Christmas Day Prayers

I think about my family, my relatives, the neighbors, and the people we will spend this day with. Dear Jesus, as I look at their faces and remember their stories, I feel gratitude and some fear and anxiety.  Thank you for these loved ones, and please forgive me for the ways I have been less than accepting and loving.  Please heal the wounds, divisions, and conflicts that stand between us, and help me remember how dearly you love them.  I only want to remember that you have come to save us all. 

Sometimes the closest person to us isn’t the one with whom we share our prayer life. On Christmas morning, before the household begins to stir, we can hold our spouse close and pray together specially, sharing the gifts of the day ahead.

God of Love, thank you for the gift you have given us in bringing us together.  On this day when we celebrate your birth, may we take another step closer to each other in intimacy.  With your guidance, we want to be more loving and thoughtful, less protective and defensive around each other.  May we dedicate this day to renewing our love.  As we leave the warmth of this bed to begin our day, bless us with the warmth of your great love for us and help us to remember to look for the light of your love in each other. 

Let me just for a moment, Lord, hold this time in my heart.  It is about mysteries and gratitude, unknowing and wrong sizes, snippets of ribbon and screams of delight.  Help me remember the immense love you have for each of us in this room.  With each gift that is opened, no matter how perfect or not, let me feel again the many ways you gift us each day, especially with your presence in our hearts and the presence of each other in our lives. 

Loving God, on this sacred day, I am going to work.  There is something special about working on Christmas, when so many others are home with loved ones.  My work today might even have a wondrous sense of service and necessity.  But it doesn’t always feel noble, and inside me, there is a struggle: I wish I could stay home.  Help me to feel missioned by you today. Let me recognize the unique way my co-workers and I are called to serve our brothers and sisters.  Let me take just a moment in this quiet to feel your deep love for me.  May I carry that sense of peace with me as the light of your love, shining on everyone I come in contact with today.  Thank you. 

God of compassion, there is such a hole in my heart!  Today should be a day of joy, but I feel only the emptiness and loss of someone so beloved.  While the world celebrates around me, I remember past Christmas celebrations and long to have my loved one with me.  I bring my sorrows to you, Lord, like some odd gift of the magi and dump them at your feet.   In my blind tears, I wonder if anyone can possibly understand the depth of my sadness. Yes, you can.  You sent your son to be with us in our deepest sorrows, and I know that even though I might not feel it at this minute, you are here with me, grieving with me, caring for me in my sadness, and loving me.  Dearest lord, help me to turn to the one I miss so much today and speak.  Help me heal the loss of our parting and help me not to regret the things I didn’t say.  Sorrow tears at my heart, but today I ask that my loss soften my heart and make me more compassionate with everyone I meet. 

God of all gifts, we thank you for the many ways you have  blessed us this day.  We are grateful to each of those who are gathered around this table.  We ask you to bless us and our food and to bless those we love who are not with us today.  In our gratitude and love, we remember your humble birth into our lives and pray for those who are without enough to eat.  We remember the stable in which you were born and pray for those who have no place to live.  We remember your challenging message of caring and giving, and we pray for peace in families and nations throughout the world.  We bless you and give you thanks in your Spirit who brings our hearts to life on Christmas Day and forever.  Amen. 

Instead of the Light of Christ filling our Christmas, we sometimes just experience lightning.  It is a very common experience.  We were tired.  We were out of our patterns.  There was a lot of emotional baggage there.  Everyone seemed “on edge,”  “a bit testy,” and “sparks just seemed to fly.”  And, instead of responding out of the graces of the Nativity, all we seemed to have been able to do is regress.  We acted like children - badly disciplined children at that.  A little “Christmas spirit” lubricated the bad spirits.  We said things we shouldn’t have said.  We got hurt by the sharp things others said.  We “retaliated in kind,” or we did the “punishing pout,” or smiled and held it all in.  We feel wounded, and we did some wounding. And we did it in front of the children, or turned our frustrations on them. It wasn’t good, and we know it.  How do we pray in the aftermath of a day like that?

Though we may have had some version of something like this, and feel very far from the graces we experienced in Advent, we aren’t really far from the grace we need.  Jesus comes to be our Savior - but, not saving us once and for all, so that we get it and we’ve got it for good.  By his coming and his death, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit, we are surely saved.  But we need continual saving as well.  Sometimes we need an experience of how badly things can go before we really know how much we need our Savior.  In the aftermath of conflict and division, Jesus can shine a light into the dark corners of our hearts.  Right when we might feel most down on ourselves and most angry at others, Jesus can reveal to us deeper and deeper love.  He loves us precisely where we are unreliable, precisely in those places where our ability to love others unselfishly is still quite shaky.  And, it is precisely into those places where we are most disappointed in and angry at loved ones that Jesus desires to embrace us, to still our hearts and give us the grace of reconciliation.

Right after Christmas is the perfect time to look back and examine our hearts.  What is Jesus saying to me these days after Christmas?  What is he asking me?  What is he inviting me to do?  He won’t be asking us to repeat our account of what happened, in terms of who was right and who was wrong.  Jesus will always draw us to himself, always inviting us into the mystery of the power of surrender.  Jesus is offering us a chance to stay longer in that stable, next to the manger, to draw deeper from the mystery of his self-sacrificing love. What do I do with my angry and hurt feelings?  What if the other person isn’t sorry, because this was just the way they are?  What if the other person isn’t “turning to Jesus”?  This is the time we need to let the Lord’s love for us to heal us.  That is the deepest healing.

To hold on to the resentment and anger is to let it become like a cancer in our hearts. To surrender these feelings to Jesus is to taste the freedom he is offering us.  This doesn’t mean that the bad didn’t happen.  It means that I let what happened be transformed in my heart, from hurt that festers, to something bad that he died to set us free from.  As Paul says, this is how God dealt with sin.  He nailed it to a tree.  Jesus takes away the sin of the world, and he gives us peace that the world can’t give. It is only in this peace that we can let the other be a fellow sinner loved by the same Lord and Savior.  Jesus doesn’t love us, on the condition that we get our act together first.  He doesn’t wait until we become holy to love us.  He loves us because we need loving, and we need it now.  The more deeply we experience this love, the more completely we will be able to let Jesus love the other.  In the process, we grow in com-passion for them - an ability to suffer with them.  We can begin to see them as Jesus sees them.  We can grieve for what they suffer.  We can feel sadness for whatever insecurity handicaps them.  We can even become their ally - turning to God and begging God for the graces they need, for the healing they can’t ask for themselves.

Perhaps this week, we can let these new faith-filled feelings grow in us.  Whether we are the kind of person who tends to be stirred up by conflict, or the type of person who tends to avoid it until things die down, we can let this peace fill our hearts.  Then we can plan to make peace - to use the healing grace we have received to be healers ourselves.  Once we have prayed for someone, it is much easier to love them.  Perhaps we will know how to do that right away.  Perhaps it will take some careful reflection.  Sometimes, it will take some acknowledgement of our sorrow for our part in what has happened.  But most of the time, it will just take care of itself.  Most likely, what the other needs is attention, affirmation, and gentle care.   We may not see the fruit of our efforts at reconciling love, right away or ever.  Jesus understands.  We can be assured that our attempts at healing love will set in motion a process of healing.  We can be assured that the Redeemer of the world can redeem even a rough Christmas day.

Keep coming, Lord Jesus.  Having awaited your coming, we beg you to keep coming to set us free - freer to receive your love, freer to forgive, and freer to love even more self-less-ly.  Thank you, Lord.  Thank you.