presence of the Lord in humankind’s history is a permanent call to return
to the sources of our faith. “In those days a decree went out from Emperor
Augustus that all the world should be registered.” In its simplicity the text
conveys an important message: Jesus was born in a determined time and place
under Augustus and Quirinius and at a time when King Herod was King. Jesus was
born at that moment, insignificant in the eyes of the arrogant and cynical
powers of the time, but all important for people who waited for his coming and
who believed in him. Christmas manifests God breaking into human history not in
power but in weakness. –A Christmas of lowliness and of service in contrast to
the rule of power of domination of earthy kings. By mentioning that the birth
took place in Bethlehem, the town of David, and by referring to the shepherds,
Luke was associating Jesus with the great King David who first appears on the
biblical scene as the
keeper of sheep. The presence of the shepherds would also make the point that
it was the lowly ones of society, and not the religious or secular elite, who
first heard of the wondrous birth. The angels who announced the birth of Christ
give him three titles: Saviour, Christ, and Lord. As Saviour Jesus would bring
deliverance to all peoples, delivering them from sin and the effects of sin,
and restoring them to the friendship of God. As Christ or Messiah, he is God’s
anointed one, the one expected for countless ages by devout Israelites. By
referring to Jesus as Lord, Luke was implicitly declaring that he was on level
with the God of the Old Testament, sharing in his power and Glory.
The Incarnate Christ
Longfellow tells of a monk whose duty it was to give food and clothing to the
poor at the monastery gate. One evening, a vision of Christ appeared to him in
his cell. The face and the features were indistinct so that he even doubted if
it were there, then it would glow a little. As he gazed with joy at the vision,
the bell sounded the hour when the poor were waiting at the monastery gate. How
could he leave now? What should he do –stay with the heavenly Visitor, or go to
his duty of distributing help to the needy? He bade farewell to Christ and went
to relieve Christ’s poor. Darkness fell before he finished, and as he entered
his cell he struck a light. The room was immediately filled with heavenly
brightness. There stood Christ not indistinct but now shining as the sun,
smiling upon him with divine tenderness. Jesus spoke, “If you had not gone I
would have left indeed!” –One part of our veneration of Christ in the crib at
Christmas is to help
those who represent Christ in the flesh around us.
Bishop Tihamer Toth in ‘Tonic for the heart’
“Carved, painted and printed images of Mary holding the Christ Child have so
flooded the world that we can hardly imagine a world without them. For all the
rich drapery in which Mary and the baby are often clothed, the image is so
touching and so human that one would think that to hold an infant in a
nurturing way is the most natural thing in the world for human beings. Isaiah
suggests that it is natural to hold and cherish an infant when he asks: "Does a
woman forget the Child at her breast?" But he immediately adds a disturbing
note by admitting that the forsaking of an infant by its mother can and does
happen, in contrast to the God of the Israelites who would never forget a
helpless infant…… The infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke give clear
indications that the world was not seen as necessarily a friendly place for a
child to be born in. However, it should be noted that there simply is no room
for a child, whether the child is divine or
human, or both. It does not matter if the dwelling place referred to in Luke
is a commercial establishment or not. The point is the same: a pregnant woman
about to deliver is not given special consideration. When Herod hears word
about the birth of a special child, he seeks to kill him. It is only the
protection of the Heavenly Father who communicates through dreams and his human
agents that saves Jesus from being killed before he even has a chance to speak
the Word of God with a human voice.” –Andrew Marr OSB – A Christmas meditation.
Lighting The Light
The English writer John Ruskin left us a splendid image of what Jesus wants us
to be in our world. In Ruskin’s time electricity hadn’t been discovered yet.
City streets were lit at night by gas lamps. City lamplighters had to go from
lamp to lamp, lighting them with a flaming torch. One night, when Ruskin was an
old man, he was sitting in front of a window in his house. Across the valley
was a street on a hillside. There, Ruskin could see the torch of the
lamplighter lighting lamps as he went. Because of the darkness, Ruskin couldn’t
see the lamplighter. He could only see his torch and the trail of lights it
left behind him. After a few minutes Ruskin turned to the person next to him
and said: “That’s a good illustration of a Christian. People may never have
known him. They may never have met him. They may never even have seen him. But
they know he passed through their world by the trail of lights he left lit
behind him.” –Christmas is an
invitation for each of us to be for the world what Jesus was for his world: a
beam of light in the midst of darkness, a ray of hope in the midst of despair.
Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’
God Came Down To Us…
During World War II plane travel and television were still in their infancy.
One Christmas day during the war a young family- father mother and children,
were outside making a snowman. Suddenly a plane passed directly overhead. The
mother shouted to the children. “That’s the plane your uncle is on. Let’s all
wave. Maybe he’ll see us.” The children jumped up and down, waved frantically,
and shouted on top of their voices. Seconds later, after the plane had passed,
the tiniest child turned to her daddy and asked, “Daddy, how do people climb
into the sky to get into the plane?” Her daddy explained that passengers didn’t
have to climb to the sky to get into the planes. The planes came down from the
sky to the passengers. –That story is a beautiful illustration of what
Christmas is all about. Christmas celebrates the fact we don’t have to climb to
the sky to get to God. God has come down to earth to us. Christmas celebrates
the fact that
the infinite God at a point in time crossed the unimaginable border and
personally entered our world. Before such an undreamable dream the intellect
reels. Fortunately, a Christian writer has helped our understanding of this
mystery. He simply said, “Well, love does such things.”
Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’
May we discover that Jesus Emmanuel is one with us and for us!
Fr. Jude Botelho
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been
collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and
from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever
possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you
could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in
these reflections. These reflections are also available on my web site
www.netforlife.net Thank you.
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